The Political Economy of Palestine Featuring Hussein Aboubakr Mansour

- Today's June 30th, 2026, and my guest is author Hussein Abubakar Mansour of JNSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. His substack is the Abrahamic Metacritique. And our topic for today is a rather extraordinary essay he wrote there. The title was A Meta Critique of Palestine on the Political Economy of a Word Symbol. Hussein, welcome to Econ Talk. Thank you, Russ. My pleasure. Now I want to say something before we start, and that is that, you know, Palestine, which is a rich, complicated word means different things to different people, but it has somehow become a incredibly salient political issue, not just here in the Middle East, but throughout the world. It was a serious issue in recent local British elections, local British elections, local California elections, of course here in Israel, all over the Middle East. And in some sense, your essay is trying to explain why the issue of Palestine is so salient, is so ubiquitous, is so central to so many conversations. I'm going to start with a quote from the piece, and then Hussein, you will get to talk. Quote, "The liberal who writes about human rights, the leftist who writes about settler colonialism, the realist who writes about regional security, the conservative, who writes about the clash of civilizations, the Islamist who writes about the crusaders, the Arab nationalist who writes about Western betrayal, and the post-Christian European who writes about the unbearable irony of Jewish power or not, despite their mutual hostility, engaged in incompatible projects. They're engaged in the same project, which is the conversion of the victimhood, regardless of its details, produced at a particular site into a particular kind of symbolic capital usable within a particular ideological market. They quarrel about the terms of the conversion, but they do not quarrel about the conversion itself because the conversion is what they all live on." So I want to unpack that a little bit. Why don't you start and give us an idea of what you're trying to say there? Well, first of all, thank you. Thank you very much, Russ. And I'm, I'm, I'm extremely glad that my essay resonated with you. And as you said, people can, can disagree about a lot of the claims but they have to engage and at least try attempt to find a way to really understand the conflict outside of all the morality plays that have dominated. And the morality plays as, as I explained in the essay, and that's kind of actually what you lay down right now, are, are actually part of of the problem. And whether you care deeply about Israel or care deeply about the Palestinian people, you have to take that, you know, these claims seriously because ultimately if this is any truth to the, the, the, the claims of the essay, helping these people ultimately means dealing, dealing with this very difficult problem. So ultimately what I'm trying to explain here, that Palestine as, as it exists today as a global phenomenon, as you said, a globally salient issue you know, and, and you have a, you have a list of the leftists and liberal and the Arab nationalists and Islamists and so on. So it's, it's, it's extremely globally. It's probably the most globally salient issue today. It's not really primarily a place or a people or a cause. It's really a self-producing reproducing system of political economic extraction. I call it an autopoietic symbolic convertibility machine that converts victimhood in, in that sp - particular site of conflict into mutually reinforcing forms of, of value across all of these different stalls at the ideological market at once. That is, it became central to our own ideological meaning making and, and the politics that come around this. This has not been always the case. This is why I insist people to understand that I'm talking about as it is today. This is not. There's a background of how this came to be. There's a history, but, but this is how, how it became to be today. It has been like this in the Middle East for quite some time. As a matter of fact, one, one could make the argument, and I would make the argument that it, it originated like this, this system of symbolic convertibility or a, a mining site of value out of certain story of victimhood. It, it like that, it, it started like that in the Middle East since 1948 already, probably perhaps even, even before. But with the great ideological systems of the Middle East, primarily Arab nationalism and, and revolutionary third worldism, and both of them were, were closely linked and later, later Islamism. And what we, what we have seen in the last 10 years or so is the complete success or the, the catastrophic success of the globalization of that system, of that political economic extractive system really on a global scale that operates even in domestic Western and Amer- American politics today. Now, tell us a little bit about yourself, and because part of the reason this essay is effective is your own personal story and your background. And you use you're from Egypt originally, you use your Egyptian background as a a way to help us outside of the Middle East or outside of the Arab world more accurately understand the water that people are swimming in. Right. And, and we don't understand it. So talk about yourself and then how this extractive mining operation operates in Egypt, which is extraordinary. Well, it's, it's, it's it's quite pervasive. That is Palestine, Palestine/anti-Zionism, there's a question here if there is actually any distinction. How, how much distinction actually is, is between both? There is, there is obviously this, there is some distinction but the, the, a lot of the content of Palestine as a word symbol is, is that negationist impulse that is entirely directed and concretized in Israel and Zionism. It's central to Egyptian identity, sadly. Now, Egypt, the entire Middle East is an extremely complex place everywhere in the planet, it's a complex place, but the Middle East, as everybody e- every learned man knows has been a a very dysfunctional region for quite some time. And it's this functionality goes on many levels that confounds, has been confounding experts, scholars you have religious problems, political problems, you have constant state collapse inability to produce stable, stable structures with notable exceptions Israel the Arab Gulf you have revolutionary regime, seemingly endemic radicalism and antisemitism, anti-Americanism, so on and so forth. All the, the, the phenomena of dysfunction that, that everyone knows. And Egypt is one of the bitter, bitter cases. I mean, it went through waves of instability. It suffers from extremely persistent authoritarianism and, and, and lack of, of democracy and, and, and civic liberties. But at least it's, it's one of the more stable states. But even though it's stability, it hides a lot of, a lot of confusion. You know, what is, what is really the primary, the main protagonist of, of the, the, of history in Egypt? Is it Egypt itself? Is it Arabs? Is it Islam? It's the questions of identity that, that again, started really explosively in the Middle East. They are being also globalized. And central to. So I grew up in, in this confusion in Egypt in the '90s which also in the '90s in Egypt witnessed the wave of Islamic violence before it's kind of subsided by, by the late '90s. But central to all of these conf- confusion always, and what brought it all back together to some sort of a cohesive idea of the self was the hatred towards Israel, the hatred towards Zi- Zionism, that we, whether you think you're a Muslim, whether you think you're primarily Arab, whether you think you're primarily Egyptian, ultimately the rock, the solid rock is the fact that we are at war with Israel. And this manifested itself pretty much in all forms of cultural production, from music to film to literature. And I write about this extensively in, in my substack. And as a child, I was fascinated by this. It's a, it's, it's a it's a really large myth that, that organizes, organizes life. The government invests in it, the opposition movements invest in it, the Islamist movement invests in it. So it has also central political salience within the Egyptian political, political system itself. And growing up, just fascinated by, by this clear centrality I started to become gradually obsessed with it. And of course, with all the antisemitic a, a, atmosphere, a very thick atmosphere around this. I basically dedicated my life to, to, to to try to understand the evils of Zionism and the evils of Israel. And as I grew up, I, I started to develop my understanding. I understood that I was inside a myth that is extremely dysfunctional and disastrous. And ha - trying to deal with it with Egypt, it was extremely difficult, had clashes of the government, had, had to flee in 2012. Since then I've been in the United States. And since then given that this is now, truly is the formative story of my life. I've just, I've been, I've been investing many years in trying to understand why and how come the society that I came from chose to organize itself or the way it thinks morally and politically around this issue specifically. But you're right you said, you're right, "I'm an Egyptian. I was raised like every member of my generation in my country to understand the liberation of Palestine as the central political and moral question of my existence. The lens through which every other question about the world was to be focused, and the framework within which my own dignity as a person and as a member of my civilization was to be measured." End of quote. And then you go on to talk about how that belief - Right. The centrality of the liberation of Palestine informs Egyptians' view of agriculture, economic growth - Right. Culture. How? Right. In what way? Well, it definitely was like that till I was growing up. I hope, I hope it's a little better. I haven't been to Egypt since 2012, and the country has been through a lot. You had you had a Muslim Brotherhood presidency, you had a coup, Cisi. My, my feeling that thing, there were some progress given the fact that there were other real issues in terms of stability, economy, so on. But my, my feeling is that there has been a major regression since October 7th for various reasons. But yes, so growing up you'll find specifically of course I deal here, I, I deal many times with intellectuals and elite culture. So Arab intellectuals who are overwhelming. So either you have two options, either leftist Arab intellectual or an Islamist Arab intellectual. That's, that's the. For, for, for, for a long time it was this strict dichotomy. And the secular Arab intellectual was, was some variation of the left, either has loyalties to some form of the old left Arab nationalism, Nasser, so on and you know so forth, or the Arab new left, which is much more centered around Palestine as the single mobilizing issue, but without necessarily any grand vision of political transformation of, of the region. But all these types of intellectual, whether the leftists or, or, or the Islamists had an un - an extremely uncanny way of getting every, discussing issues and ultimately find, finding at the root Israel at, at the bottom. For example, I do remember specifically when the wove of global, global, global anti-globalization, which was a, a, a major wave of protest and activism in Europe, Latin America, and, and the Middle East in the '90s and the early 2000s, it kind of merged into the anti-war movement as the war terrorism and, and war Iraq started. Obviously it was a moment of much ideological ferment in, in Arab societies, especially a place like Egypt. That was also the moment of the ri- rise of global jihadism and Al-Qaeda as, as we know it. And even that moment of ferment in, in Arab society itself is, you can, you can draw a direct line to the events of, of the Arab Spring. But I remember I was, I was young, but I would, I was very interested in, in these issues, and they would watch intellectuals for, let's say on the, on TV discussing stagnation of Egyptian agriculture and just the fact that Egypt has become the, the number one wheat importer globally. We can't even feed ourselves and, and so on and so forth. And then they discuss IMF austerity programs changes of government policy that led to this. And then they go into a chain of causality into why this happened. Well, we're in debt, we need to restructure our, our economy. Part of the restructuring is these kind of tropical cash crops and, and, and, but ultimately they think it's, it's bad. We're shipping all of these strawberries in Europe, but our people are hungry and we have to buy wheat from Russia. Well, why did it have to be ended this way? Well, our, our political or our economic project failed because of the what Saddad did, let's say at the late, late '70s in terms of liberalization. Well, why did he do that? Well, he did that because of Camp David. What was Camp David? It was a peace peace agreement that guarantees sec - the security of Israel. So ultimately, it will calm down why these intellectuals think that the, the Egyptian economy is suboptimally organized. It will be actually because of Zionism. And this will go. You, you can do this pretty much into others. The, the, the absence of democracy is a big one. I mean, you find, you find intellectuals doing that in the United States. Shade Hamid, for instance, who writes a lot on Arab and Muslim issues at the Washington Post keeps making this point many times, which is that Israel is central to the absence of democracy and human rights in Arab societies. Because the, the number one objective of US foreign policy in the Middle East is protecting the security of Israel. Well, if you get democracy in a neighboring country, say Jordan and Egypt, in, in all likelihood, you're going to get an anti-Zionist some, some, someone anti-Zionist in power because that's the populous sentiment. So you have, they have to suppress democracy and human rights, support all of these decrypted autocrats in order to maintain the security of Israel. So if there is, if there's an Arab somewhere in Yemen or Algeria who's being tortured in the prisons of the police state in which, in which they live, ultimately through that chain of causality it's because of Israel and because of Zionism. And that's quite convincing. I mean, you have large intellectual structures that are built in order to make these large structural analyses that, that then center on Israel. And you point out, you elaborate on this in the essay, and you use Egypt as an example. You talk about and we'll talk about it in a minute, other, other nations in the Middle East. But you point out that, you know, on some of these claims, which are, which seem like fever dreams of blaming the other rather than taking responsibility, there is an element of truth in some of them. Right. Now, how big an element we're not going to go into now, but I don't want to, I want to make it clear that we're, we're not saying, I don't think you're saying that the Arab world is is insanely obsessed with Israel and it's just, there's no there's no logic to it. There, there's an element of truth in some of the claims of sometimes it's small, sometimes it's large, that you just gave an example of the chain of the argument that you could make, and it's not, it, there may be some truth to it and it could be persuasive to many people. But the, the key point here that I, that I want to stick with for a moment, and we'll maybe delve, delve more deeply into some of the, the side issues and examples, is that it is, it serves the self-interest - Right. Of many governments to blame their problems on - Right. To find a scapegoat. Now, this is, this is not a deep insight. This is, sorry. Many people have, have noticed that it's convenient for people to blame an the other, whether it's the Jews or some eth - other ethnic minority or racial minority in a, in a country. But you're saying something much more deeply, much more deeper, much deeper. You're saying that it doesn't just help, let's say an autocratic government, a tyrant or a, a thug or a corrupt thug to say, "Well, and things aren't so good for you in the street, but that's all because of, of Zionism, or that's all because of Israel." That's just one piece of this complex system. And many, many people, I want to try again, take a little summary here for listeners that don't want to get lost in the weeds. For many, many players in the intellectual marketplace, it's profitable to blame Israel for something. It doesn't have to, in this case, it might be the poverty of, of the average Egyptian, but for other people, it's about, it might be about the failure of certain intellectual ideologies that should be more successful but aren't and so on and so forth. Is that a, is that a fair summary of what, of your claim? It's, it's more than ideological. I think it's directly it's directly political. That is I think ultimately these ideas succeed aside from the o - they have their own compelling aesthetic power. I mean, they are aesthetically total, final. They are quite comprehensive in what, in what they can include, but I don't think that this is the reason that they are persistent. I think they are the reason, the reason that they are per- persistent is actually interest. This serves interest. And, and as you said, it serves the interest of a lot of almost everyone that involved in the process of ideological production including the regimes that tacitly either allow this or promote them themselves. I mean, the Egyptian, the Egyptian regime is a big example that its own media constantly promote, promote this point of view specifically because it. Well, what does the ideology itself achieves? Yeah, right. It's, it, it, it blame. Things are not good for you, not because of me, not because of what we're doing, it because of someone else. But it, it does more than that. It's, it forecloses, it occupies any place in which real political analysis can emerge. That is, once it becomes established, it becomes total. It becomes so intuitive that even the chain of causality is not really on a. When you go down from the intellectual level to just kind of a mass layman level, they don't even need the in - that these chains of, of, of causality established. It just it's direct, you know, a lot of our problems because of, because of Israel and, and, and so on. And whether on the intellectual level or the mass level, what you have is you have this cognitive trap in which now you're trapped into this self-reinforcing idea that can reproduce itself and revalidate itself and rejustify itself that then occupies the cognitive space in which or through which you should have started to look at your problems objectively. You should have started to produce an actual analysis of why the economy is not functioning well. There is no economic mobility, stagnation, so on and so forth. So obviously an autocratic regime has a deep interest in promoting this because once it's, it's there it's, they actually have to do much less in terms of speech control in ter - in terms of censorship, in terms of, of of speech policing. And this is actually true for a lot of these Arab regimes that by the way, they are no near the levels of autocracy, let's say China or North Korea. And, and they don't need to be because ultimately this kind of ideological method of control is just, it's completely self-enforcing, self-producing. You don't need to, to, to you don't need to police the people's speech themselves. But the same regime now here's the problem of, of Palestine. Now you have, you have the, you must control the flame. That is because of the revolutionary potency of this very word symbol itself. You can't get litigate out of control because then that can be weaponized and mobilized against you. And that's what the oppositions movements try to do. So again, Egypt is the example I know best because I grew up there. So the regime would be holding the flame off liberation of Palestine and the hatred for Israel. And then the Islamic movements primarily will try to even raise the flame up even further as to consume the regime by pointing out, oh, you're right, but you are the one who are guaranteeing the peace of Israel. You have a peace of - You're too soft. You're too soft. You're too soft, yes. You're too soft in Israel. Not just you're too soft, you're a collaborator. You, you have security arrangements with them, you have security collaboration. So then the opposition tries to raise the flame even further in order for it to start burning the regime itself. And then these Arab regimes then have these multiple, you know, thermostats that they have to all the time adjust the heat of of this anti-Israel sentiment. It has to be just enough to keep people from thinking about their, their, their political problems and the real nature of the political system in which they are living, but not too high as to start hurting the regime itself. Now, this gets more complex when you know, when you know the fact that this same issue is also a ga - a regional game. So it's not just that you're playing this game domestically in your domestic politics, you're playing it against other regimes. So for example, you have a rival state. Qatar is a chief example. Qatar was the main instigator of a lot of instability during the Arab spring. Everybody remembers the 217 blockade by a lot of Arab countries against Qatar specifically because of sponsorship of Muslim Brotherhood movements, which are the main threat to a lot of these Arab regimes. And Al Jazeera, which is the main ideological media instrument, the largest media instrument in the Middle East. And, and people know what Al Jazeera does. So you're playing another game against Qatar. Now, Qatar then can and often does, and that's the way they do, inflame Palestine among your own population and, and, and in order to make you unstable. So you're not just. And of course, Iran is another big example. I mean, Iran ultimately is trying to outmaneuver all the Arab states by making them the custodian of the word symbol of Palestine. So you're playing this game domestically. You need Palestine, but at the same times, you don't need it too much. You need to block the opposition from capitalizing on it. And this is how you see the accusation and counter-accusation of in Arab politics, "Oh, you're the one who's a product of Israel. Oh, no, you are the one who's a product of Israel. But at the same times, you're not the only one. This, this game is actually part of a bigger board in which a lot of other regimes are playing against each other as well. So, so let me ask about that. As someone sitting here in Israel and, you know, one challenge to your theory is the Abraham Accords, which is - Right. Which looks, and you mentioned this in the essay, you know, it looks like there's a sm - it's a small group, but - Right. A couple of, a handful of countries decide to step out of the game that you're talking about. Right. Recognize Israel, trade with them, invest here and have Israeli and others invest in their countries. But, you know, it's a dream of a lot of Israelis, including the prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would join the Abraham Accords. And there was a lot. It, it gets rumored all the time. Right. You hear, "Oh, Saudi Arabia's actually thinking of joined. There's a big announcement coming soon. I wonder what it is. Maybe it's Saudi Arabia. It turns out it's Kazakhstan joining the Abraham Accords. It's not as quite as exciting, but nice, pleasant if you live here. But you have all these rumors that, that, that Saudi Arabia's liberalizing. They're going to cooperate with Israel against Iran. That's why October 7th happened to stop that. But in the meanwhile, you have the United States, which is friends with Saudi Arabia and can use carrots and sticks to advance Saudi Arabia's position on Israel. And, and you think, well, so now it's time for this liberalization with Saudi Arabia to happen. Then all of a sudden they crack down. They suddenly, their rhetoric ratchets up. Suddenly they're saying that, of course, we can't have anything to do with Israel. They, they oppressed the Palestinians, but they did in Gaza. It was unacceptable, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, we're playing. It feels like a yo-yo or maybe a tennis game. I don't know what the right metaphor is. How do you understand that? Well, Let - In Your framework? Let, let me put another layer of analysis and, and then so we can have even a, a bigger picture. So you have, you have the, you're playing the domestic game. So the, a regime is trying to extract consent and acquiescence from its population through, through the Palestine word symbol. Regionally, regimes trying to extract influence from each other through, through the same word symbol. But then there's also an international layer, which is a lot of these Arab states extract massive concessions and privileges from Washington through playing the game itself. There are a lot of, there are a lot of examples, but let's take Jordan and, and, and Egypt. Both of them are largely dependent on US support and, and USAID. And the US support and the USAID is intrinsically linked, inherently linked to their relationship with Israel. As a matter of fact, so all of the Arab economies, almost all, are various forms of frontier economies. They just, they live by extracting grins from natural resources and so on. Egypt Egypt really has two forms of French extraction. The first one is the Suez Canal and the second one is their border with Israel and Gaza. That is, it's a major, major piece of leverage from which they can extract from Washington a lot of concessions on a lot of it. As a matter of fact, even in DC, here in Washington when you hear people talking about cutting USAID globally one of the few exceptions they make is Egypt, specifically because of just its centrality to stability of the m - the region through their piece of Israel. The border of Gaza is a major is a major, is one, one big source of extraction. Just very quickly, when the Biden administration came to the White House obviously they had serious problems with both MBS and, and President Sisi because of authoritarianism, human rights, and, and so on and so forth. And President Biden didn't talk to President Cisi at all after after he came came to office. The first time ever President Biden picked up the phone and called President Cisi was actually in the Gaza, in the, in, in the Hamas-Israel War of 2021. Because then Egypt becomes very important because of their border with Gaza. So you have also this international level. Now with Saudi Arabia, when you're talking about a state like Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf, when they are talking about normalization with Israel, they are playing all of these games at once. But usually their most important extraction is from the United States. The Saudi Arabia wanted a, a civil nuclear, a nuclear program. F - 35s. F - 35s so, so on and so forth. So the, the calculus, especially in there was a moment sadly this moment had passed, which is the moment that made the Abraham Accords possible when it, it seemed possible to pull out of that game. So what I'm saying, by the way, all Arab statesmen understand fully better than I do because that's actually their politics. That's the game that they have to play every, the moment that they wake up in the morning. And the UAE had an extremely daring vision to really pull out of that game because that game is destructive. It makes, it makes regional politics extremely difficult. It militates against states pursuing their interests transparently and honestly. And the UAE obviously has a lot of ambition. It's a small country that's extremely wealthy and extremely successful. So they wanted, they wanted to pull out of the game not just pull, pull out of the game would be actually the wrong the wrong term. They wanted to turn the game around. So they wanted to turn a different. They basically wanted to turn it a different game in which accepting Israel then becomes the main asset that a lot of the Arab states can have when they are dealing with the West, when they are dealing with each other and so on. It was really a daring vision and it, it seemed possible for a few years even Saudi Arabia was going in that direction. What happened is that as after October 7th, given the massive geopolitical shifts that came out of, you know, you had a domino effect. First of all, the gradual weakening of Iran by Israeli military action that ultimately changed the level of the Iranian threat itself. And the Iranian threat was one of the main forces that determined the structure of power in the region, relationship and relationships in the region. That is, for a long time, every single relationship in the region had to be triangulated through the Iranian threat and, and calculated against the Iranian threat. So obviously that changes everything. The global salience of Palestine, I think actually the Saudis and Arab statesmen are actually taking that into consideration, that is they are actually looking at American domestic politics and wondering about the future of American support of Israel and whether that does that mean in, in which in terms of the asset that Israel represents. And ultimately, I believe the Saudis recalculated that they can actually gain more by pulling back from the path that they were contemplating along with the UEE and actually go playing the old game. And that way they can have then a comparative advantage over both the Israelis who are now becoming a formidable military power that is threatening to a lot of Arab states and even against the Emiratis who are becoming the most successful Arab state and most successful economy. And playing then against them will allow the Saudis to carve a place for their own, for their own regional leadership. And I believe that's what the Saudis recalculated. That is that they can win more by, by playing the old game back. And as you said, you can see, I mean, I'm writing something about this in which you I, I kind of see in the Saudi official statements that changes, the gradual changes in the language after October 7th that went through phases. Well, we can't ignore the Palestinians anymore. Well, we need some path towards a Palestinian state. And then it's really hardened in 2025 into a Palestinian state is the only way forward for, for the region. Which is the Saudis are extremely. Saudi statesmen, and I talked, I talked to a few of them are extremely educated and intelligent people. I believe they actually know that this is not a possibility. Like they themselves know that a Palestinian state is not really viable at all, given the conditions of the Palestinians themselves, whether in the West Bank and, and, and in Gaza, and of course the problems of, of internal Israeli politics. I mean, this is almost an impossible ask. So I believe they are demanding the impossible because they are not really, that's not really what they are demanding. It's a, it's a component in the new calculation that they are doing in the game that they're playing. So let's talk for a minute about the, the other players, just to be clear. I mean, this, as I said, it's not so controversial to argue that states that, I'll just call them corrupt thegocracies, states that extract resources from their own people need to keep the people quiet - Right. And comfortable and not looking too carefully at, at their own feelings as a regime. I want to say something also go ahead and say that they're also trapped. They themselves, the regime, yes, is using the word symbol, but also is trapped in the game. Like, let's say, let's say that I am, I'm an Egyptian autocrat and decides tomorrow, you know, this is a terrible game. I just don't want to play this anymore. Well, you do that at your own pearl. First of all, your opposition is going to play that game. The Qataris are going to play that game. Urdhuan is going to play that game. The Saudis are now playing it again. And the Iranians are playing that game. You're going to be out of power probably in, in no time. So you're experiencing it not just as a mining site in which you're mining whatever resources you get from all the you're mining, you know, acquiescence and quiet from the population. You're mining aid and privileges from the, from Washington, you're mining other things from the region. You're also experiencing it as a, as, as a, as an entrapment. You really can't, can't get out of it. You can't afford to. Yeah, I think that's the important thing because I think Westerners in particular and particularly Americans have a very as I suggested at the beginning of the conversation, a morality-based view of foreign policy. Right. Which is very romantic, comforting, and is probably misapplied not only to foreign countries, but to their own American administrations. But at a minimum, you can debate if you're an American - Right. How moral or just American foreign policy is. But the fact that you. And you might need to believe that for your own emotional wellbeing, that it's, that it's not so self-interested. It's not extractive. It's, it's, it's a, it's a beacon to a freedom to the rest of the world. So if you believe that, that's, you might be being a little naive, and there may be some truth to it, but you might be being naive, but it's certainly naive to apply it to other regimes that are not democratic. Right. And are using rhetoric, the kind of rhetoric we're talking about to serve themselves. And, and it's, it just doesn't come naturally, I think, to even American diplomats, without going into names, to assume that the the other side is self-interested. I'll just take one example. And I, I don't, it doesn't matter whether this is historically accurate or not. The story is told all the time that, that I think it was Madeline Albright chased Yasir Arfat down the driveway when they were trying to get to a, a two-state solution. She, I think she, in the, in the story, and it's, again, I don't know if this is true, she had her h, her, her shoes in her hand so she could run comfortably on the gravel, calling to come back and, "Come on, we're so close." When I think just to be, to give Aravat the benefit of the doubt if he'd agreed to it, he probably would've been killed. And it, Sadat was killed, he took a chance. You don't, you're not guaranteed you're going to be killed. Right. But as you say, if you, if you, if you, if you go, if you break the rules of the game and you try to play a different game - Right. Step out of the game, it's not just, "Well, you know, maybe you won't, maybe your vote, maybe your seats of parliament will go down." That's not what they're worried about. They're worried about being killed. And it's a whole different. It's hard for, I think, Westerners to understand that calculus and that kind of political system. It, it just doesn't compute for, for most of them. Right. I, I think there, there are multiple ironies here. I, I personally find Westerners more ideological than a lot of politicians in the middle. It's definitely a lot of than almost every statesman in, in, in the Middle East with the exception maybe of Iran put it aside. But I found both Israelis and, and Westerners at large, I mean, because they have all these various belief systems, liberalism and international liberalism, conservatism. And this is why I'm, I'm particularly upset at, let's say, the intellectuals of clash of civilization, because you're creating these narratives that really obfuscate the reality at all. Mike Duran from Hudson had that saying that I really liked. He said that the Middle East is a cockpit of, of power politics. And that's, and that's definitely true. The Middle East doesn't have doesn't have a regional structure, and that's what has been its endemic problem. It doesn't have an regional structure that forces countries to cooperate, and then that regional structure develops its own story. It actually doesn't have that at all. It's all unilateral, self-interested in non-democratic regimes that are just fighting ruthlessly and selfishly for power amongst themselves. So you're right, that does not come natural to I think a lot of Westerners. But I want also to emphasize, it's not just a naivete, despite that this is definitely an element. I think it's a difference between Western liberal political structures and that do function many times. I mean, problematically, I have other writings on this issue that I don't like, that function as a religion many times. And really Middle Eastern states that are less ideological and much more self-interested than people think. But I want, let's move away from the Middle East for a sec. And, and like I said, we've been focusing almost exclusively on the regimes of the Middle East. How do we understand, how does your framework help us understand a local election in London, a local election in New York a state senator in California? The, these are people who really don't have access to the levers - Right. Of aid, of foreign policy positions, and yet they stake out a view, a political view and campaign on Palestine. This doesn't really make sense. At least it doesn't seem to. Well, it didn't, it didn't exist a few, a few decades ago. This is, this is much more difficult to talk about. And this is this then you get, you get a much more globalized view of events for the past few decades that, that basically resulted in the globalization of this world symbol that now has its own power and its own salience within Western political systems themselves. No, I think, I think it became also like that. It became also this extractive political economic system or it basically an extension of that system that operated in the Middle East for, for so long into Western politics. And this has to do with various reasons. The decline of Western institutional health in general that would've helped to protect against this cultural health so on and so forth. So desperation of various forms of political meaning making. But also you do have issues of migration the rise of post-coloniality in the university that then it started really in the universities as an academic, in literature departments as an academic new reading technique that then developed its own negative canon that displaced the Western canon and gradually took over the humanities out of the literature department, took over all the, a lot of the humanities, including things that have nothing to do with third world or, or colonialism, like women's studies. Like for example, in women's studies, now the hierarchy that successfully was established is that the issues of third world come first. And you find that even in women's studies department. And, and this is might explain why you should support the Hamas fighter more being angry at the Israeli women who are being raped. This is actually follows from a lot of these things that was established in, in, in the humanities. Expand, massive expansion of higher education gets you, a lot of people exposed to this. Now, you have also the issue of Middle Eastern regimes that are running these extractive systems, specifically the more successful ones. Qatar is a big example, the Turks are another various other Arab regimes, investing in this, in Western societies. And they did this because they know that this amplifies the asset of the word symbol that they have in the region. That is ultimately, it gives them more influence at your own home, at your own region, and this is what they were doing. So he had that element as well of people investing actively in this. I want to, I want to interrupt for a sec. Right. Because I think this, on the surface, this sounds like Looney Tunes. Right. This is just absurd conspiracy theory. But it, it, if you, if you feel that way, and, and that's my first thought. Your second thought should be why did Qatar invest tens, hundreds of millions of dollars in American institutions because they care about American education? I mean, what would be the, what's the motive there if, if there's some motive it's not just a random event. You can debate what it is, I guess. It doesn't have to be your explanation, but, but whatever your reaction is to listeners to, to Hussein's theories about, say, Qatar or Turkey or Saudi Arabia for that matter, you have to have a theory to ex - to explain what, what they're doing. It's not an easy thing to explain. It's not an easy thing to explain. And ultimately, you're not going to pay billions of dollars. I mean, the Qatar investment specific. Qatar is the most egregious case, $20 billion or something in the American higher education system. You're buying something. You're purchasing something, you're doing especially these are non-democratic regimes. Qatar is a tiny state. Has enormous wealth. It has no demographic or military weight at all. Yet they are very influential. Look at how much we hear about Qatar. They're central to United States policy in the region. They host our CENTCOM headquarter. They are the main Arab interlocutor with Iran helped us reach this deal, helped President Trump get the hostages out from, from Hamas. You watch the World Cup games, you find Qatar airways pretty much in, in, in every game. How come a tiny state of 300,000 people managed to gain this level of influence, access to power, access to Muslim? This is exactly what they're buying. And actually people who don't think that they would do that are the ones who are being irrational. Why wouldn't you do that? If you have this endless stream of cash why wouldn't you try to convert that into a form of power that you lack otherwise? You don't have the demog - for example, patronizing Islamists buys Qatar. Let's think about it as a, as a, as a, an extension arms, right? They don't have enough people to send all over as diplomats. They really don't. It's a tiny population. They don't have the enough human capital to go represent, send them to represent Qatar and try to push Qatari influences in all the capitals of the world. But once gullible Islamists think of Qatar as the holy patron of, of Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood, they will do that. I mean, you're buying massive influence by doing this. And again, like a Palestine issue doesn't, doesn't require explanation why, why they do this. But they managed by the end of the day making this themselves very influential by virtue of these investments. Now, the upshot from this is that these investments are leaving now effects on your own, on your own societies on your own elite institutions and your own elite education. You see that specifically, for example, in Georgetown. I invite the audience to go to Georgetown University's website and go to their Arab studies department, which is a center, which is the largest in the country. Their Islamic studies, it's called ACMCU, Islamic Studies Center, which is also one of the largest in the world. And go to their websites and see what their websites are talking about. See the faculty. Find one dissenting voice from a clear academic consensus that what they are doing is about Gaza and about genocide and about Palestine and about Israel. So obviously this is, this is indeed happening. But again, I don't want to reduce this to ideological reasons, which is a lot of people do. Well, it's because of hate and ideology and they're Muslim and classic civilization. No, these people are, are extreme, extremely re - rational. And they are know what they are buying and they are buying interest and influence. I want to let's talk about why it persists. You know, President Trump is doing, recording this in June of 2026. Right. I'm somewhat agnostic about and uncertain about how his recent efforts with Iran and the Middle East are going to turn out or Gaza for, for that matter. It's I think it's complicated. I think it's too soon to come to a judgment, so I'm not going to come to a judgment on that. History will make its own judgment. But when you see it, a problem, and, and, and let's call the problem, and we haven't talked about Israel enough. We'll, we'll come. At the end, I want to talk about Israel. We'll do that soon. But when you see a problem, and the problem here in this case is that Israel, despite its two million Arab-Israeli citizens, is also entangled with Gaza and the West Bank in all kinds of ways. We've talked about a number of episodes on the program in the past. But, you know, we wish it were better. If you're an idealistic person, you wish it, it could lead to self-determination for the Palestinians, peace for Israel. There are many, many things that, that could be better about the region and, and would allow human beings to flourish. Now, hovering behind all that, of course, is there is ideology, there is religion. So I don't want to understate the challenges there, but, but what your perspective brings is an understanding that quote fixing this is not really feasible. You know, that we know there's a longtime quote on the program, no solutions, only trade-offs. Right. And, and that's not even what we're talking about here. So you write the following. You say "The system is irresolvable on three independent grounds. It's too distributed. No single nodes removal collapses it because every loop runs on its own independent logic. You know, it's kind of a redundancy argument. It's got all these extra parts because that way it'll always, if you take out one, there's still plenty left. There are too many actors extracting too much value." It's, I'm continuing to quote, "It's that resolution would the resolution would require every actor to simultaneously abandon extraction. And since the loops are independent, no single actors withdrawal collapse is a system. There's no single king to kill. It has no center, no origin, no base, no starting point. Every participant is extracting from it for their own reasons. And the suffering and victimhood of the captive population is the fungible commodity that makes extraction possible across otherwise incommensurable domains." And what you're saying there, I want to say one, read one more piece, but you know, kind of what you're saying there is that if you have a, an organization that's designed to fight cancer solving cancer puts them out of business and that is unattractive. You think that would be the goal, but you worry sometimes that that's not the goal because then the participants would, would pay a price. You close it in this section saying, "Every proposed solution is itself an extractive move within the system. The two-state solution is a position from which liberals extract moral prestige. The one-state proposal is a position from which the left extracts radical credibility." Side note, the one-state proposal, meaning Israel should allow Palestinians return to their 700,000 people that were refugees in 1948 who've now become how many, four million, six million, if we allowed them to come back to Israel, destroy the Jewish nature of the state. So that's very appealing to certain, certain groups. I'm continuing to quote now, "The rights-based view is a position from which the NGO sector extracts institutional revenue. The security-based framework is a position from which the policy establishment extracts professional standing. The discourse of solution is not an exit from the system. It's one of the system's loops." And so I just want to try to summarize that. You're arguing that pushing your agenda for how to fix this from whatever corner of this world you're in is just, it's just so much. It's, it's just window dressing. It's not a real solution. It can't actually be imposed. So all it is is a, a banner to wave around that to your, to your base and to your funders. Right. That you're continuing to uphold the right, the good, and the, and the beautiful. Yes, but it doesn't necessarily emerge. I want to also be charitable to people. I mean, that would be a really malivolent reading that everybody's coming. No, I think a lot of people come to this, which now became a huge. There's a huge professional class worldwide that is working on this. I mean, this is a massive, massive economic, economic extractive system as, as we said. Employment machine. Yeah. Employment Machine. Peace processes. NGOs. Think about all the EU aid. I think there. I read some. I remember when I was researching this, just the, the, the NGO per capita in the Palestinian territories, right? The, the aid per capita. It's just absolutely insane. The amount of Europeans who go work in Ramallah and, and, and, and so on. And not just them. You have UN mechanisms. You have political machines in, in various political systems working on this. You have you know, here in America, you have in the Jewish community. There are a lot of people employed this. I mean, arguably, I am making my living from this issue. So as you said, it's just that it became a, it has its own economic, economic interest. Now, it is entirely possible, and this is not possible. I think this is what happens. That when people come to this and trying to bring in a solution, they are ba- basically, they are genuine. The, because they don't, they don't see the system. They don't understand the problem. They come bring a solution. But ultimately, what it becomes, it becomes another, another loop. It joins another loop system because just it's so resistant to resolution. So ultimately you're just going to join the ranks of everyone who's extracting value, value from the system. So I, I don't want to, I don't be malivolent in this. Also - In other words, it's not, it's not, there's not some sinister cynicism at work. Right. It's just that people are naturally benefiting economically - Right. From the insolubility of the problem. Right. But, but there is cynicism on some, on, on, on. The cynicism. I have also a passage in the essay about this. Cynicism goes up as you move up the hierarchy, right? Like cynicism increases. As you move up leadership, for example, you go to political leaderships, including the Islamic Republic, I, I, I, I speculate. You'll find a lot of cynicism about all of this. But there is blindness in all over. Everybody's captive of the system. Everybody's, everybody's extracting. The reason that that I want to ensure that I'm like, yeah, I'm trying to produce a systematic analysis of this really enormous problem that we're having, but I don't want to be kind of a Marxist analysis in which it's organized, it's need. There's a structure, there's a base, there's some sort of a revolutionary subject that can destroy the system. There is one, there is an origination of it. No, there is actually a, there, there, there is none of, none of that. You can't actually point at any point, point and say that this will can undo the entire, entire system. Yeah. It's like the universe. Where's, where's the center? Yeah. You know, there isn't one. What do you mean there's no center? How can there be no center? But I, but, but I do think and now let me be a little less cynical and a little less, less about self-interest financial self-interest. There are a lot of good human beings who care deeply for peace in the Middle East, self-determination both for the Palestinian people and the persistence of a Jewish state that could live in peace alongside its neighbors. And I think you know, my community, the Jewish community, either in the United States or Israel, is desperately eager to find the, the switch. Where's that switch? Where, where's that, where's that little knob I can turn and, and, or what can I spend money on? Or what could I invest in? And which cause should I be, what horse should I be backing either politically or policy-wise to make things better? And there is a fatalism about what you wrote that says this works too well for too many people to get fixed. And again, you could, I, I think the cancer analogy is kind of, I don't know if it's a good analogy or not, but we don't believe that about cancer. Even though we understand that, that there are people who profit from fighting cancer and, and would lose money if it disappeared. We assume that most of them are decent human beings, if not all of them, who want to solve the problem. And we're making some kind of progress in different ways on this problem. We're not making much progress on the Middle East. I'd say a little bit. The Abraham Accords are encouraging. This, the, the military strength of Israel in this moment right today and the, the damage it's been able to do to its worst enemies is, is positive. Although many people would say it's not going to last long and it's all it means is that the next round's coming whenever it comes. So give me a little cause for optimism, if you can find it. Well, you're right. The, the analogy of cancer is not, is, is not perfect. Especially that cancer ultimately is a physiological. It's a, it's a, it's a medical Problem. A lot of things Wrong with it. Right. But This is, this is a massive political problem. There's a lot of power into this. I mean, people kill large number of people to maintain power. Think about think about the, the Arab states and, and, and how much they're ready to sacrifice with their own populations or even the Palestinians in order to just get a little bit. And, and just one concession from Washington. Egypt is, is willing to close the border and shut it and, and ensure no Gaza and passes no matter what conditions are, you know, just to make sure that they are very important to Washington, have a lot of leverage and, and, and so on and so on. Not just that, but that's, that's one point of it. I think, I think the, the concerns is still good in the idea that you said we still fight it. I mean, I'll still do what I'm. You know, that if I had, if completely fatalist then writing this essay would have been the, my very last act rationally if I'm engaging with this at all. And then I can just, you know - Yeah. You know, I'm done. Which many times I do feel, I do feel like it, but I'm, I'm still engaging in this because ultimately we're humans and we have a lot, both hubris and, and, and faith. And I think, I think the latter is much better than the former. So I do have faith that this is not, this is not going to continue forever. Nothing continues forever. And there's a lot of people who are suffering from this. Ultimately, as, as you said, and I've started this, I'm Egyptian. I understand the central role that this plays in Egyptian political dysfunction. I'm from the Arab Spring generation. I saw the Arab Spring failed and become disastrous. And it did start with the very, you know, idealistic hopes of a lot of young people. So ultimately, I'm trying to do my apart in order to contribute to understanding of a problem, hopefully we find a way, we find a way to fix. Now you're right, there's a lot of people in Jewish community who are very sincere about this and this is the reason that most of my work with the Jewish community, I believe I have a lot of critiques about. Let me just be clear, I have a lot of critiques about, about Jews and about Israel but by the end of the day first of all, I find them the most vulnerable position in this entire system because this system operates on their vilification and on obfuscating themselves itself. The primary mechanism, and this is maybe issue of the second I say in which the critiques that I received this whole thing operates through concealing itself by projecting it all in Israel. Israelis are doing this and the entire conversation, what really drives me nuts in all the conversations about Israel, Palestine, it's like no one else exists. It's the Israelis and the Palestinians, not as if the Turks are heavily involved, the Iranians are heavily involved, the Egyptians are heavily involved, so and so are heavily involved, everybody's playing a role and everybody's getting something out of it. No, no, no, it's the Israelis and the, which is not true at all. So the system, the, the primary mechanism of mystifying itself is making it about Zionism and about Israel and so on and so forth. So I find, I find Jews in, first of all, they are in, still in a good position. I mean, they are able to protect themselves. That's actually the, the system runs because Israel is so resilient. I mean, if, if Israel, you know, collapses tomorrow, this whole thing comes down. So, so they are protected, they have, they have some amount of power, but at the same times they are the most vulnerable and they are the ones who have the most interest in trying to understand it objectively because of just how threatening it is to them. So they have an incentive, I think, in that system, they have a higher incentive to hear a contrary complex opinion like this than anyone else in the system. And that's why I am where I am. Well, that's why I liked it probably. It's part of the reason. But I just want to be clear, and I don't, I don't know if listeners, I don't know if we've done a good job doing justice to the complexity of your essay. It's very long and it's very thoughtful and we've just done a kind of a thumbnail sketch of it here, but I, I want to come back and just before I come back to the, some of the criticism you received, I want to come back and say why I think it's comforting despite its seeming fatalism, right? And I, and I think the reason I like the essay isn't because oh, now I can wipe my hands and not worry about it anymore. It's because it helps me understand some of the things that happen in this part of the world and in the West and on college campuses in the West and in Western countries. It helps me see that it's not it's actually not as dark as it appears. It's actually a little bit brighter. It's not because it's not because there's a fundamental injustice, which is what all side, parts of this side feel, right? Everybody in this conversation feels whichever side you're on, that there's a terrible injustice being done. And, and sometimes it's a factual question, but a lot of times it's an emotional question. It's a feeling of you know, I, I have, I can defend the existence of the state of Israel. I can defend most, cheerfully most of what Israel's done since 1948, but I can also understand why people live in Gaza are really angry and hate Israel and hate Jews. And it doesn't, those two are not, those are not in conflict. I understand that. The, the part that's difficult to understand is the insistent focus on this one issue to the exclusion of so many things that are also horrible feels quote unfair. Right. Just like if you're on the other side, the relentless success of Israel and the failure to advance the Palestinian cause feels like grotesquely unfair. I, I totally get that. What this essay does is it says it's not really about fair or unfair. It's not about cruel, cruelty versus mercy or justice versus injustice. It's, we're all tangled up in a very complex system of incentives that kind of sustains itself. And that's, that's really what, what you, what you write about. Might not have been true 30 years ago, 50 years ago. There were options to - Right. Step out to, to restructure this perhaps. Israel made a lot of mistakes. Right. And others made mistakes on behalf of the Palestinians. And even the Palestinians made mistakes. And the thing that drives me crazy, you mentioned your thing that drives you crazy. What drives me crazy is the, there's never, the Palestinians have no, no agency ever. Right. And that's, I think, unfair to them, un- unfair to the human condition. But put that to the side, my point is that on the one hand, if you do look at the world as a morality play, you can get very upset and very angry and feel that, that injustice is triumphing, whichever side you're on in this debate. And what your essay says is that, you know, it's actually a lot more complicated than that. And, you know, you've, we've emphasized the incentives and the extraction, but it's, it, when you, when you tangle that up with the, weave that in with the religious feelings around the, the issue on both sides. Yeah. And you weave it in with the, with the philosophical and ideological feelings that people have, you can you can see that it's not, it's not so straightforward. And to use the watch word phrase of this show, the, the watch phrase it's complicated. And I, I find some comfort in that. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm glad. I want to, I want to say two things. First of all, about the morality play. The morality play is arguably the primary form of the very, the, the basic extra extraction. I mean, yes, I'm trying not to put a center in the system, but there is a basic form of extraction that makes, that creates value. I mean, ultimately, okay, if you're talking about extraction, there is value creation. This, this Arab autocrat or Palestinian movement or intellectual post-colonial intellectual in some university when they, they are, they are, they, they are operating within the system, mining it, they are extracting value. What is that form of value? And that form of value is ultimately sentiment. It's the moral sentiment and the moral enchantment of as many people as possible with this cause. That's really, really the most fundamental level of extraction that happens. And that's why I have a religious bit at the end that ultimately people people have to find Alternative transcendent sources of meaning. Because as long as this is their form of meaning, this is going to be a, a mining site for politics. The, the other thing, I want to, I want to talk about the Palestinians. Yeah, you're right. You know, the, the, the system denies at all that they have agency. I actually have a section that I really like in the essay about the Palestinians. So the Palestinians also are, of course, part of the system. Now, you can argue that they are in the least privileged position. But they're also, you know, you're going to do the best you can do. Everybody has agency. And they're also, you know, have their own extraction. So you have a Palestinian militia that extracts, again, consent or power domestically from, from people fight rival groups by claims that it is the most authentic representative of, of Palestine, but then will extract regional, the regional games for resources. I mean, we've seen this. This has been endemic for the Palestinian movement since it start really after 1967 when you had every Palestinian militia represented was a proxy of some regional power, Bathurst, Syria Iraq Egypt so on and so forth. And, and it's still the case today. I mean, Hamas is a proxy of Iran. And now the PA is increasingly becoming a proxy of Saudi Arabia, or that's what the Saudis actually are trying, are trying to do. So here you have an extraction also, two-way extraction, extraction from the bottom, extraction, extraction from the top to get as much as you can. If you're talking about the pal - the actual Palestinian layman, the problem is that the system is not just exploiting. Ultimately, that, that's the commodity is going to, that's the, it's the victimhood of, of that, of that Palestinian. And it doesn't exploit their suffering. It invents it. That is the system now in order to keep itself, it has to ensure the value keeps coming. So it needs to invent the, the, the, the Palestinian victim constantly and ensure that it's in adequate supply. And that's what Onrua had become. Obviously Unruh when it started did not really, it's function - It's the UN refugee agency. Refugee, Yes. That, that, that deals exclusively with the Palestinians. It's a unique institution. It, And - It's the Only one. And it does a unique thing, which is it actually compounds the number of refugees. It doesn't decrease refugees. It actually increases the number. It make it a, a hereditary, hereditary status. This is basically a perpetua- perpetuation. It's a structural feature of the system that is responsible for the perpetuation of this statelessness as an identity, because that's ultimately the main the main currency that allows vac - value extraction. Yeah. And I, but to push back as, which is I'm an Israeli, but - Right. On the other side, people would say, "Well, come on. They're not manufacturing victim. They don't have to. They, these people are victims. Israel has mistreats them, abuses them, sometimes kills them keeps them from getting food, keeps them from getting economic opportunity." There was an article this week in The New Yorker that after October 7th, Palestinians used to work in Israel, having trouble getting work, which is a mind-blowing article to write. At least the headline, I didn't read the article. I don't know what the rest of it was. But so one of the critiques you got of this essay was you focused on your home team, their players of the region, but you kind of whitewashed is too strong, but you didn't spend enough time blaming Israel and its incentives to keep this problem on a low flame, say, as a, you know, I like, I like this metaphor. Yeah. There's a Goldilocks aspect to it. You want people to, to be angry about antisemiti - excuse me, angry about Zionism, but not too angry. So how does that, how does that apply to Israel? Which is something you didn'twrite much. I think you gave a couple paragraphs. So say something about that, just and you write about it in the second essay, but say something about it. Well, I mean, I already kind of said the main reason. So yeah, that's the main critique. Okay. Like I, the, the essay actually, to, to my surprise, was one of the most popular things I ever wrote. And a lot of people read it, including pro-Palestinian activists and scholars and and a lot of people had to respond to it because I think, I think it is, it was indeed a leftist academic should have done what have, what, what, what, this is what they do as, as you know this kind of structure analysis. They should have, someone should have tried this a long time ago, but because they are part of the system, they, they refuse to. So I, I got a lot of pushback that, yeah, exactly what you said. Well, you, you, you completely ignored Israel. You're, you're not saying anything about what the Israelis do, how they are extracting value from this. First of all, of course, the Israelis are part of this. The Israelis are extracting, extracting value, various forms of values. From this American Jewish communities are, are part of, a part of this system. They're also extracting all kinds of value and it can map it different ways, the left, the right, the right in Israel with it, with its own extraction of ideological fantasies about ultimately annexation of the, all of the, and so on and so forth. But the reason that, again, the reason that I completely refuse to do this is because the persistent feature, the reason that no one is able to talk about this is because the, the critique of Israel and Zionism, which obviously comes enhanced with two centuries, a legacy of two centuries of, of antisemitic sentiments and propaganda and so on and so forth become, floods the field of vision that, that, that, with which we can actually see what's going on. So I didn't, I, I, I purposefully did not want to do this in, in order to exactly make it an issue. Because insisting on Israel the entire time has been the single most destructive element for any understanding or trying to, to solve this problem. The second, the second, and this mishes, I, I also, so people know, I also have my deep critiques and, and Jews. This actually mishes very well with, you know, ethno-narcissism that the lot of Jews have. They like to feel everything's about them. So they also play that game too. When they, when everything made about Jews and Israel, the res - like they respond that it's just they. So I, I wanted to get out of that entirely. Yeah. I'm, I'm trying not to interrupt. Keep going. There's some amusing examples of that. Keep going. The, the second thing is I, okay, if you think that this is a valuable analysis and you think it didn't apply to Israel, well, why, why don't you do it to yourself? Here is the methodology. Here's my analysis. The methods are transparent. You can stretch. And some people did that actually, and it was quite it, it was quite interesting. And some people took, took it and, and even put it in an LLM model. And then it asked that like, "Hey, extend His Analysis." Sure. Which Was, which, which was a - Which it did effortlessly. Which effortlessly, yes. But yeah, so basically, okay, I want, because ultimately what I want force people to have is not a new information, is not a new polemic, is not a new talking point that they can use in, in, in our, in, in constant debating. I want to give them a way of seeing things and a way of thinking about them. So if you're so passionate about Israel and what Israel is doing, well, go ahead. And you like my essay, go ahead and try to think about Israel from within that, that framework. So I'll just add you know, before we started recording this, I told you I think we should not talk about a piece of the essay that's actually quite fascinating. I just want to let listeners know it's, it's out there on post-Christian modernity, especially applied to Europe, which is fascinates me. I've written about how, you know, when you go to Europe you see this extraordinary cultural heritage of Christianity. Right. The, the cathedrals, the music, the art the influence of Christianity on European culture is just, it's, it's mind blowing. And yet there are almost no Christians left in Europe. So it, when you experience Christian achievements of the past 500 to a thousand years they're museum artifacts the same way the Jews are in Europe. The Jews are artifacts in Europe because of the Holocaust. There's, there aren't many, very many left. There's a few trying to, you know, persist in a few places in Europe. But in, in Christianity, they're, they're Christian in name, but not in practice in any sense. And it's just a totally, it's a weird thing. It's a similar phenomenon. Religion in Europe is a museum, not a way of life. And we'll s - you know, we'll see where that, where that leads, at least, at least in Christianity and Judaism. Obviously, there's, there's now Muslim populations in Europe that are, that are still quite devoted to their religion. You do actually, we didn't talk about it, and we'll close with this. You do actually have a little tiny element of hope at the end of your essay. And you have an, you imagine, you don't tell us how to get there from here, but you imagine a person who's been told that they're a victim to maybe have a different perspective. So why don't you talk about that in our, and we'll close. Well, so there's also, I have other parts of writing about this. And generally, it's, it's a larger thesis that I have about the modern world in general that basically in its in summary that the post- post-Christianity or post-Christian condition, having the post-Christian culture is not really a Western or a Christian civilizational fact. It's actually today is a universal condition of the modern world. Whether, whether you are in the Middle East, whether you are in Asia, whether you are in Europe it's all post-Christianity. Now, this is obviously very complex for people and a lot of people find, find it weird, but I, I write about it extensively. And this includes a lot of you know, a lot of Islamic movements, Muslim Islamic ideologies and, and so on and so forth. The, the post-Christian condition by virtue of being post abolished structures that meant the need for meaning. But it obviously cannot abolish the need. You do need meaning, especially as you go through life and there is suffering. You can, you can be a Pop Nietzsche as much as you want and go lift and just live happy, go lucky until you made the first, you know friction in life the first tragedy and you get to have many of those. And then that becomes a real problem because, because what does that, what does that mean exactly? And that's when you feel the wound that we are left with. And that requires explanation and, and requires a meaning and interpretation, redemption, a story of redemption ultimately. Now that demand is bottomless because the wound itself is bottomless. That is the appetite for the symbol, in this case, Palestine, is insatiable is because it's a demand for a lost totality. And I think a lot of people understand this somehow intuitively in, in a very simplified form. People say Palestine is the Jesus of the modern world. You read the pro-Palestine literature in the West now, and it definitely, it is a religious devotional literature in which, in which Palestine represents redemption for the planet, redemption for society. Just like climate change did just a few years ago. Very similar. Yeah. But Palestine now absorbed that, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It became, it became a queer, it's the future of queerness. It's, it's, it absorbed a lot of these kind of a black hole of modern Politics. Yeah. And the reason that, that, that has to do indeed with the Jewish element or the Jewish presence center to this. And that's a complex analysis in in in the issue. But because it, the, the Jew in the, all of these po - in all post-Christian ideological system was assigned or held in the position of the unresolved question about the wound itself and about meaning and about the lack of meaning. Now, when it comes to the very fundamental level of, let's say, where I came from, let's go back to where I came from, to Egypt. You are living in a, you know, stable but dysfunctional country. You really don't have economic prospects. You're worried about your children. It's really bad. Like if you're an Egyptian middle class or lower, which is the majority of the country you have no political power. You see a policeman in a uniform in the street and it's like, you know, basically a thug or a, or a, or a mafia. You just don't know what they are going to come demand from you and you have, you have no power to, to resist. It's just not really a good condition. And then you turn on the TV and you have this crisp image broadcasting from Doha with a a very fluent hijab-wearing, a highly educated woman with very eloquent Arabic, probably has a PhD from Georgetown University and probably even a green card because the American system loves these people. And then she tells you that this political dysfunction in a country like Egypt, the lack of democracy, the lack of rights, the economic the lack of economic prospects is is because of Israel. Israel did this to you. And there are vulgar forms of this that now happens online in the Western space. Like this is what the Jews took from you. Here you have a bargain. You have, you have the serpent making you a proposition that basically you're going to, you're going to self-justify. You're going to justify yourself completely and utterly and feel good about yourself as a victim instead of actually trying to face the re - your own reality. And the problem is that most people say yes to this proposition. And ultimately that what creates that false system of meaning that then becomes politically salient. That very power, that men who are fighting for power can pick up and try to form into the various weapons that they fight each other, each other with. And, and that's at bottom the tragedy and the problem, the problem of this. And, and I mean, I, I don't want to sound fatalistic but it sounds like a bigger who can deal. Like I remember one of the comments on the essay was like, okay, how, what am I going to do about hundreds of millions of people? Like this is not anything anyone could do. But, but it's, it's, which is true. But I believe ultimately this is, this is the issue. But do you imagine at the end of your essay that this person actually makes a different choice? Yes. And that's what a, you know, there is a religious end. Now I am, I am spoiling the essay to people. There is obviously a, a religious end to the essay in which basically that a, a, a, a real conversion is ultimately what is needed. An inner conversion, a chuva in, in, in, in, in the Hebrew sense, in, in which man turns from his own self-justification and just faces his own, his reality with sober eyes. With honestly before God. I do believe that the greatest tragedy of Islam in the 20th century, again, like I have a lot of, a lot of criticism on the clash of civilization thesis and its intellectuals because multiple things. They obfuscated how politics actually work, what is actually the geopolitical structure in the Middle East. They, they led people to think about fairytales and fantasies that completely mystified the real power politics and the awful the awfulness of a, a, a lot of these powerful men in the Middle East are, are, have been doing. But also because it, it completely has been has hidden one of the largest tragedies of the world of the 20th century, which is that the religious structure of Islam, of pre-modernism, completely collapsed under, under the pressure of a lot of these modern ideologies and was reconstituted. Muslims tried to reinvent. It's this kind of collapsed civilization that tried to restore itself by trying to assemble its symbolic fragments try to express it eh, eh, eh, themselves now in all of these new ideologies that they, they faced from Europe. And that's how we ended up with a weirdly seemingly uniform understanding of Islam that's extremely widespread amongst Muslim, that Islam is about liberating Palestine, is about politics, is about civilizational struggle against the West. None of this existed before the 20th century. And it's one of the greatest tragedy that this could happen. And this story, which I tell in many other essay, the reason I tell is not just to justify or defend or, or, or explain actually what I think had happened, but actually to warn that if something at this scale could happen, it could happen to you too. It does, if you're American, if you're a Jew, who you are, your very language, you could completely have this amnesia. Your language completely transforms. Who you are is completely lost by these ideologies that completely warp the human mind and you can become something monstrous and ugly that is comp - and, and you're completely unaware of it. Which is sadly beginning, I, we see some beginnings of this happening in the United States and a lot of American institutions. So even this very large story, I tell now as an American as a cautionary tale to America because we are on this path. Palestine now is as much as our cause as it is the Middle East. Our universities are just as bad as a lot of the universities in Cairo and Lebanon. Ah, that's a cheerful note to close on. My guest today has been I hope you're wrong, but you might not be. Me too. Thank You. I Have My Children. I hope I'm wrong. Yeah. My, my guest today has been Hussein, Abu Baker, Mansour, Hussein, thanks for being part of Econ Talk. Thank you, Russ.