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The American Jewish community is in turmoil over the Gaza concentration camp breakout and subsequent genocidal bombing campaign. While a few Americans of Jewish ethnicity side with the Palestinian Resistance (check out my interview with David Rovics) the wealthier and more powerful element—the one that dominates US media and politics—has united behind the genocide, and forced the US to back it. But many American Jews, especially younger ones, are losing their taste for Zionism. I thought this might be an interesting time to check back in with two Jewish guests from years past…
First hour: Joel Simpson has “had careers in college teaching, jazz piano and music software” but is happiest now as a professional photographer. He also has a good eye for truth (as opposed to “public myth.”) When I was censored at the Left Forum in New York, Joel wrote a terrific report. In it, he writes: “Growing up, as I did, in the traumatic shadow of the Holocaust, I embraced Zionism as a young person—it was the dominant ideology of my Jewish education—insensitive to its implicit racism, and only came to realize its truly oppressive dimensions in the early 1980s.” Since then he seems to have fully recovered…
Second hour: Doooovid (check out his X/Twitter feed) is an independent Jewish thinker and interfaith activist. A strongly religious Jew who opposes Zionism, his distaste for Israel may be one reason that our cordial conversation on Jewish identity and anti-Semitism was censored by YouTube.