Oikophobia and the Crisis of Western Democracy with Shany Mor

Summary

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Quillette Cetera Podcast Summary

Episode: Oikophobia and the Crisis of Western Democracy with Shany Mor
Host: Zoe Sankey
Guest: Shany Mor (Israeli political theorist, former foreign policy advisor, Reichman University)
Date: February 20, 2026

Episode Overview

In this deeply engaging episode, Zoe Sankey sits down with Shany Mor to dissect why anti-Israel activism has become such a dominant moral cause in elite Western spaces, the concept of oikophobia (Western self-hatred), and what this reveals about the current state of Western liberal democracies. The conversation traverses topics such as the post-war cultural legacy, the genealogy of Western guilt, the changing dynamics of democracy, radical Islam, and fertility rates, drawing on Mor’s unique perspective as an Israeli academic and former advisor.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Australian Protests and the Lens from Israel

[02:47 - 07:10]

• Zoe opens by referencing recent violent protests in Australia and asks how these are viewed in Israel.
• Shany observes that, contrary to diaspora Jewish anxieties, Israeli society seems largely unfazed and even disconnected from these Western controversies.
• The claim that President Isaac Herzog incited genocide is, in Mor’s words, “such a level of absurdity that I don’t think anybody here could possibly comprehend it.” ([03:26])
• He attributes Israelis’ lack of concern partly to “the provincialism of the Israeli opinion market...for most Israelis there’s only really one foreign country [the US].” ([05:37])

2. The Rituals of Anti-Zionism and Western Guilt

[07:10 - 13:44]

• Mor frames the surge of anti-Zionist activism as a local cultural ritual in Australia and the West, driven by “cultural and intellectual anxiety...displaced onto Jews.” ([08:25])
• “A liberal democracy has whipped itself up into a...religious hysteria about a people apart, tainted by some ineffaceable sin...targets for any kind of libel and violence.” ([07:10])
• Zoe and Shany discuss the idea of Jews becoming national scapegoats to bear the “colonial guilt” of host countries.

3. The Western ‘Accounting Fraud’ of Historical Guilt

[10:02 - 13:44]

• Mor explains a “moral accounting fraud” where Western guilt for imperialism, slavery, and the Holocaust is transferred, paradoxically, to those who were not victims — such as the Arab-Muslim world.
• “Not only is the guilt supposed to be sacrificed, but the moral credit of Western sin is somehow transferred in this great accounting fraud…onto people who were neither victims of the West’s great sins...in many cases active participants in those crimes.” ([10:02])
• On identity politics: “It has to do with who is the enemy of the West.” ([11:39])
• He defines oikophobia as: “anybody who hates their own society, is convinced that their society is touched by sin...is drawn to that [oppositional cause].” ([12:15])

4. Oikophobia: Western Self-Hatred and Its Christian Roots

[12:18 - 16:40]

• Pascal Bruckner’s “The Tyranny of Guilt” is referenced as influential in articulating this phenomenon of self-hatred in the West.
• Zoe reflects on her own prior “oikophobic” activism (“I hated the West and...myself...”) and volunteering with Muslim refugees.
• Mor distinguishes between critical self-reflection and pathological self-hatred, warning against a “moral affirmative action” that indulges unacceptable behavior or politics if performed by those deemed victims.

Quote:
“The third stage is...almost hilarious. Not only are there these cosmic sins, not only do they create a kind of moral ledger...but that we can redistribute those debts not to the actual victims of these Western sins, but to the people who the West believes...are its biggest enemies. That part’s ridiculous to me. I mean, it’s insane...” ([15:10])

5. 9/11 and the Reorientation of Leftist Symbolism

[16:40 - 21:12]

• Mor charts a transformation in leftist activism before and after 9/11:
  • In the 1990s, Spanish was used on protest signs as a gesture of solidarity.
  • Post-9/11, Arabic replaced Spanish not because of demographic demand, but as a performative signifier: “This is what it means to be the good guys right now.” ([17:16])
  • The symbol of the hijab becomes a feminist icon in leftist spaces, which Mor finds incongruous.
• Mor confesses he did not publicly dissent, but noticed “how much Arabic language and image had replaced Spanish as the sort of cool foreign thing that we would use to signal that we were good.” ([21:13])

6. Islam, Social Change, and Gender

[21:34 - 25:15]

• Zoe shares her disillusionment after observing gender inequality in immigrant Muslim families she volunteered with.
• Mor argues that the two greatest social transformations in the past century are “the full emancipation of women,” and “the introduction of Islam in such huge numbers into Europe or the West.”
• He critiques both right-wing deportation fantasies and left-wing assimilation optimism as misunderstandings of the scale and irreversibility of such changes.

7. Assimilation, Prejudice, and the Exception of Antisemitism

[25:15 - 29:54]

• Immigrant prejudices against women, blacks, or gays tend to moderate over generations in the West, but “if you come with retrograde views about Jews...your kids will...have those prejudices nurtured. They will have what is a silly prejudice from home, fully ideologized and systematized into a progressive worldview.” ([26:30])
• Host societies sometimes reward these attitudes as a sign of authenticity or marginalization.

8. Media, Genocide Claims, and the Ritual Persecution Narrative

[29:54 - 31:56]

• Mor and Sankey note how Western media frames conflict involving Israel with unique pathos (casualty counts including children, etc).
• Zoe references the recurring use of “women and children” in anti-Israel rhetoric as having “a deep, deep genealogy.” ([30:16])
• Brett Stephens’ argument is invoked: “People have always hated Jews. Always hate Jews. There was Jew hatred before Christianity.” ([30:36])

9. The Cost of Jewish Security and the Academic Purge

[31:56 - 33:40]

• Mor comments: “It’s hard to sustain a kind of community and an education when all our resources are going to be poured into security.” ([31:56])
• There is now a “purge of Jews from intellectual and academic life,” unless they perform “the ritual self-denunciation.”
• Mor: “I’ve never put myself up for...ritual self-denunciation. Many of my colleagues...did. Not just post-October 7th...parts of the academy were already locked, sealed off from Jews who weren’t part of the micro minority of denouncers...” ([32:58])

10. Anti-Zionism as a Christian Moral Ritual

[33:40 - 35:46]

• Mor stresses anti-Zionism’s “very obvious Christian genealogy,” with tropes of inherited “sin...transmitted through the generations for an ineffaceable guilt.”
• He draws parallels with environmentalism (“you’re a sinner for flying...pay indulgences in the form of carbon offsets...”) and notes: “That religion hasn’t gone away.”
• “People need these stories and myths for any kind of meaning.” ([34:59])

11. Fertility Decline, Meaning, and the Israeli Exception

[36:15 - 41:47]

• Sankey notes Israel is the only developed OECD nation with a healthy, above-replacement fertility rate—not only among the religious.
• Mor: “Nobody knows why fertility rates have dropped so precipitously...It’s very easy for anyone to tie this to a kind of politics they already...believe in...The fact is the number has been declining in poor countries, rich countries, Christian countries, Muslim countries…” ([37:03])
• The Israeli exception may be due to a pervasive sense of meaning, community solidarity, and conflict: “Life here...has meaning. It’s inescapable.” ([37:42])
• Fertility is influenced by “contagion effects”—if no one around you has kids, you might skip it.
• “Nobody who doesn’t want kids should be having kids. Nobody who’s not ready for it should be having them.” ([41:38])

12. Democracy in Crisis: From Moderation to Existential Struggle

[41:47 - 47:50]

• Mor expresses concern that elections in mature democracies “have become referendums on the constitution itself each time. And I don’t think this is sustained.” ([42:15])
• Post-war consensus politics (Christian Democrats vs Social Democrats) has collapsed.
• “We get to a point where each election becomes a referendum on democracy itself…That’s a terrible place to be.” ([44:53])
• Both left and right have shifted toward “privatization of politics” and adversarial identity-based discourse.

13. Was the Postwar Democratic Order Just an Exception?

[47:50 - 51:02]

• Mor questions whether the liberal consensus post-1945 was the exception, with resurgent extremism and violence now “the status quo.”
• The Shoah’s legacy is ever-present but, says Mor, “none of those [postwar] things would have been possible” without the military victories of WWII and the check on Soviet power.
• He acknowledges the postwar era’s social solidarity but also points out immense global and domestic exclusions and inequalities.

14. Israel’s Social Dualities and the Hostage Crisis

[51:02 - 53:46]

• Sankey notes Israel’s unique mix of patriotism and open society.
• Mor: “The defining feature...was the hostages who were being held in Gaza...For the right, there grew to be this hatred of the hostages...Instead of understanding that these were the worst victims...they seemed to genuinely dislike them...I think it exposed not just something very healthy...but a few things that are deeply, deeply unwell.” ([51:37])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the absurdity of anti-Israel protest rhetoric:
  “The idea that this mild-mannered head of state...incited genocide...is just so stupid, it’s hard to even convey to people.” —Shany Mor ([06:00])

• On Western guilt and oikophobia:
  “Anybody who hates their own society, is convinced that their society is touched by sin...is drawn to that (oppositional cause).” —Shany Mor ([12:15])

• On radicalization and academic hypocrisy:
  “If you come to Western society with retrograde views about Jews...your kids will be...have those prejudices nurtured. They will have what is a silly prejudice from home, fully ideologized and systematized into a progressive worldview.” —Shany Mor ([26:30])

• On the need for meaning and myths:
  “People need these stories and myths for any kind of meaning.” —Shany Mor ([34:59])

• On the fragility of democracy:
  “The point of an election in a mature democracy...is to pick between two reasonable options. The situation we find ourselves in...where the election feels like a life or death reckoning...I think that’s a terrible place to be.” —Shany Mor ([42:15])

• On Israel’s social fabric:
  “Life here...has meaning. It’s inescapable.” —Shany Mor ([37:42])

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [02:47] — Australia’s protest reputation from an Israeli perspective
• [07:10] — Anti-Zionism as cultural ritual and scapegoating
• [12:15] — The rise and roots of oikophobia
• [16:40] — September 11, symbolic shifts, and identity politics
• [26:30] — Assimilation, prejudice, and antisemitism’s unique status
• [31:56] — Jewish security, academic ostracism, and self-denunciation
• [34:59] — Rituals of anti-Zionism and the persistence of religious moral logic
• [37:03] — The fertility paradox; Israel’s exception
• [42:15] — Why democracy now feels existentially at risk
• [44:53] — Collapse of consensus, the privatization of politics
• [51:02] — Israel’s duality on solidarity and division in the hostage crisis

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Conclusion

Zoe Sankey and Shany Mor’s conversation is a rich, nuanced exploration of the cultural, political, and psychological upheavals facing the West—through the lens of Israel, Jewish experience, and democratic fragility. Mor’s insights reveal a Western society rife with displaced guilt, rituals of self-flagellation, and a crisis in meaning, but also demonstrate the rare exceptions possible when a collective sense of purpose and solidarity persists.

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For further reading:

• Shany Mor’s essays in Quillette and other platforms
• Pascal Bruckner, The Tyranny of Guilt
• Analysis of post-war social democratic consensus and its unraveling

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome back to the Quilletc podcast. You're with me, Zoe Booth. And today my guest is Shani Moore. Shani is an Israeli political theorist and a former foreign policy advisor with a pretty serious resume. He's taught at Columbia Brown Sciences PO in Paris and is now at Reichman University in Israel. Before that he served as director for Foreign policy on Israel's National Security Council. So today we're trying to understand a very pertinent question which is confusing many people, including myself, which is why anti Israel activism has become such a dominant moral cause in elite Western circles and what it says about where we are culturally. We dig into questions such as why does anti Zionism sometimes function as a kind of moral ritual, perhaps reminiscent of a modern Christian ritual in a supposedly secular era? We talk about oikophobia, Western self hatred, Western guilt. We also talk about Islam radicalization, the Bondi massacre, and how we were both young lefties protesting. Shani was protesting in support of Mexican migrants and he tells that story. I was not protesting per se, but I was volunteering with Muslim refugees because I believed that Islam was a religion of peace and that we needed more Muslim refugees. In Australia. To end the conversation, we speak a little bit about the global fertility rates dropping and why Israel is one of the only countries that actually has a healthy replacement level fertility rate. Shani's bread and butter is studying democracy and we talk about the current state of democracies around the world and whether those post war decades of prosperity have come to an end and whether this is the new normal. So I hope you like this conversation. I find Shani to be a very interesting thinker. If you do like this conversation, please share it widely. You'd be helping me out a great deal and get active in the comments section. Let me know what you like, what you don't like, who you'd like to see on the podcast next. I read all the comments, so let me know what you think. Without much further ado, let's get into this conversation with Shani Moore. Shani, thank you so much for joining me today.

[B]

My pleasure to be here.

[A]

I was wondering if Australia's been in the news much in Israel. With the recent visit of President Isaac Herzog to Australia, we've seen huge protests, unfortunately, very, very violent protests. Perhaps the most violent clashes between protesters and police that we've seen in Australia's history. From what I hear outside of Australia, Australia's developing quite a bad or notorious reputation as being an island that's so hostile towards Jews and Zionists. Have you heard Much about it in, in Israel?

[B]

Well, I should say two things about it. One is it's got a lot less attention than you might think.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Those things exist and loom large in the Jewish world perhaps for Israelis, much less. Very little of it makes sense and very of it little coheres to any kind of domestic political story. In particular, the thing that is almost taken as a given in the community of obsessive Israel haters, which is that Isaac Herzog of all people, incited genocide, incited genocide by giving a speech in English about the importance of respecting civilians non combatant status and answered a question from a reporter about whether Hamas was just a terrorist organization by saying well no, it's actually the governing structure of a state like entity and that it's an entire nation there that was responsible in the sense, in the context clearly that he's saying not just a weird terrorist organization, that this is somehow taken as a given. That makes him a Herzog, a guy in Israel who's perceived, who's noted mostly for his high pitched nasally voice and gentle manners, that this makes him in the category of criminals together with the people who murdered 6 million Jews in Europe in the 1940s. It doesn't even register. It's such a level of absurdity that I don't think anybody here could possibly comprehend it. Again, in the world of anti Israel activism, this is huge. And in the world of Jews who are caring about this and dealing with this and it looms large, it doesn't really have any resonance for Israelis. It's so highly improbable, makes no sense. The visit itself received some coverage, obviously. So did the protests. Do Israelis have an understanding of the really the institutional capture of Australian intellectual life or left liberal Australian intellectual life in particular in the academy and in the world of NGOs by a kind of obsessive and fanatical hatred of Israel and Jews, I don't think that that has penetrated here in any real sense.

[A]

That's good to know. Actually. I'm relieved to know that Israelis seem, yeah, unfazed by so many things that I guess diaspora Jews and their supporters faced by. So they're always a sense of inspiration for me. But yeah, I did go to the

[B]

Isaac, it's terribly inspiring. I'm sorry to interrupt. I was terribly inspiring. It just also has to do with the provincialism of the Israeli, you know, opinion market. I mean for most Israel there's only real one foreign country and it's also English speaking and it's also across an ocean. But that that's about as far as the, the general interest is, is going to go.

[A]

So if those protests were to happen in the States, Israelis would be a lot more concerned.

[B]

Sure. And if the claims the protesters made a minimal sense, that would probably get attention. Again. The idea that this mild mannered head of state, which is not an executive position here, um, had incited genocide in English in a speech about the importance of respecting non combatants is, it's, it's just so stupid. It's hard to, to even convey to people. And yet again, if you, if you go online or look at the, the so called experts in the genocide studies field, this is something that's, that's bandied about as though it were a, as though it were true.

[A]

Yeah. And we should get into that, into the genocide studies topic. But I, yeah, I just have to agree that I was there at the Isaac Herzog event and essentially the only reason I bought a ticket was because of the Streisand effect.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Because these protesters and activists made such, such noise about it that I paid a ticket to see a man who by all counts is pretty boring orator, you know, like not that inspiring or interesting really. But I was there to support fundamentally

[B]

what we've seen in public life in Australia, and not just in public life, but on Bond beach as well, is an Australian problem, not an Israeli one. I mean there's something to consider here and it goes beyond just the Jewish community in Australia that a liberal democracy has whipped itself up into a, I want to say quasi religious, but it's really just a religious hysteria about a people apart tainted by some ineffaceable sin that makes them and their community at large targets for any kind of libel and violence. I think this is something that needs to concern you much more than needs to concern us.

[A]

Definitely. I would agree, I would, I guess question whether it's a particularly Australian issue or just a Western issue at the moment. Although there, I mean, I spoke to Adam Lewis Klein who made a good point that a lot of these post colonial studies, you know, ideas came out of Australia, that Australian academics were really very influential in this field and that maybe there's something about the Australian mindset that makes, makes us more susceptible to sort of anti Semitic crap essentially.

[B]

Yeah, I, I think there's a larger Western problem here, but I, I do think there's a uniquely Australia. I mean Australia, Australia and Canada have been real stars in the intellectual ferment of the last two. That that's come to the fore in the last two years, but also Much deeper. Think a lot of this, as in other historical examples where a kind of elite anti Semitism gains this kind of traction, a huge amount of this is a cultural and intellectual anxiety that is entirely local about entirely local issues. That's then displaced. Displaced onto. Onto Jews. In the same way that I wouldn't center this around Israel, as we said when you raised the question earlier, I wouldn't. I wouldn't also just expand it to a question of the West. Something is definitely underfoot in Australia and in Canada both, by the way, for largely the same reasons or the same combination of reasons of real anxiety about the fundamental morality of the national identity as it is. And on the one hand this sort of performative renunciation of. Of the collective historical mythology, but that when it touches us, the Australians or the Canadians, it's a performance and then a displacement in terms of actual kinetic action. People who are supposed to really pay the price physically to. To Israel and to the local j. Jewish community.

[A]

So a literal scapegoat, like a sacrificial sort of all the. The guilt of a nation is placed onto the Jew or the Zionist and to be sacrificed. Right, like our, our colonial guilt.

[B]

Yeah. And not just is the guilt supposed to be sacrifice, but the moral credit of Western sin is somehow transferred in this great accounting fraud, as I've referred to it elsewhere, onto people who were neither victims of the West's great sins of imper. Chattel slavery or the Holocaust, and in many cases active participants in those crimes and who continued them long after the west abandoned them. Yeah. Anyway, this is a, this is a different topic which we could expand on.

[A]

Wait, were we talking about Islam world?

[B]

The Arab Muslim world had the least penetration of Western colonialism as out of any part of the Americas, Asia or Africa. It was the last place in the world to finally abandon African slavery. It's the place whose entire language and religious practice is based on an expansionist and imperialist presence. And it's far longer than anywhere else in the world. The firmest believers in the kind of murderous antisemitism that plagued Europe in, In the last century. And yet the moral credit that is supposed to be accrued by these cosmic Western crimes of imperialism, chattel slavery and the Holocaust is somehow transferred to them

[A]

in the, in the hierarchy of identity politics of, I guess, noble savages whom the left really holds in esteem. I thought it was, I thought it really had to do a lot with literal melanin in your. In your skin. So like south, you know, sub Saharan Africans would be, you know, on A higher sort of. No, I just think it would be held up.

[B]

But it seems it has to do with who is the enemy of the West. Yeah, it has to do with who is the enemy. You think all the leftists who were so engaged in Russian culture and Marxist Leninist thought in the 1950s and 60s genuinely were motivated by a kind of ideological Marxism? No, that was who the West's enemy was. And since 2001 especially. But already, really from 1989, you can see the beginnings of this, but especially since 2001, anybody who hates their own society, living in the west, hates their own society, is convinced that their society is touched by sin, is convinced that there's something irredeemably morally wrong with their society, is drawn to that.

[A]

Oikophobia.

[B]

Yes, I've heard that word, a good one.

[A]

It hasn't quite caught on yet.

[B]

No, it's a really ugly word. It's not particularly euphonic.

[A]

Sounds like a Greek yogurt brand or anti Greek yogurt brand. Hmm. Have you read Pascal Bruckner's work on the tyranny of guilt?

[B]

Yes. Yeah, from like 10 or 15 years ago. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, I think 2014. That really stuck with me because it was the first time this oikophobia, I guess, had been explained to me in a way that made sense. I'd always sensed it, I'd felt it, I was fully on board with it. I hated the west and I hated Australia and I hated, you know, aspects of, I guess, who I was and my family and our history and everything when I was a teenager, and I've talked about it a bit in other podcasts, but I wanted to put my money where my mouth was and find the community most in need of my saving and Islamophobia and Muslims I deemed to be the most in need. So I. That's who I chose to volunteer with. You know, I didn't choose an animal sanctuary or anything. I chose the Muslim community. Newly arrived refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. And so I was very oikophobic.

[B]

So, yeah, there's nothing wrong with a critical look at one's own history. And there's nothing wrong. There's certainly much to be critical of and much to want to re examine critically. We in the west live lives of extraordinary privilege in any kind of global comparison. Although the G are much smaller today than they were, let's say, 20 or 30 years ago, and certainly than they were a century ago, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that impulse or with that. That desire to. To. To come to terms with these things. And I don't think there's anything wrong with. I think there's a serious discussion to be had about all three of those matters that, that, that, that plague us. What, where, where I think the discussion goes wrong is I, I would illustrate as sort of a three part, a three stage discussion. The first one is the identification of a kind of moral debt with, as I said, Western imperialism, chattel slavery and the Shoah, which I think has problematic aspects, to be sure. If it becomes the totality of our historical consciousness, then we're doing ourselves a massive injustice. But to try to place our own good fortune at being alive in the places where you and I live at the time we live in some kind of historical context for all of its good and ill, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It can certainly go wrong. That's the first stage, possibly problematic, but mostly quite reasonable. The second stage is a lot more problematic and that's the, this moral accounting that essentially says we can hand out a moral credit based on, based on these, these perceived cosmic sins. And that that credit essentially creates a sort of moral affirmative action where if you're a victim, you get to be judged on an entirely different standard, make all sorts of demands and excuses for what would in any other context be seen as manifestly unacceptable behavior or politics. I think that second stage is really problematic, although not entirely. There are some very complex political situations in the world where nothing is, can be divorced from its history. There's a simplistic attitude to this that I don't, certainly don't subscribe to. The third stage is the one that I think is, like I said, I mean, almost hilarious. It's that not only are there these cosmic sins a knot which I think is historically limiting, but can be helpful. Not only do they create a kind of moral ledger, which I think is not a good way to go, but maybe has some sense to it, but that we can redistribute those debts not to the actual victims of these Western sins, but to the people who, who the west believes, or people in the west believe today are its biggest enemies. That part's ridiculous to me. I mean, it's insane. It has been the centerpiece of every form of international political morality suggested by the mainstream of left wing intellectuals since 2001. In many ways since well before 2001.

[A]

Why'd you say 2001?

[B]

9, 11.

[A]

Say more about that.

[B]

So what do you guys talk about on September 11th every year in Australia? Because when I look at the media in the UK, and in the United States, 9 11. Every September 11th is the anniversary of the day we talk about Islamophobia. I was a teenager in, in California and there was a, a lot of. This is pre 9 11. There were a lot of. There was a bubble of anti immigrant right wing, anti immigrant hysteria in the mid-1990s.

[A]

Anti Mexican sort of.

[B]

Yeah. And when we would organize protests against this stuff, we always made sure to have signs in English and Spanish. Part of that was practical because there were people part of our intended audience didn't really know English very well. But mostly that was a sign of respect. More than just a sign of respect. It was a sign of who we were. By putting Spanish on our signs, we were saying something about what it meant to be in the community of the good when this was the issue, what it meant to be standing up to the bad guys. So it wasn't enough to just have a slogan. For example, we would have, we would put on our signs no one is illegal. Then I'm back in Israel for a couple years. I happen to be living in Israel Israel during 9 11. But then I came to graduate school in the US and I was now in New York post 9 11. I go to left wing events and stuff. The slogans are the same slogans, right? Except now instead of it saying nobody is illegal, Nadia s illegal. And having everything in Spanish things are in Arabic too. The only thing that happened was 9 11. But. And it wasn't. And there was nobody in New York who, there weren't a lot of. Unlike a situation in California where there were many, many, many Spanish speakers who didn't actually know English very well. New York was not a city, nor was any city in the United States. You know, this is not a Germany of 2015. New York was not a city that had a lot of poor downtrodden Arabic speakers who didn't know English. It was a signal, it was a way of saying this is who we are. This is what it means to be the good guys. Right now. 911 meant for the sort of activist left that what it meant to be the good guys. Especially in a post Soviet reality. What it meant to be the good guys was to be having a. You know, to be having things in Arabic. I again come to the US Many years later. The only other time I lived in the US as an adult was 20 years later. I was doing a postdoc. And it happened to be. Now I'm again, I was at, in, in Providence and in Rhode Island. And it happens to be the beginning of The Trump era. So the resistance, as it styled itself to Trump. There's a loaded term, is very focused in its initial days on the issue of gender, which is, again, a really brief. Exactly. It's a really brief bubble, actually, which I would love to expand on because I think it's something fascinating about that intellectual moment in American life. But it's very briefly focused on gender, I would say far too briefly, but it abandons this issue extremely quickly. But at the time, it was focused on gender. And the icon of this, at least where I was in this liberal Northeastern University town, was a picture of a woman in a hijab. And I thought, how is this a feminist icon? I should say about myself. I'm realizing this as I'm telling both of these stories of my young adult self in. In 2003 and my slightly more grizzled adult self.

[A]

I have a lot of questions about that, by the way.

[B]

2017, that, you know, I can. I can describe myself here as dissenting from people and disagreeing with them. And I did, by the way. Yeah, but I'm no hero. I didn't publicly challenge anyone.

[A]

This.

[B]

Made a few comments, whatever. I was very discreet. I wanted to also be on the side of the good people. But I would look at this and I would wonder. It's like falling asleep and then waking up and discovering that this is now a feminist symbol. I didn't get it.

[A]

So you realized at the time that you. You weren't on board, but you didn't say anything because you didn't want to ostracize yourself from the group or.

[B]

I wasn't on board. Even in 2003, I was not on board with any of these things. They. They struck me as ridiculous. Right. But no, I didn't. I didn't. I sort of. I was struck at how, in being in. In sort of a left space in 2003, how much Arabic language and image had replaced Spanish as the sort of cool foreign thing that we would use to signal that we were good.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I didn't make a fuss about it. And in 2017, I was really struck by the hijab. But it's not for me to make a fuss. I'm a Jewish Israeli guy, and nobody wants to hear. Understandably, I guess I'm the last person who would be considered to have any moral authority to tell people that this is insane.

[A]

Even though it was probably your Israeliness or your Jewishness that made you realize far earlier than some other people like myself, for example, that Islam is not a Religion of peace for anyone, let alone a bastion of freedom for women or a good place. Actually, it was through volunteering with Muslim families and finishing this meal with them, which was often a really great meal, I must say. But then, you know, the little boys would go off and play and the little girls, regardless of their age, if they were 5, 6 years old, just little kids, they could not go play with their brothers. They would have to stay and sweep the floor and clean the tables and

[B]

families until that was the reality. And most families, regardless of their religion until shockingly recently. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's true, I would say. And it's funny that you, you say those because usually when I, I say, not prompted by, by your example, I say to people that the introduction of, of Islam in such huge numbers into Europe or into the west in general is the second biggest social transformation of the last century. Where obviously the, the biggest social transformation of the last century is the, the full emancipation of women. I mean, I don't think we've actually come to grips either of those things are, but we certainly haven't come to grips at all with how dramatic the second one is. And the people who are occasionally leading the discussion on the second one, some of them are deeply unpleasant people that we don't actually want to introduce into, into polite company. I mean, so a lot of that discussion, the only people commenting on this for the last 20 years have been a bunch of far right figures, often very openly racist. And I don't think that's done much to advance it. And the second place that that's been leading that discussion, that's maybe perhaps not as, as disre. Still believes somehow that it's reversible, reversible or in some way assimilable or that this is something that, that, that the west can digest and then, and still when it's done, be itself again, whatever that means.

[A]

And it's not, it's people urging for deportations or.

[B]

Yeah, there aren't going to be deportations, though.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

The deportations is the unpleasant aspect. The more pleasant form of deportations is not deportations, but. Okay, this is, this is an immigrant group that's assimilating. Give it 20, 30 years, they'll be just like all of us. And, and I don't think that this is just, I don't think this is something that's going to be digested and, and incorporated in the way that either a deportation fantasy or some assimilation fantasy would want us to believe. This is not a reverse.

[A]

I Agree, I agree. But at the same time, I think it was Razib Khan tweeted about this, that Muslims do have a higher rate of. What's the word I'm looking for, Leaving the religion than Jews, for example, or other. Other religions. But then at the same time, they appear to have, you know, higher levels of, well, obviously radicalization, but also radicalization. I mean, a lot of the issues in Australia and in Canada, I believe, with young radical Muslim men, they're not boys who. Or men who came to Australia and they were 20 or something, they were born here. Navid Akram, who shot up the Hanukkah event down the road from me, was born here. He went to a school, normal Aussie. Well, normal Aussie school in. In a very, you know, in the western suburbs of Sydney, which is skews heavily Muslim, but also has a lot of, you know, Vietnamese and Polynesians and, you know, but he, he was Australian and he became radicalized in Australia and there's more to learn about him and how it came to be that way. But, you know, yes, many Muslims may leave the fold, but they also come back into it really radically.

[B]

The issue here isn't. Isn't a demographic and it isn't a Muslim one. I mean, the issue here is a Western one. Look, somebody comes from a non Western society as an immigrant into a Western society, and chances are they have very retrograde views on four groups of people, on blacks, women, gays and Jews. Now, there's two processes that happen regarding the first three kinds of prejudices. One is an intergenerational process. You move from a non Western society to a Western society and have all sorts of very horrible things in your mind about blacks, women and gays. And chances are, your kids who are socialized and educated in the local public school, watching local tv, making friends with locals, have much more liberal views than you do. That's just a natural process between the generations. There's something even more interesting that happens, by the way, which is you yourself, even if you deny that it has happened over the years of living in a Western country, even if all your friends are from your own immigrant, without you controlling it, your views on those things will liberalize. Yeah, it's an almost natural process that you can't stop even if you made an effort to stop it.

[A]

Do you think it would happen in reverse? If I moved to Tunisia, I would develop some stronger opinions just from being

[B]

around, you know, I think if you moved anywhere, you'd. Yeah, I mean, of course our ideas are shaped by Our social interactions. I think that, that, that's, that's natural, but that's part of why certain social interactions are so toxic. I can give you examples from right here. Part of why I oppose the west bank settler enterprise in Israel is because I think it a kind of social interaction that brings out the absolute worst instincts that, that already exist here and, and that it has a selection mechanism by, by attracting some of the worst people in Israeli society to go and settle there and live out this, this fantasy. But let's put that aside for a second. If you come to a Western society with retrograde views about blacks, women and gays, your socialization of that Western society will moderate those views, whether you wanted to or not. At first. Maybe you will be hypocritical and pretend to have more liberal views because of the social costs, but eventually even that pretending will take its toll on you and your views matter. If you come to Western society with retrograde views about Jews, not only were your views not moderate or your kids, your kids will be. So the kids who go into elite academic institutions will be have those prejudices nurtured. They will have what is a. A silly prejudice from home, fully ideologized and systematized into a progressive worldview. You often see that the kids of immigrants from the Muslim world come to Britain, Canada and Australia. And what is a series of silly prejudices that they heard from home becomes a fully formed comprehensive doctrine. And their, their Western peers treat it not as a pathology, the way they would treat prejudice about women, gays and blacks, but they treat it as a sign of authenticity. It's often a card to academic and professional promotion. The murderers who killed 15 people on Bondi beach did it following two years of Australian elites who are not immigrants, not. I mean, we can't blame this on people who came from far away and look different from us and speak it differently. Not immigrants, not Muslims, not anything. Think people from the heart of the heart of the establishment in Israel repeating the same grievances and lies about Israel and the Jewish people, turning that into something legitimate. Then they're shocked. Well, we are against violence. We don't think you should be. This is like saying, we don't think that, you know, it's. Jews should not be held accountable for the crime of deicide, which we condemn. But everybody in Australia who spent the last two years saying things that were verifiable lies about genocide, about starvation, about. By the way, you're in media. One of the things that struck me when I lived in Britain by the Way which is also a little bit back in the past was reading war coverage in the local media. There were a lot of wars in the world, but only when there was a war involving Israel, whether it was in Lebanon or the west bank or Gaza did death tolls include the numbers of children. I never saw that for any other war. So and so number of people were killed and fighting today including at least 80 children or what, you know, whatever. Often numbers that completely made up too. Never. That is part of a daily drip.

[A]

Women and children. Yeah. I saw AOC today said something in Munich at a Holocaust remembrance. I don't know, it was disgusting. But she, she said women and children. The genocide of women and children. And it just stood out so much to me. I mean I've heard it so much, but it just seems so forced. Like why not just say people why the focus on women and children was

[B]

focus on children is is a huge part of, of the idea of, of j. Slaughter of children.

[A]

Is.

[B]

Has a deep, deep genealogy.

[A]

Yes. This is reminding me. Have you seen Brett Stevens address? Brett Stevens's address?

[B]

I haven't watched it. I, I heard about it though. I read about it. I didn't actually watch it. Yeah.

[A]

In, in summary, he pretty much said, you know, after the multi million dollar super bowl ad to combat antisemitism, you know, he said, you know, it's great whatever to try to combat anti Semitism but frankly it really doesn't work that well. People have always hated Jews. Always hate Jews. There was Jew hatred even before Christianity. So you know, what's, what's we should be focusing on really uplifting and like, you know, making, making Jews great again. Just focusing on, on Jews and you know, bringing up Jewish children. And you know, there was some mention of not marrying, you know, marrying out so much and focusing on Jewish learning, which seemed to make a lot of sense to me because I've been trying very hard to share all the knowledge that I've learned about Jews and Israel since October 7th. Not growing up Jewish and not meeting any Jewish people. You know, I've just been obsessed with learning and you know, I hate the term but unlearning so much of the propaganda that I'd been fed. And I'm so passionate about it and I just think everyone else must be so passionate about the truth. You know, like, wow, isn't this interesting? People do not give a shit. They don't care. You can say no, you came up with the vaccine for polio. No one cares. They know that. They don't care. It's not a rational thing. Think.

[B]

Sure. I mean, but it's hard to sustain a kind of community and an education when all of our resources are going to be poured into security. I mean, we've seen that in the last 25 years in European Jewish communities. We're probably going to see that now in Australia and Canada and even the US the entire endeavor of sustaining a Jewish cultural and an ethical life is really hard when it has to be done behind armed guards and fences.

[A]

The government should be paying for that taxpayer. Why, why do we have to. Like that doesn't make sense to me.

[B]

Yeah, but that, that's the reality. I mean even, even, even if you ignore the cost, I, I think the psychic cost of that is really high and it'll be hard for people who aren't hugely committed to want that. Why, why would you. And that's happening on a background of what is basically a purge of, of Jews from intellectual and academic life. Unless they of course do the, the ritual self denunciation.

[A]

Have you experienced that as an Israeli academic? Jewish academic?

[B]

Look, I, of course I've experienced it throughout every academic endeavor that I've been in. What I've not done is I've never, I've never taken, I've never put myself up for, for this ritual self denunciation. I had plenty of colleagues who did, many of whom clearly didn't believe what they were saying. Not just post October 7th. I mean, I'm talking about things that for the last 20 years or more. More. In fact, parts of the academy were already locked, sealed off from, from Jews who weren't part of the micro minority of denouncers of their community. And that small part of the academy that was sealed off has expanded greatly in the last 10 years.

[A]

Do you have any comments on this Oikophobia or Western self hatred being a coming from religious roots like a Christian theology or before that a Judeo Christian.

[B]

I mean, I think that the rituals of anti Zionism, its basic moral commitments, its idea of sin being transmitted through the generations for an ineffaceable guilt, has a very obvious Christian genealogy. Much of our moral politics in the west draws directly from these practices. That religion hasn't gone away. The environmental movement in particular loves this stuff. You know, you're a sinner for flying. You can pay indulgences in the form of carbon offsets. If something feels good or convenient, it must be making you impure, which you later need to fix. And all of this is happening at a supposedly secular time, as I've written elsewhere sarcastically at Least Church Classic gave us beautiful stained glass windows and ethereal music. I don't know what the current theological fervor is going to. Gonna leave us with. The fact of the matter is that people need these stories and myths for any kind of meaning.

[A]

I assume you say that as not an observant Jew yourself, or maybe you

[B]

are, I'm not sure I'm not an

[A]

observant religious at all. You don't have that vibe, so how do you.

[B]

But that doesn't mean that I live a life of emptiness, nihilism and no meaning. You know, it's a. It's a bit awkward for me to be telling people not even, not about the religion I don't believe in, but about another religion that's not even mine, that I don't believe in, that I sometimes wish they would just go to church and shut the fuck up. But that's.

[A]

I'm feeling more and more like that I'm very pro Christian.

[B]

I. You know, our, our cultural lives are like our language. Our stories are our only way of processing our interactions and, and communicating things with each other.

[A]

Other.

[B]

Our stories, our images. It's impossible to exist in a culture and not operate within its, its myths, its images, its enduring protagonists. The fact that people stopped getting up on a Sunday morning to hear sermons about implausibly unscientific stories hasn't actually removed them from those larger myths at all, including from some of the less savory sides of it that they indulge.

[A]

Fascinating. And I'm very interested in this topic of babies at the moment. I've been baby pilled and hopefully will be having my own quite soon. Israel is one of the, well, the, I believe the only developed OECD nation that actually has a healthy replacement level fertility rate, total fertility rate. People say, oh, it's just religious Jews. No, it's secular Israelis as well. I think Australia's low fertility rate is due to a number of factors, you know, economic factors, but also. So I think deep down there is a lack of a desire to reproduce. Like, what's, what's the point of it all? There is a nihilism. There's a lack of belief. So, yeah. Do you have any comments on that and why Israel has a healthy fertility rate?

[B]

It's a, it's a, it's a rather complex subject. Um, I. Nobody knows why fertility rates have dropped so precipitously in the world in the last 15 years. It's very easy for anyone to tie this to a kind of politics that we already are predisposed to believe in. It's very easy for me as an Israeli to tie it in because it's just one more measure where Israel is extraordinary. So hooray for us. I don't know, you know, I, I, I, but the fact is that the number has been declining in poor countries, rich countries, Christian countries, Muslim countries, northern countries, southern countries, equatorial countries, cold countries, warm countries, countries with generous welfare states, countries with, with po. Something is happening there that I don't have an adequate explanation for. Believe in something larger than oneself. To seek a life with meaning rather than with just subjective happiness can't really lead you anywhere else. But this, this essential part of life that we're all programmed to want that doesn't have a lot of rational purpose for it. Certainly not in a wealthy modern welfare state. I, I suppose a big part of the Israeli exception is that life here, regardless of whether you're a believer or not, has meaning. I mean, it's just inescapable. There's a lot of material and aesthetic dullness here. Middle class life in Israel isn't as luxurious as it is in most of the West. Our apartments are smaller, our climate is a bit more unforgiving. You put up with a lot of crap here in daily life and you put up with a lot of danger. Service really bad with that customer service. And life has meaning. I don't know how to quantify that or positively identify it. The push to have families is always going to be higher in, or is necessarily going to be higher in a conflict zone. And of course for Israelis it ties also to a certain kind of post Holocaust sensibility. But I don't have an overarching scientific theory for more why things are different here than they are in other countries. If I began to indulge in one, it would probably just be indulging in, in my own political prejudices. I would say, by the way, that fertility rate is not always the best measure of, of these things, right? I mean there's fertility rate measures one thing population growth can measure not, you know, measuring births or deaths per, per thousand or things like that. Because fertility, for example, doesn't tell you much about population trajectories if you, if it's not normalized for age of, of reproduction, right? I mean the, the same fertility rate babies in their early 20s versus women who are having babies in their late 30s has a very different population trajectory if it's replicated over generations. And, but yes, people's, people's desire to have family and the size of the family is something that's responsive to a whole bunch of incentives. There's a, there's a crazy study in the US that looked at states that had mandatory child seats up to a very late age versus ones that didn't. And it found it had a, it was directly correlated with fertility rates.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So states that were mandating child seats up to age 8 or 9 were having families that stop at 2 kids and states that weren't, were having many, many families with three kids. But the economic incentives clearly aren't the whole story. The social pressures are a big part of the story. When you're in a place where other people are having kids, you're more likely to have them. When you're in a place where nobody is, you're also more likely to skip it. That is a certain contagion effect. I think that's happened a lot in the west since 2008.

[A]

And there's a lot of talk here that, oh, it's due to, you know, houses getting smaller or, you know, people only being able to afford apartments. And I think that's definitely part of it. But at the same time, I was just in Vietnam and people there live with their grandparents and like live in very, very small multi generational housing, which we would find very humble. But they're still having kids. Interestingly, they still only have two kids. Kids because that was imposed on them by

[B]

communist regime. Are houses in Australia smaller today than they were 50 years ago? I doubt it very much.

[A]

I think so. I think more people living in high density, like apartments and stuff. But yeah, I don't think that's, that's the best argument. But I guess it depends what your peers and what your parents had. If your parents had a house and you only have an apartment, then maybe it feels like there's more pressure on you.

[B]

I'll say this. Nobody who doesn't want kids should be having kids. Nobody who's not ready for it should be having them. There's a lot of bad parents out there.

[A]

Yes, that's true. So you, you write a lot about democracy. What, what are your thoughts on democracy at the moment? I mean, you've also, you know, we've already talked about mistruths and lies spreading and it seems to me, and I think, you know, know studies back this up, that like, people just simply don't care that much about the truth. Like how, how does that humans overestimate their, their care about the truth. So how does that affect democracy?

[B]

I suppose the thing that's really concerning me in the last decade or so in mature democratic countries is that our elections have become referendums on the constitution itself each time. And I don't think this is sustained. The point of an election in a mature democracy that's at peace is to pick between two reasonable options. And it's unpleasant when your side loses and it's sad for a day or two that's normal, but that, that needs to be it. The situation we find ourselves in in so many democracies, including the one that I'm sitting in right now, where the election feels like a life or death death reckoning, where losing doesn't just mean the people I like less are going to be in power for the next three or four years, but it has a real feeling of this is the end. I think that's a terrible place to be. And when that's then iterated over multiple election cycles, I don't think that's a level of tension that you can sustain. And I feel that that's where we are in Israel and I feel that's where we were in the United States and I feel that that's where we were actually in Britain and in France and, and I don't think this is a normal state of affairs. And yet it seems to be standard now in the world, in country after country for, for much of the post war period you had in most of the mature democracies a choice between something that looked like Christian Democrats and something that looked like Social Democrats. And these were basically very moderate people who had had different points of view on major cultural and social issues, but fundamentally believed in the constitutional order, in the rule of law and in basic set of civil rights that all citizens were guaranteed and they fought back and forth and they lost power from time to time and they spent time in the opposition and occasionally one or two of them, you know, got snared in some corruption problem and then even were put on trial and went to jail and things like that, that. But, but that's more or less how the system functioned. And it's been falling apart for a good 30 years or so, first rather gradually and then since about 2015, really quickly. If you look across the landscape, you don't see many more authentically Christian Democratic parties or Social Democratic parties. There's very few countries where you still see both. The United States hasn't had a functioning Christian Democratic party since the 90s, really. I mean, the Republican party turned into something else. Neither has any Israel for at least 10 years now, probably a bit more even.

[A]

Why is the Christian aspect important?

[B]

I'm just Using that, I mean Christian aspect in the sense of social party that basically believed in, in real social solidarity, a national purpose, universal civil rights and a kind of cultural and welfare collective mission for, for society with different emphases. Then there are their left wing counterparts, right. I mean they, they believed a lot, much more in free market, they believed much more in personal responsibility, much more in the importance of, of, of family units. They were much more culturally traditional, but they operated within, I mean this was a kind of conservative politics that operated within a constitutional consensus that began to Fray in the US already in the 1990s and in Europe maybe a bit later. And, and the reality is that most of the old Christian Democratic parties either either withered away themselves or were hijacked by other elements on the political right that were for most of the post war period kept at bay. On the left the picture's almost the same. I mean the social democratic consensus began to fall apart really rapidly in the 1970s and 80s and onwards. I think what happened to both the left and the right was what I refer to as the great privatization of politics and various versions of highly individualist politics that were very adversarial.

[A]

For example.

[B]

Well, I, I, I think, I mean the, the whole kind of rights based discourse of left wing politics since the 70s, which was a discourse entirely about how minorities trump democratic political processes.

[A]

Did the Vietnam War have a bit to do with that as well?

[B]

Yeah, in the US that definitely had a lot to do with. There are many things the whole sort of social dislocation of, of the new economic order after 1973 did a lot to apart certainly the tie between the working class and the moderate left in Israel. By the way, we don't have either of those things anymore. We don't have a major political party that looks anything like a Western Christian Democratic party. We don't really have a major political party that looks anything like a Western social democratic party either. And I'm not sure Britain will have either of those after the next election cycle either. And France absolutely doesn't have those. I'm not sure that the US will still have that right. We get to a point where each election becomes a referendum on democracy itself and occasionally the result is not satisfying. And I don't know where we go from here. We ultimately may come to the conclusion that the liberal consensus democracy of the post war years, that it was the extreme deception.

[A]

Hmm.

[B]

And that the politics of extremism and violence which characterized most of human politics in the years before 1945 and increasingly characterized our political lives in the 21st century. I mean, I hope that's not the case, but we could very well end up just living with that as a status quo.

[A]

Scary. And again, it reminds me of Pascal Bruckner and he's riding on the tyranny of guilt because, I don't know, you said post post war order, but can we talk? I mean, would we have had that order without the Shoah? I wonder? Like, could we have had those that, that those few decades of, I guess, prosperity and pacifism without the Shoah? Or did we need the Shoah to, to learn to be like that?

[B]

I don't know. I mean, the Shoah is there in the background of so much of our politics and our anxieties. I do know that we would not have had the post war peace and prosperity and social solidarity without the decisive military victory that the allies had in 1940 and without the overwhelming military threat that the west posed to Soviet tyranny throughout that time, without the victory of 45, without standing firm against the Soviet threat, none of those things would have been possible. Now, at the same time as that glory period for North Atlantic countries was happening in much of the rest of the world, life wasn't so great. So I mean, we had a lot of social equality in Western life during those post war decades, but it existed next to a massive global inequality that we don't have anymore. And that opens, I think, several questions as well. One of the great achievements of the more recent decades, which have been politically not so glorious in the Western countries, but taken as a whole in the globe in the last 30 years, there's been a drastic reduction in global poverty, really quite unlike anything we've seen before. And it's not just China. China has a massive weight on the statistics because it's so big and because its gains are so large. But it's actually not just China. I mean, really throughout the world, we've

[A]

seen

[B]

an astonishing near elimination of a kind of absolute poverty that was endemic in the human condition from time immemorial. That's a stunning achievement that shouldn't be gainsaid in our nostalgia for the post war era. Nor should all of the social reforms that we've done in the west in the last couple decades be, be, be eclipsed in, in this kind of nostalgia. It was a glorious period economically perhaps, but it's much better today to be a woman, a gay, an ethnic or racial minority in the west than it was in, in those glory days of the post war years. A lot of the social solidarity that we can admire so much from that period was done in exclusion, inclusion of very vulnerable groups inside Western societies. What we haven't found is a formula to be both inclusive domestically and globally while still holding on to that old vision of solidarity. A vision that existed both in a moderate left form of politics and in a moderate right form politics which alternated power with each other nonviolently in an orderly way continuously for decades until everything went to shit.

[A]

Yeah, not to again speak about Israel, but I was struck when I went to Israel for the first time a few months ago that I do think Israel strikes that balance quite well of having a patriotism and self belief and a pride in who you are and a self respect that so that Australia doesn't have, for example, while also, you know, being able to welcome people from different countries and have a fairly open society. Liberalism essentially.

[B]

Look, the defining feature of domestic life life or the most salient issue in domestic life in the last two years was the hostages who were being held in Gaza. And on the one hand, the salience of that is indicative of a certain kind of, of a certain kind of solidarity. But on the other hand, there's something very depressing for me as an Israeli of the political valences that the hostage issue took. For a great deal of the Israeli left and left wing commentary, you would read about the hostages as though they were being held by the Israeli government, not the Hamas. And the moral failure of their captivity seemed to attach to political leaders here that we didn't like rather than to the sons of Satan who kidnapped these men and women from their homes after murdering their families. For the political right, there grew to be this hatred of the hostages. Instead of understanding that these were the worst victims of the Hamas massacre massacre, they seemed to genuinely dislike them. They were far rightists who would harass families of hostages at protests. They seemed to see in them an instantiation of the humiliation of that military defeat that we experienced on that Saturday morning. The thing it recalled to me most was the cruelty of the Arab states to the refugees from the 1948 or as being reminders of a defeat. I'm happy that we cared about them. I'm happy we didn't give up on them. I'm happy that we brought them home. I'm happy to see even in all the tragedy and the cruelty that we learned all their names and struggled so hard to get them back and that they meant so much for us. I think that says something very positive about Israeli society. But I'm very depressed at how that issue came to be understood by some of the most partisan elements domestically. I think it exposed not just something very healthy and admirable about Israeli society, but a few things that are deeply, deeply unwell.

[A]

Wow. When's the next election? Or what's happening now?

[B]

The next election is supposed to be in October. It might be moved up by a few months, especially if it looks now likely that there won't be a compromise on the conscription bill Bill. And if that happens, it's very likely Parliament will be dissolved early. But it's a difference of a few months. I mean, in one way or another, the election's going to be this year, in 2026.

[A]

Is there anything else you'd like to talk about? I should probably wrap it up with some update here. Yeah. You sure?

[B]

You'll have to invite me again.

[A]

Okay. And if people want to read your work in Quillet, we've published one of your pieces, which is a book review. Review of a book which I haven't read, but it was a good review. Thank you. And hopefully you publish. Well, we publish more of your work soon.

[B]

Looking forward to it. I really enjoy the magazine. It's been a voice of sanity in the last two years.

[A]

Great. I agree, but I'm biased. Thanks for joining me, Shani.

[B]

Thank you for having me, Sam.