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Dana Alkerd (2:16)

Hello everyone, this is Dana Alkerd for It Could Happen Here. Today's episode will be focused on Arab Israeli normalization, Arab Israeli peace deals and Arab Israeli relations more generally. The reason that this is an important topic to discuss is because a few weeks ago the Washington Post published this PowerPoint presentation originating in the Trump administration, titled the Great From a Demolished Iranian Proxy to a Prosperous Abrahamic Ally. And this presentation is about Gaza, the US And Israeli vision for what Gaza's quote unquote, reconstruction will look like. And the word great itself is an acronym that stands for Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation. Now, this presentation has so much in it that horrifies any normal human being, but essentially it outlines this vision for how Gaza is going to be reconstructed. And throughout the entire document, it's very clear that whatever remains of Gaza's population will not have any political rights. There is some gesturing at some point about handing over some governance to, quote, vetted Palestinians. But there's also a repeated discussion within this presentation, within this document of how they want to incentivize a significant segment of Gaza's population to leave Gaza altogether and not return. And they want to financially incentivize them to do that. I think the entire presentation is worth looking at. I'll put it in the show notes, because it really outlines what they think Gaza is going to look like and what they plan for the Palestinians more generally. The reason why Arab Israeli normalization is important to discuss, given this presentation, given what's happening in Gaza after ceasefire is present very much in this document. It's very clear from the presentation that the US and Israel envision a particular role for Arab governments in this reconstruction and in this new Middle east that they hope to achieve. A Middle east where Gaza is this economic zone, connecting it to Saudi Arabia, connecting it to other parts of the Middle east, opening up investment opportunities for different Middle Eastern governments and companies in the global north as well. And it really is just an astounding vision to behold. Referring to Gaza as a demolished Iranian proxy that they want to turn into an Abrahamic ally is also interesting here because we've seen this kind of language in the last couple of years, especially during the first Trump administration with the Abraham Accords. Now, the Abraham Accords, as this episode will outline in detail, were agreements signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and eventually Morocco and a part of Sudan. And these agreements were billed as this new era of peace between Arabs and Israel under this kind of religious language and religious framing of Abraham as the father of both Jews and Arabs, Jews and Muslims. So to discuss this entire framework, what it means, what it obfuscates today, I'm Joined by Ben Schuman Stoller and Matan Kaminer, who have created a new podcast series called Bad Cousins. This is published by Colo Media in partnership with the Diasporist, and they recently had an event in Berlin debuting their first episode, which, full disclosure, I'm on. But essentially, they tackle this question of why are the Abraham Accords named after Abraham? What was that intended to denote? And why is Arab Israeli normalization such a big piece of the puzzle in understanding both the Israeli Palestinian conflict right now as well as the vision for the Israeli Palestinian conflict from the American and Israeli perspective? So, please enjoy this interview with Ben and Mattan. I wanted to give you guys a chance to introduce yourselves to the audience. So, Matan, would you like to start?

Matan Kaminer (6:16)

Sure. I'm an anthropologist. I work at Queen Mary University in London. My main research is on migration from Thailand to Israel for agricultural work. But this project is something of a side project that's blossomed together with Ben, who I've been good friends with for, I think, over a decade now.

Dana Alkerd (6:33)

All right, yeah, I remember that first book on the Thai migrants. But you have also published extensively on the Arab Israeli normalization question. So, yeah, we'll get into it. Ben?

Matan Kaminer (6:43)

Yeah.

Ben Schuman Stoller (6:43)

I'm Benjamin Solar. I'm the founder and owner of Colo Media here in Berlin, Germany. We're an audio publisher. We have audiobooks and shows and documentaries in English and German. And, yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having us.

Dana Alkerd (6:56)

Awesome. All right, so the listeners, I'm sure, are going to be a little bit aware, but let's kind of just define terms at the. At the top of this. When we say Arab Israeli normalization, well, what do we mean by that?

Matan Kaminer (7:10)

So it's a long, long process. It's not new. One of the interesting things that I found out when researching this, the article that this podcast came out of, is that more than 100 years ago, Chaim Weitzman, who was head of the Zionist Organization, and King Faisal were in very, very close communication about an agreement that it seems a lot like a progenitor of the Arab Accords today. We had a very sort of strong pro Western orientation on both sides. Pro imperialist, if you like, use that language. We had a disdain for the Palestinians as people who were not supposedly an important factor in the politics of the area. And we had a framing of Arabs and Jews as relatives, as kin, which is one that we trace back in the show to the sort of Abrahamic concept that has really come to the fore with the naming of the Abraham Accords. Of course, there's a long, long history since then with the bigger landmarks being Egyptian Israeli normalization in the late 1970s, 79, I think, and of course Jordanian Israeli normalization in 1994, which came very, very tightly knit with the Oslo Accords and the initiation of so called peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis. So the Palestinians were of course do play a central role here, whether as present or as present absentees, as the Israelis like to call them sometimes. Today, of course, we fast Forward to the 2020s. The Abraham Accords were signed between Israel, Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and one of the warring factions in Sudan back in 2020. And of course there's a kind of live project led by the US under Trump as well as Biden to extend normalization between Israel and not only Arab countries, but other so called Islamic countries like Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan, yes.

Dana Alkerd (9:00)

Which has had diplomatic relations since 1992, but we'll get into that.

Matan Kaminer (9:04)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's other ones, of course, that are on the table. I think Indonesia has been spoken about. Pakistan is always some hovering in the background. The big fish is Saudi Arabia. And we can talk about that as well, right?

Dana Alkerd (9:16)

Yeah. And when we say normalization, usually people are referring to the formal normalization of diplomatic ties because a lot of these countries, a lot of the Arab countries, had a position reiterated in the Arab peace initiative of 2002 that they would not have normal ties with the State of Israel until a resolution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. And the Abraham Accords was a step away from that kind of breaking of that precedent. But if we think about kind of under the table normalization, and of course there are so many ways in which these Arab countries have had under the table normalization to varying degrees with the State of Israel. Ben, maybe you could tell us about what the Abraham Accords were, how were they billed and what did they include?

Ben Schuman Stoller (10:01)

You have to make sure the precision of my language is on point. But there's two agreements, right? There's two things that were actually signed. So one is the framework, right, which, which, which discusses like the Abraham Accords.

Matan Kaminer (10:12)

As this unit, the Declaration of Principles.

Ben Schuman Stoller (10:15)

The Declaration of Principles. And the other one's a peace treaty, right, the peace treaty between Israel and the UAE and, and other countries. Right. So essentially that's what it is. It's these two signings. But I think when you, when you talk about how it was presented, it's supposed to mean it's supposed to be like a, a vehicle, a conduit for travel, for Security for economics, for. For deals, for cultural interchange, for a new way to be seen. It's like a massive PR exercise. Matan, jump in with the specifics.

Matan Kaminer (10:51)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we're kind of honing in on here is the sort of, sort of cultural or ideological aspects, if you want to be more stern about it. And I think, you know, that's the real interest of the show is in how the sort of mythical framework that I referred to already, and specifically the figure of Abraham is really, really central to this kind of ideological framing of the course. Like Elham Fakhor has written extensively about how toleration and tolerance have become sort of ideological tools. And Abraham is kind of a figurehead for that. He does this in two different ways that I think are interesting for listeners to sort of follow on. The first is as the progenitor or the kind of figurehead of monotheism. So Jews, Christians and Muslims all have a stake in Abraham. And of course, this concept of the Abrahamic religions, that's very central here. But another one, and we already mentioned this as well, is the sort of language of kinship of Jews and Arabs as being related to one another, as being specifically cousins, or so it's called bad cousins, because we're kind of exploring the various modalities or the various kind of shades of meaning and mood that this idea of cousins can have. It can be very positive. Of course, you know, a lot of people say, oh, Abraham, he's a wonderful figure of peace, of hospitality, et cetera. But there are also really dark sides to it. Dark sides that we really get into are the sort of misogyny that's very, very central in the Abraham myth, the underpinnings of slavery versus freedom that are really, really present there. And maybe most prominent and most important to me, maybe as somebody who also studies migration to the area, is xenophobia. So something that Yudan have written about, you know, the similarities between the UAE for example, and Israel that aren't really considered, that aren't thought about much. One that's always stood out to me is the way that migrant workers are treated in both these countries. The Gulf states, including uae, are huge, obviously users of non citizen migrant labor. Israel is not as big. It's not as big a phenomenon in Israel there, but it's growing a lot, especially since October 7, when Palestinian workers have been shut out of the Israeli market. And so I think Israel is like the Gulf states in a lot of these ways. And it's also getting to be more like them. And Abraham is kind of a prism or a figure through which we start to explore all these issues.

Dana Alkerd (12:56)

So in my mind, when the Abraham Accords were, you know, whispered about and then we saw them happen, and, you know, I've been writing about Arab Israeli normalization since. Since before the Abraham Accords in smaller ways, but in my mind, when I kind of heard that terminology being used and that framing being used, to me it felt deceptive that they were using this term of, like, the Abraham Accords, denoting and hearkening back to, like, the idea of the Abrahamic tradition and that we're kin and all of these things. For listeners who are bad at religion, as I am, Abraham had two sons, presume, you know, apparently. And one of those sons is the ancestor of Jews and the other one is the ancestor of Arabs, if you believe that. So anyway, I'm not gonna blaspheme on.

Matan Kaminer (13:46)

This podcast, but no, I think the story is important. I mean, it is a deception. I totally agree with you on that. But it's important to unpack how the deception works. Right, right, right. It's so effective because the story is so well known to people in the region.

Dana Alkerd (13:58)

No, absolutely, absolutely. But to me, like, the deception lay in the framing of Arab and Israeli animosity through a religious perspective, as if the conflict was a religious one.

Matan Kaminer (14:12)

Yeah.

Dana Alkerd (14:12)

So to me, it felt kind of very shallow. But then as you start to unpack not only the impacts of the Abraham Accords immediately, so immediately repression increases in these countries that sign the agreement, but then you start to unpack, like, what are these accords actually serving for the Arab countries that are signing, why are they signing with Israel? Well, they're re. Engineering. They're attempting to re. Engineer society. A lot of that tolerance language has to do with that. It's. They don't want societies that are politically active. They want them to be interested in consumerism. They want them to be maybe slightly socially liberal, tolerate the Israelis, tolerate war crimes and kumbaya, and never, ever have the ability to question the political leadership or the political status quo in any of these countries or in the region as a whole.

Matan Kaminer (15:02)

Yeah, I think it's all that, but I think it's also a global power move. Right. The Gulf countries, including Qatar, which has a different politics, are all really trying to make a name for themselves to become really, really huge global players. They're basically all trying to transform this gigantic oil wealth that they have into soft power, into diplomatic power, into cultural power. You know, this, this, this brings us into the. The comedy festival in Saudi Arabia as well. Right. And I think. I think part of the framework here is we are part of this larger global story, which is about freedom, peace, and friendship through religion. Now, what's the deception here? The deception is this sort of. And I think Ben, this is one of. One of his favorite points, so he can. He can expand on this. There's a sort of like a switcheroo game in which something else is brought into view and the Palestinians are hidden. Right. The crux of the conflict, the crux of what has basically brought Israel to go wild on the entire region, attacking seven different countries simultaneously, is the Palestinians, and it has been the Palestinians. It's always going to be the Palestinians. There is. You've written about this as well. There is a segment of Arab society, especially Arab elites, especially in the Gulf, who want nothing to do with the Palestinians and would be happy to get rid of them. But this isn't the case with the vast majority of Arabs. It's also not the case with the vast majority of the global South, I think, and even the vast majority of the global North. Right. We've seen very, very clear majorities against Israel's genocide in Gaza, even in the United States, you know, in Israel's biggest, biggest ally abroad. So there's. There's. In order to not have to talk about this, it's always good to be able to talk about something else. One of the many ways, and I'm not saying this is the only one, but one of the many ways in which the subject has changed is by talking about Abraham. So we're doing. I mean, our show has a little bit of a. It's kind of a difficult move to make because we're trying to talk about an excuse, but also unpack why that excuse is so powerful.

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Ben Schuman Stoller (17:10)

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Matan Kaminer (17:20)

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Ben Schuman Stoller (17:28)

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Matan Kaminer (17:35)

Period. I'm going to eat. You're going to do better than me? I'm going to eat. Yes. I literally will. Ryan will. I cannot wait till we both team up and get you out. And then one of us gets the other out. Cause we didn't realize they were a traitor the whole time. And you were actually an innocent. Y' all won't even know that I'm a traitor.

Ben Schuman Stoller (17:51)

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Matan Kaminer (17:54)

Well, thank you for coming to our show. And on that note, thank you for coming to my show.

Matan Kaminer (18:02)

Listen to High key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Ben Schuman Stoller (19:52)

You know there's like a lot of violence in in this piece framing and if you look at, I think it's 0.18 of the peace framework that Trump talks about that Trump presented on Gaza. I Think it's, I think it's 18. I have, I have the quote here, but not a number. It's, you know, an interfaith dialogue process will be established based on the values of tolerance and peaceful coexistence to try and change mindsets. I mean, this is like. To try and change mindsets and narratives of Palestinians and Israelis by emphasizing the benefits that can be derived from peace. I mean, it's like Mafia talk, right?

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Ben Schuman Stoller (20:22)

Exactly. You better. You're going to love this piece so much or else kind of thing. I cut up some audio from the episodes and from the interview with you, Donna, at the live event that we had here in Berlin a couple weeks ago. This topic is so. Feels so urgent and relevant to so many people that like, more than 50 people came out in the rain in November in Berlin. And one of the things I played was exactly when you called it an obfuscation. Like, there's this paradox where all these things that were under the table are coming up and are now explicit, these secret deals with Gulf states, this normalization that, you know, you two had known about, you know, in your research, but people like me wouldn't know about if they're not following, if they're academics, if they're not following this closely. And yet the Abraham Accords brought this all up. Okay, now we're on. Now everyone knows, right? Now we know that, like, this is about Iran, this is about security, this is about, you know, these material issues, right? But at the same time, that, that, that, that it's playing on this kind of clarity and this openness, right? And this moderation. It's also creating a whole new obfuscation, a whole new myth. And, you know, people love, love this quote. Like, there was a lot of, like, nodding heads in the audience when I played what you said, Donna, which was like, as if, right? Like as if this is about religion, it's about land and it's about sovereignty and, and that's clear. But these aren't called the Land and Sovereignty Accords.

Dana Alkerd (21:37)

I mean, like you said, like you said, it's very violent. I mean, I've been describing normalization under these terms as well as the Abraham Accords in particular as authoritarian conflict management because it maintains structural violence. It's not attempting to solve the underlying, you know, motivations for that violence, which, as you said, is the Israeli Palestinian conflict, which is the land, which is the, the, the war crimes. And I think also I want to just emphasize for listeners that the tolerance, framing in particular there's like the flip side to it, which is you better like this piece or else and we're calling it peace and it's Abrahamic. So like if you don't like it, what does that say about you? Yeah, are you intolerant? Are you an anti Semite? Are you, you know, like it's just. How could you be against peace? The peace is in the name, but it's a very particular type of peace.

Matan Kaminer (22:26)

It's illiberal, I think, I think authoritarian conflict management is a very good way of putting it. But also it's also very helpful to help to explain why the Abraham myth is so, so useful in that regard. Can we just go over the story real quick for listeners who aren't that familiar?

Dana Alkerd (22:41)

Yes, please.

Matan Kaminer (22:42)

So Abraham, who was known as, in all the so called Abrahamic religions as the first one to explicitly reject idolatry, right? So there are other righteous men in the Bible before him, but he's the first one who becomes what is in Islam is known as the friend of God. Right? So and he also, in addition to having this very, very intimate relationship with God, he also has a family, right? And in this family he has, he has a wife and a maidservant. The wife is named Sarah and the maidservant is named Hagar. Now I'm going to do this quick, don't worry. Sarah is barren, she can't have children. And she says to Abraham, I have an idea, why don't you have a child with a maid servant with Hagar and it'll be my child. So already, already I think we can see authoritarianism, we can see authoritarian conflict management already as kind of the, a seed that's planted in the story. Hagar has a child. That child is named Ishmael and Ishmael is beloved by his father. The Old Testament says so it's very, very clear, right? But then Sarah gets jealous. She says, well you know, this son is going to, and his mother are going to be basically be pushing me out of my status within the family, yada, yada, yada. There's a lot of other stuff that goes on. Very, very interesting and very fascinating and lots of very well known like so called sacrifice of Isaac. She miraculously has the child, right? That child's name, Isaac. Everyone agrees within these scriptural traditions that Isaac is the father of the Jews and Ishmael is the father of the Arabs. This is central to both Jewish theology and Islamic theology. And the Christians, insofar as they're involved in the story, they're also in on now, then the question becomes, which one of them is the blessed son? Which one of the one is the one who is supposed to inherit the land, that is the Holy land, wherever that's defined. And that's a little bit vague as well. The Jews say it's Isaac, and the Muslims say it's Ishmael. So we have a story what my dissertation advisor, Andrew Schreier, called a community of disagreement. There are people who disagree on something, but they don't disagree on the frame. Right? The frame in which all that entire story is inserted is one in which there's no disagreement. Everybody agrees that Abraham had two kids. Everybody agrees that the women are basically, you know, the women. This part in the story is predicated on their sons. And whether their sons succeed is what makes the women succeed or not. And then the question becomes, which one is the favorite son? Which one is the one that the father loves and the big father up above also loves? Right. Now, this is in itself, I think, at least in the way that it's framed in their Abrahamic accords, a form of. What do you call it, Authoritarian crisis management. Right. That's what it is. Now, that doesn't mean. And I think that this is also important. This is also one of the reasons that we made the podcast, that there's no other ways of reading the story. How else could we read the story? For example, we could point out, we could note that the person who has the most intimate contact with God in this entire story is Hagar. She's the first and only person in the Bible to give God a name. She calls him El Rohit, the God who has seen me. She has at least two miracles done to her in Islam, of course, her story and Ishmael's story becomes the story of Mecca. All the traditions of the Hajj are based around the story of Hagar and Ishmael. So she's a central, central figure, and she's a slave woman. She's an Egyptian. She's the one who was cast out into the desert. She's a migrant. Her name, Hagar or hajar in Arabic means migrant or migration. Right. There's all these powerful undercurrents in the story, as there are in every powerful myth, that mean that it can be read differently, and some people are reading it differently. So I don't think the story itself is the problem. The problem is that the story is used in a very particular way, in a way which facilitates, again, what you called conflictual.

Dana Alkerd (25:58)

Sorry, authoritarian conflict management.

Matan Kaminer (26:00)

Conflict management, yeah.

Dana Alkerd (26:02)

I mean, it's a mouthful. Maybe that helps us to get to what the podcast does. Like, who, who do you speak to? I know I'm on one of the episodes, but who, who else do you speak to? And like, what trends were surprising to you? How did your kind of thinking shift over time?

Ben Schuman Stoller (26:20)

I mean, let me start at least, because one thing we talked a lot about at the live event, there was a panel and there was a discussion with the audience. And one thing that's become excessively clear, like we heard Matan explain the story. I'm not from the Middle east, right? And also in this Berlin audience, like, the relevance of the story as a Bible story. I know I've heard of the story, but it doesn't have that much impact for me, like on the, on my life or on how I understand the world. It's a story. It's a Bible story. And we, we felt this from the European audience, right? We, we heard people say something like, like, okay, this is a myth, but are these the myths that are worth exploring right now? You know, maybe with like looking at the, at other myths of more like material issues. And I think what we're trying to do with the show is also explain. Well, but these do affect people's lives in the Middle East. Like, this is something, in fact, episode two, which comes out in a couple weeks, we have all these vox pop interviews from the old city of Jerusalem where we talk to people on the street and just ask, like, why do you think Jews and Arabs are cousins and what does that mean? And what does that mean with the Abraham Accords? And immediately everybody had different Israelis and the Arabs that you talked to, Mitan had different understandings of the Abraham Accords, good and bad. But if you said, why is it called the Abraham Accords? Every single one of them are like, oh, yeah, because we're cousins. Yeah, so start there. Right? So, so episode one was about the kind of geo, geopolitics. So that's why you were on Donna, episode two, explaining this kind of. What does that mean then? That if everybody can agree that the Jews and the Arabs are cousins, but the Abraham Accords are seen with all of these, like, we already started talking about, you know, all these obfuscating kind of nasty, hidden violent undertones, but also kind of like sick, you know, we can fly there or whatever. Like all this tourism and, and high fiving and entrepreneurship and you know, the biggest seder of whatever UAE history or whatever that was, you know, so like, so we start there and then, and the idea is to really like then turn this whole thing around and look at the myths and look at the stories and try and understand from all these different sides. We go into, you know, medieval Islamic stories and texts and the idea of hospitality and the idea of, of cousinage and what does cousins mean? And I mean, Matan, you can, you can go further here, but the idea of the show really starts from there, right? And that's how we're going to like start at the geopolitics and end up hopefully and turning the whole Abraham idea thing in such a, such a somersault that it lands right on its head or right on its butt or something. And not only can we kind of dismantle it or understand it and take it apart, but then maybe like reclaim it in a different way and maybe even use it for some kind of positive progressive purposes, even radical ones that, I mean, Matan, in his activism and in his research, you've, you know, you, Matan, you say you've already seen and kind of he has to make the case to me, you know, that's kind of the framing of the podcast.

Matan Kaminer (29:06)

Like I'm eternally making the case, but that's okay. I think, I think it's kind of a difficult case to make and the fact that people keep challenging me on it I think is very, is very productive. One other thing that came up in Berlin, and I think it was really interesting, is that Ben sort of touched on this at the beginning of what he was saying just now. The way that framing this as the Abraham Accords, framing it as the Abraham story, tends to make it easier for people from Europe or from the United States or to North America to see themselves as outside of the story, right? So this, Donna, you also alluded to this. There's this idea that this is like an age old conflict, you know, between.

Matan Kaminer (29:41)

These relatives who are always quarreling between themselves and, oh, it's so difficult to.

Dana Alkerd (29:44)

Understand people over there.

Matan Kaminer (29:46)

Yeah, yeah. Q Like Oriental music right in the background and, and hence that we rational outsiders, we Westerners, we Christians, et cetera, all these sort of vaguely linked identities that so called outsiders have. We are sort of neutral and rational outsiders who can play a mediating role and bring this, this, this, this whole ancient mess to an end. Right? But the funny thing about this is that it's also a religious kind of. There's also a religious undertone here. There is this idea, you know, a lot of scholars have written about how so called secularism, so called enlightenment in the west actually is a secularized form of Christianity in A lot of ways. And this is really actually very, very clear in this Abrahamic framing. Because there is this idea that Christianity is superior to these other two religions. Right. This is the actual universal religion. This is the one that is able to encompass and sort of transcend the other ones. And hence I think maybe this was controversial a few years ago, but nowadays I think it's quite clear that the US sees itself as a, as a Christian state. Right. It even sees itself as a crusader state.

Dana Alkerd (30:45)

I mean, they state it pretty clearly.

Matan Kaminer (30:46)

With the Secretary of Defense having Deus Volt tattoos on his chest. Right. So this is no longer. They're saying the quiet part out loud in this context as well. And they think that they can come in, you know, and as these sort of outsiders solve things, but they're actually deeply implicated in the story themselves for much, much earlier than the 19th century. We could go back to the Crusades if we want. Europe has always been involved in the Middle East. Right. And the Middle east has been involved in Europe force. These are near foreigners. Right. So there's no innocence here. Right. There's nobody who's outside the story and the Abrahamic framework. One of the, I think sort of pernicious ways in which it's acting in this current conjuncture, in this current day and age is as this sort of framing that neutralizes the Western influence and makes it seem objective and rational and.

Ben Schuman Stoller (31:29)

Also I think allows the Gulf states to claim that. Right. There was like some interesting stuff in the Fakir book that I didn't quite put together about the, you know, sort of elite Emirati perspectives as liberal and anti democratic. But if you're pro business in a certain way, then you can claim this kind of, you know, like Donna Matan, you two have written about moderation a lot, but this idea for me of like, if you can claim, you know, the, the business forward thinking, then you're also modern, then you're also considered, you know, more above. Like you have a different elevation and a different sort of legitimacy according to this worldview than somebody that would care about such things as the Jews and the Arabs. What an ancient old fashioned kind of passe, you know, the Palestinian issue, you know, ugh kind of thing. But you know what's cool, like artificial intelligence and like shipping deals in the Indian Ocean. That's new, you know.

Matan Kaminer (32:27)

Golf.

Ben Schuman Stoller (32:28)

Yeah, that's sick. Like, yeah, golf and like virtual reality, watching people play golf, like that would be awesome.

Matan Kaminer (32:34)

Yeah.

Ben Schuman Stoller (32:34)

And, and it's sort of data centered, sort of invited Dubai chocolate. I could go on it's. I still think the Seder, like the biggest Seder in Emirati history or whatever, is my favorite anecdote. But the way that it invited this space so, like, I. It's almost like a genius. Like, maybe it was like Jared Kushner's great genius was to see this, like, you know, ability to let other people claim the same Christian elevation. Right? The same. Like, I'm on a bit shaky ground here now, so I'll stop.

Matan Kaminer (33:02)

Yeah, I don't know if. I don't know if. Genius. I don't. I might. I might dispute you. You know what I mean? In a way, it's. In a way, it's kind of obvious, right? Like, they were. They were always going to call these the Abraham Accords when they did them, in a way. Right. Jared Kushner, I don't know. He's a. He was. He's the right guy. He's the right guy in the right place at the right time more than anything else.

Ben Schuman Stoller (33:18)

But do you understand what I mean? That, like, this invitation into this perspective that you were saying, we're talking this kind of like, Christian, you know, in the. In our event in Berlin, someone said something like, even without the Jewish Muslim context, we have this problem. We have this problem in this region. And the Abraham Accords allows the conversation to happen on this level of, let's talk about chips, let's talk about fighter jets. You know, let's talk about drones.

Matan Kaminer (33:43)

Yeah, Drones, Yeah.

Dana Alkerd (33:44)

Surveillance. Yeah.

Matan Kaminer (33:46)

One other thing that I think is really important is it sort of normalizes this idea that there is a place for everybody and the people shouldn't be mixed. On the Israeli extreme right, the religious extreme right, in Israel, there is this notion of the distancing of Ishmael for his correction. Right. What's the idea here is that the Ishmaelites, that is the Arabs, that is the Muslims, that is the Palestinians, they have their place in the world. It's just that that place isn't here. It's somewhere else in a place called Arabia. Right. And therefore, that's why we can be friends with the Emiratis, because the Emiratis are Arabs in the right place. In Arabia, the Palestinians, however, they're a problem because they're Arabs who don't realize what the right place is. They can stay here if they accept total subjugation, basically. You know, the Smotrich's plan is sort of a secularization, decisive plan. Yeah. His decisiveness plan, or whatever that's called.

Matan Kaminer (34:31)

Is a sort of secularization of things that Kahane was saying, the so called Rabbi Mayor Kahane was saying in the 1980s, the sort of spiritual father of the Israeli extreme right, they can stay here if they're willing to be our slaves, basically. If not, they can go to Arabia. And once they're in Arabia, they can be our best friends. And this is really, I think, very, very closely connected to the animosity towards migrants. Right. That brings me back to the figure of Hagar or Hajar. She is a migrant and because she is a migrant, because she's not in the right place, that's why she's denigrated, that's why she's exploited, that's why she's cast out into the desert. So it's not just about the Palestinians in that regard. We can see how this sort of myth also plays into the hyper exploitation of migrants in the Gulf. We can see how it plays into the racist treatment that refugees from sub Saharan Africa are receiving in North Africa. Right. We literally saw people a couple of years ago in Tunisia being cast out into the desert the way the Hagar and Ismael was. And of course this is all closely related again to Europe, to global imperial kind of processes, to capitalism. Ben was talking about racial hierarchy. Racial hierarchy, right. So one of the reasons that I think we need to keep our eye on this ideology is that in some ways it's different from what we're used to. Right. It's not, for example, white supremacy. Right. We're used to thinking about white supremacy as this sort of globally dominant racial ideology. But this is something different. This is not about people being better because they're white. It's about people being better because they're in the right place. And that's actually, I think, something that's really coming up very, very strong on the global far right. On the far right, globally. This idea that, oh, you'll see, like in Europe, for example, it's not that we have anything against black people or Arabs or Asians or anything else. It just needs to stay in their own countries. So long as everybody stays in their own countries, that's fine. And you know, with climate change, with all these catastrophic ecological changes that are happening in the world, people are going to be moving and we already see people in masses moving from place to place. But that's going to be larger and larger movements as they come in the coming decades. And you know, the basic test of humanity is going to be this test of hospitality, whether people are allowed into new places that they have to go to in order to survive. And this sort of ideology, I think is already sort of primed. It's primed to deny that and to say no, you got to just stay in your own space, right? So against that, Abraham, I would like to play Sagar. I think she's the. She's. She's the answer.

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Well, thank you for coming to our show. And on that note, thank you for coming to my show.

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Dana Alkerd (39:41)

So I mean, that's fascinating. I've never really kind of thought about. I've never really thought too hard about this story because as a Muslim and Arab child, it upset me. But I do want to say, like, there is, as you, as you mentioned, like there is a general trending towards ethno nationalism all over the world. But the Gulf states cannot manage ethno nationalism. Saudi Arabia is kind of a little bit of a different story. But the ones that signed, they are minorities in their countries.

Matan Kaminer (40:14)

That's right.

Dana Alkerd (40:14)

On top of that, to their own citizens, to Emirati citizens, to Bahraini citizens, they are illegitimate. They are only legitimate by virtue of providing economic opportunities. You know, those cracks have already been showing up. So the way in which these countries can build legitimacy for themselves, offset possible public pressure, offset any kind of accountability for their regional role. People forget that the United Arab Emirates is deeply implicated in the genocide in Sudan. The way that they connect with what is, I think, inherently white supremacist and things like this is. But of course they're not white is what Yassin Al Hasadah has Syrian theorist calls the ideology of modernism. He was writing about the the promise and the discourse of the Assad regime when Bashar al Assad came to power. But when I read it, I was like, this sounds a lot like the ideology of these Gulf states. And so he says it has three traits. It entirely neglects issues of values such as freedom, equality, human dignity, mutual respect among people in favor of morally amorphous categories such as secularism, enlightenment and modernism itself. It neglects fundamental social issues related to poverty, unemployment, marginalization, life conditions, gender relations, etc, and the advocates of this modernism are politically conservative. I mean, just to a T. Yeah.

Matan Kaminer (41:31)

That'S the Abraham Accords in a Nutshell right there.

Dana Alkerd (41:32)

Exactly. Yeah. And, and I, you know, I wrote about this in, in the context of the Abraham Accords in a Paper I 2023. But Yasin Hasalah, like, kind of nailed it back in 2011 that this was the trend.

Matan Kaminer (41:45)

Yeah, I think Syrians saw a lot of things earlier than the rest of us.

Dana Alkerd (41:48)

Yeah, definitely. And so this is their vision for the world, and I think this is the vision of a lot of essentially the right in the world, even in America, like, they don't really. They don't care about democracy. They want this.

Matan Kaminer (42:02)

Yeah.

Dana Alkerd (42:03)

They want you to be prosperous and in your place and. Yeah. Everybody stays separate.

Matan Kaminer (42:08)

Yeah. There's a sort of, like, callousness around all of it, which I think is. It's actually a draw for some people because, you know, cynicism is a big thing in the world and people are. I think one of the reasons that people are attracted to Trump, for example, is because it's clear that he's a completely cynical actor, you know, who's only out for his own sake. And people are sort of, you know, for better or worse, sick of the, of liberal hypocrisy, so they gravitate towards that. And it's funny, I mean, you would think that that wouldn't go hand in hand with religion or these mythical stories, but it actually does. You know, speaking of prosperity, for example, there's in evangelicalism, there's a very strong strand of what's called, like, the prosperity gospel. This idea. And this has, you know, very, very old roots in Calvinism as well. If you make it in the world, if you're rich, if you make, if you make a lot of money, that means that God loves you. That's like a proof. Right. And so, again, we shouldn't think about religion too narrowly. Religion is really infused in all these sorts of social ideologies, among which are, and I think this is very, very prominent in the Abraham story, in the Abrahamic story is that, well, you know, if they have oil, if they have riches, if they're, if they've managed to sort of manipulate the global economy to their own advantage, then more power to them. Right. And that's attractive. That's something that you want to. That's a train that you want to get on. Maybe they'll give you a plane too.

Ben Schuman Stoller (43:19)

Right.

Matan Kaminer (43:19)

That was the Qataris, that wasn't uae, so we shouldn't get them mixed up. But I think it's kind of the same story.

Dana Alkerd (43:24)

Yeah, no, I completely agree. So, I mean, I started this discussion by talking about the plans for reconstruction in Gaza. And you've already mentioned that like the, the big whale for the Trump administration is Saudi Arabia. They want Saudi Arabia to normalize with Israel. What are some things we should watch for in the near future? What do you, where do you think this Arab, Israeli normalization is going to go?

Matan Kaminer (43:49)

I'm always hesitant to make predictions. I think it's an extremely volatile moment, this, the ceasefire in Gaza. God knows if it's going to hold or if the Israelis are just going to go back in and start genociding again. I think we're also seeing these really rapid movements throughout the region with, I mean, we've kept alluding to Qatar, but Qatar and Turkey are really playing a really much bigger role now than they were until recently. And that's with American blessing. So that's also going to change, I think, the sort of calculus that Saudi makes. But broadly speaking, I think one thing that we really need to keep an eye on is this IMEC corridor, this idea of that basically the Biden administration was starting up, but Trump is really sort of put into hyperdrive, which is this idea of connecting India, the Gulf, Israel and Europe through a sort of alternative to China's Belt and Road initiative. It revolves around oil and gas, but it also revolves around data centers and AI. So sort of geopolitically and geoeconomically, I think that's the big plan that the Americans have hatched for the region. And that basically means turning Gaza into some sort of concentration camp. SEZ economic zone. Right. There are really, really, really frightening plans to ethnically cleanse about half of the Gazan population and to sort of turn the rest of them into, into, well, basically slaves, you know, basically unfree workers in this so called special economic zone that they're trying to set up. Now, whether any of this is going to actually happen, I think it's anybody's, it's anybody's guess at this point, but it's very clear, and I just saw Rafik Ziada speaking about this at the Historical Materialism Conference in London. It's very clear that it's their plan.

Ben Schuman Stoller (45:25)

Right?

Matan Kaminer (45:26)

That's the plan. It's out there. I don't know if it's even been leaked or it was just publicly released that this is what the Americans, Israelis, Saudis and Emiratis are planning for the region. It's a really kind of nightmarish vision that they're not even, they're broadcasting out loud. They're not even pretending to disown it or Anything. So we should take them at their word and we should be very, very clear that this is something totally unacceptable. And I mean, as you started out saying, and I think we always agreed on this, the question for the region is the Palestinian question. If the Palestinians don't have sovereignty, if they don't have freedom, if they don't have equality, if they don't have the right of return, then things are not going to calm down in the region. It's just going to be more and more, more and more violence, more and more of this hell for everybody. And, you know, these have been hellish years for all of us. I'm not, of course, making any sort of comparison. I think it's clear that the things that have been happening in Gaza are, are beyond any sort of any sort of description in terms of how hard the genocide has been. But, you know, as an Israeli who's currently not living in Israel and would like to return at some point, I really hope that everybody in the region can come to this very, very clear conclusion. You know, whether you phrase it in religious terms or not, and I don't think there's a problem with framing it in religious terms. There are ways of framing it in religious terms and we can talk a little bit about that more if you want. Just the fact that the indigenous people of Palestine, the Palestinians, need to have the rights to respect it and fulfilled and that's the only way that we can bring peace, that we can bring these really beautiful biblical prophecies about the wolf and the sheep lying down and the cutting down of swords into the plowshares to make those reality. So some people might call that messianic, but I think there's also good, good forms of messianism.

Dana Alkerd (47:06)

Ben, do you have anything to add?

Ben Schuman Stoller (47:09)

Top of that, My hope the past year or two years has been that if the Abraham Accords elevated, you know, countries like the UAE to a certain, like, volume, like gave them a certain audience that maybe they didn't have before internationally, that then what Israel has done could be criticized more obviously and that they would actually have some leverage. So my hope still is that as like normal partners, they can normal threaten and normal criticize and normal check the power of their, you know, whatever partners, Israel. And so I'm keeping an eye on, hopefully that, that, that will start happening more. But what we do see is that like trade continues to go up and it doesn't seem to have an impact. And I find that very disappointing. And also at the same time I see the polling and Donna, you know more about this than I do. But the polling shows increasing criticism of normalization with Israel. So, you know, the idealist to me thinks that, like, civil society will win out eventually, that this is just untenable and that what October 7th showed was that and the wars since then, that without dealing with the central cause in the region, which is the Palestinian cause, like, there will be no possible safe, you know, entrepreneurial dreamland of a. Of a rich future that. That they're claiming is going to happen. So that's my hope. But. And I keep an eye out for that. I hope that they use China and Russia as good countermeasures and counter threats to the American agenda. And I keep my eye out for that.

Dana Alkerd (48:54)

Yeah, I think really that's the open question moving forward is like, will the political elites win out? Will they be able to sidestep the Palestinian question, sidestep their own publics, who, as you mentioned, are extremely critical of normalization, extremely supportive of the Palestinian cause? I think the Americans think that they can. I keep mentioning this on this podcast, but I was on a panel with Stanley McChrystal, general and commander of the joint. What is it? The joint Armed Forces or whatever. Yeah. In Iraq and Afghanistan. And he was like, oh, you know, the Arabs really want to move past the Palestinians. Like, it's a thing of the past. If October 7th hadn't happened, like, you know, we would have just moved past the Palestinians. And I was like, what the hell are you talking about? That's. You only say that because you think that you can continue to crush Arab publics.

Matan Kaminer (49:45)

Yeah.

Dana Alkerd (49:46)

Like, you are predicating your entire strategy on authoritarianism. And it's. It's not a Middle east problem. It's a civil society all over the world has to fight back against authoritarianism or this is our reality.

Matan Kaminer (50:00)

Yeah, this is. I think this is the moment now. And this is one of the ways in which the rest of the world is becoming more like the Arab world. In some ways, as we mentioned, we have large majorities almost everywhere in the world. I think maybe every country in the world except for Israel. We have a majority of people who are now supporting Palestine more than support Israel, who are against the genocide, who say, you know, who answer the polls in a way that makes it clear that they're against what's going on.

Ben Schuman Stoller (50:20)

Right.

Matan Kaminer (50:21)

And they're against their government supporting it. But most governments in the world. Most governments in the world, including ones that aren't considered very pro us, are basically letting this happen. Right. That means that there's no effective democracy anywhere in the world, really. Except maybe in a few places where you can say, okay, I don't know, Spain, some countries. Ireland. Ireland, yeah.

Dana Alkerd (50:39)

Yeah.

Matan Kaminer (50:40)

Where? Even. Even those countries, I don't think they're doing as much as their populations would like them to do. Right, right. So, again, this idea that the west is somehow essentially different from these other countries, it's also kind of a lie, and it's also something. It's also bogus, and we need to call bullshit on that as well.

Dana Alkerd (50:58)

Yeah.

Matan Kaminer (50:59)

Many people have already. Have already made various arguments, and there's various ways of making this argument that the Palestinian question, the question of Gaza, the question of the genocide is kind of the global question of our time. I don't think just because there's a ceasefire that that's going to go away in any way. Everything that caused the explosion in the first place is still there.

Ben Schuman Stoller (51:17)

Right.

Matan Kaminer (51:17)

And I think we're going to keep seeing mobilizations around this issue. I'm sure we are. The crucial question for me is how we connect this to other issues, how we connect this to the question of democracy. Can we connect this to the question of rights for migrants, how we connect this to the questions of climate change. Right. And various people are already doing that. So I'm not saying this is something that people aren't working on, but this is kind of the challenge for our time. And this podcast, this project, is just one small part of that mosaic, which is looking into the ideology that framed the chords after Abraham. And again, thinking about how we can not just debunk that ideology and say, oh, it's not about this, it's about that. But also about how we can read those stories in a different way and sort of.

Dana Alkerd (51:56)

To usurp it.

Matan Kaminer (51:57)

Yeah, exactly. To subvert it and to read those stories in a way that makes progressive sense.

Dana Alkerd (52:02)

No, that's.

Ben Schuman Stoller (52:03)

I'm.

Dana Alkerd (52:03)

I'm really looking forward to listening to the other episodes, not just my own. So.

Matan Kaminer (52:07)

Yeah, you sound a little more convinced now than you did after we interviewed you.

Dana Alkerd (52:12)

I'm being really nice. No, I'm just joking.

Matan Kaminer (52:15)

You're being hospitable. Like Abraham.

Dana Alkerd (52:16)

Exactly. It's in my blood.

Ben Schuman Stoller (52:19)

When we played it live, someone came up to me afterwards and was like, you know, I agree with Donna. Right. And I was like, no, I think we all agree. Like, that's kind of the point. I think we all agree on the basics here. The other part is just sitting in the cringe, as Mutant says.

Dana Alkerd (52:32)

Oh, nice.

Matan Kaminer (52:32)

Yeah, yeah. Basting. Basting in the cringe.

Ben Schuman Stoller (52:35)

Yeah, basting in the cringe here and trying to find our way out of like a. A bad mushroom trip hallucination where you can do things like pretend that the Palestinians don't exist. Yeah, you know, that's, that's. We're trying to be the orange juice that's supposed to get you out of the, you know, of a bad mushroom trip or something.

Dana Alkerd (52:50)

Out of the hangover or whatever. Yeah, the trip. Yeah. Sorry, I don't, I don't do drugs. I don't understand. Anyway, thank you all so much. This has been a very interesting episode. And yeah, I'll link in the show notes for listeners, all of the things we mentioned, but yeah, more soon.

Matan Kaminer (53:05)

Yeah, episode one is already out by the time your listeners hear this. I think episode two might already be out as well. And episode two, we kind of go into the backstory. Episode one was with you and we talked about the chords themselves. Episode two, we start digging into those wormholes of the Abraham's story. Interesting. And when we talk to people in Jerusalem again, Ben mentioned this, both Palestinians and Israelis, we went out and asked them what they thought about the Abraham Accords and why they thought it was named after Abraham.

Dana Alkerd (53:34)

Yeah, I'm really excited to listen to that.

Matan Kaminer (53:35)

Thank you.

Dana Alkerd (53:36)

All right, thanks, guys.

Ben Schuman Stoller (53:38)

Thanks for having us.

Matan Kaminer (53:39)

Thank you.

Dana Alkerd (53:39)

Take care.

Dana Alkerd (53:44)

It Could Happen. Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can now find sources for. It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. If a Lenovo gaming computer is on.

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