118: Is Israel a settler-colonial state? A historian’s honest answer, with Alex Yakobson

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Was the Zionist-Arab encounter always destined to end in displacement, war and suffering? That's what the settler-colonial theorists argue, and it's a claim that's moved from the fringes of academia into mainstream discourse on college campuses, op-ed pages and protest movements worldwide. It is a claim that has become almost definitional to left-wing politics in the West.

In this episode, we sit down with Professor Alexander Yakobson of the Hebrew University, a scholar of ancient democracy, national identity, and the modern Middle East, to take these arguments apart, piece by piece, with the one thing the debate usually lacks: actual history.

What really happened when the UN voted for partition in 1947? Why did the Jewish Agency beg both the Americans and the Soviets for an international enforcement force? How close was the IDF to losing the War of Independence, and what does that tell us about Zionist "inevitability?" Is the Nakba historically unique, or does it fit a painful pattern seen from Cyprus to British India to Greece and Turkey?

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This episode is sponsored by Howard and Darlene Wolf, a Jewish couple from Tampa, Florida. They want to dedicate it to “the millions of Americans who have an unbreakable bond with the Jewish state of Israel, including the millions of evangelicals whose beliefs and reasons may differ from our own, but who nevertheless stand shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish state. Regardless of our motivations, whether religious or secular, may we all act on the critical need to align ourselves with America’s most trustworthy ally and the Middle East’s only democracy.”

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Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.