On the Nose

On December 14th, two gunmen opened fire on a celebration marking the first night of Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, killing 15 and injuring more than 40. The gunmen, a father and son, have since been linked to the Islamic State. Immediately, as observers near and far were just beginning to process and mourn, bad actors rushed in to claim the narrative. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered a rebuke of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, linking the antisemitic attack to Albanese’s call for a Palestinian state. Australian antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal similarly linked the attack to a peaceful August 3rd Palestine solidarity march over Harbour Bridge attended by 300,000. She used the opportunity to promote her controversial 20-point plan to combat antisemitism, which would necessitate the broad adoption of the flawed IHRA definition of antisemitism, mandate Trumpian funding cuts to universities, and crown herself arbiter of acceptable speech related to Israel/Palestine in the media. American politicians quickly weighed in to express solidarity with the state of Israel and link the violence to the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Some prominent American Jewish figures like New York Times columnist Bret Stephens and former US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt claimed—without evidence and before anything was known about the shooters—that the attack was downstream from use of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” a dig at New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani who chose not to condemn the phrase.On this episode of On the Nose, Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel and senior editor Mari Cohen spoke with Sarah Schwartz, the Melbourne-based executive officer of the new progressive, independent Jewish organization the Jewish Council of Australia. They parsed the various responses, from Australia to the US to Israel; explored the folly of conflating the ideology of the Islamic State with Palestinian national or solidarity politics; and reflected on the role and responsibility of the Jewish left amid antisemitic violence.Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”Articles Mentioned and Further Reading“Jews, antisemitism and power in Australia,” Max Kaiser, Meanjin“Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like,” Bret Stephens, The New York TimesBenjamin Netanyahu’s statement on Bondi BeachTweets from Rep. Claudia Tenney, Rep. Cory Mills, and Deborah Lipstadt“'Not a blame game': Antisemitism envoy responds to Bondi attack, following Netanyahu snipe,” Ewa Staszewska, Anna Henderson, SBS News“Labor is fast-tracking its response to the antisemitism envoy’s report after the Bondi attack. What are the recommendations?,” Sarah Basford Canales, The Guardian“I was at Bondi Beach last week. Our concerns were ignored,” Marina Rosenberg, eJewishPhilanthropy“A Canadian Antisemitism Statistic Went Viral—But It Has No Source,” Blake Lambert, Jewish CurrentsIsraeli figures talking about antisemitism as an opportunity to trigger immigration to Israel“Sydney Gunmen Were Motivated by ISIS, Australia’s Leader Says,” The New York Times“Understanding ISIS’s Palestine Propaganda,” Samar Batrawi, Al-Shabaka“Islamic State's Response to October 7,” Ilana Winter, Washington Institute for Near East Policy“The importance of understanding the differences between Hamas, IS and al-Qaeda,” Dino Krause, Danish Institute for International Studies“The Centrality of Anti-Semitism in the Islamic State’s Ideology and Its Connection to Anti-Shiism,” Daniel Rickenbacher“Criminal complaint reveals new details in alleged ISIS-inspired plot to attack Jewish people in NYC,” Aaron Katersky, ABC NewsTweet by Deputy Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the UN Majed Bamya“Australian state proposes ban on protests at places of worship to fight rising antisemitism,” Rod McGuirk, AP“The Tangled Knot of Anti-Zionist Violence,” Daniel May, Jewish Currents, and the accompanying letters“Chabad’s Extremist Turn,” On the Nose, Jewish CurrentsRabbi Eli Schlanger’s Zionist activismTranscript forthcoming. 

This year saw the release of two memoirs concerned with the Palestinian diasporic experience. Tareq Baconi’s Fire in Every Direction is a story of queer adolescent unrequited love, braided together with a family history of displacement from Haifa to Beirut to Amman. Sarah Aziza’s The Hollow Half is a story of surviving anorexia and the ways that the body holds the intergenerational grief of the ongoing Nakba. In this episode of On the Nose, Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel speaks with Baconi and Aziza about what it means to claim Palestinianness as a political identity, not just a familial one, and the radical necessity of turning silence—around queerness, Gaza, the Nakba—into speech.Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”Books Mentioned and Further ReadingThe Hollow Half by Sarah AzizaFire in Every Direction by Tareq BaconiHamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance by Tareq Baconi“Al-Atlal, Now: On Language and Silence in Gaza’s Wake,” Sarah Aziza, Literary Hub“The Work of the Witness,” Sarah Aziza, Jewish Currents“The Trap of Palestinian Participation,” Tareq Baconi, Jewish CurrentsBlack Atlantic by Paul Gilroy“Selling the Holocaust,” Arielle Angel, Menachem Kaiser, and Maia Ipp, Jewish CurrentsTranscript forthcoming. 

In spring 2023, journalist and filmmaker Antony Loewenstein published The Palestine Laboratory, a book tracing the way that Israeli military technology and weaponry, battle-tested on Palestinians, is exported around the world. Lowenstein argues that as Israel’s surveillance and combat technologies are sold far and wide, we can expect to see the forms of violence carried out in Gaza, for example, appear elsewhere in the world. Last month, Jewish Currents published an article by Rhys Machold called “The Myth of Israeli Innovation,” which takes a critical look at what Machold has termed “the laboratory thesis” and examines how it obscures Israel’s dependence on powerful allies, while doing PR for the overhyped Israeli tech sector. On this episode of On the Nose, Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel hosts Loewenstein and Machold for a comradely debate about the “laboratory thesis” and whether it serves a narrative of Zionist exceptionalism. The guests discuss how advanced Israeli weapons really are; how “Israeli” they are, given the role of Western governments and corporations in their development; and how much of Israel’s “innovation” should be considered technological as opposed to political. They also explore whether or not Israel is on the verge of collapse, and how to characterize the balance of power between Israel and the US.Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”Articles and Media Mentioned and Further ReadingThe Palestine Laboratory by Antony LoewensteinThe Palestine Laboratory, documentary series by Antony Loewenstein on Al Jazeera“The Myth of Israeli Innovation,” Rhys Machold, Jewish Currents“Reconsidering the laboratory thesis: Palestine/Israel and the geopolitics of representation,” Rhys Machold, Political Geography“How Palantir, Google & Amazon armed Israel's genocide in Gaza,” interview with Antony Loewenstein on The Big Picture, Middle East Eye “‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza,” Yuval Abraham, +972 Magazine“Profiting from Terror in Cold War Latin America: Bishara Bahbah’s Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection,” Alexander Aviña, Liberated Texts“From Domination to Extermination,” Shir Hever, Phenomenal World“Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus,” Frontline, PBS“Zionism is an anachronism,” Makdisi Street“The rot is very, very deep,” Makdisi StreetIsrael on the Brink by Ilan Pappé“How Israel’s War Economy Defied Economic Predictions,” Assaf Bondy and Adam Raz, JacobinThe Israeli Connection: Who Arms Israel and Why by Benjamin Beit-HallahmiDrop Site reporting on “Epstein and Israel” by Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussein“On Jeffrey Epstein,” On the Nose“Survey: Young, diverse generation of evangelicals shows growing ambivalence toward Israel,” Jack Jenkins, Religion News ServiceTranscript forthcoming. 

“Real life conspiracies pose a certain challenge for political analysis,” wrote Jewish Currents contributors Noah Kulwin and Ari Brostoff in their 2019 piece on Jeffrey Epstein, the child sex trafficker, financier, and international rainmaker. As recently reported in a series of articles at Drop Site News, Epstein had close ties to the Israeli intelligence community, and frequently brokered meetings for former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, including meetings that resulted in the establishment of security ties with Mongolia and the sale of mass surveillance infrastructure to Cote d’Ivoire’s authoritarian government. What do these revelations tell us about the flows of power and money across the billionaire class? And what do we do with the extent to which Epstein’s story reads like an antisemitic conspiracy come to life? To explore these questions, Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel spoke with Kulwin, a co-host of Blowback, a podcast about US empire and interventionism, and Ryan Grim, co-founder of Drop Site News and the co-author of multiple recent reports about Epstein.Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”Articles and Media Mentioned and Further ReadingDrop Site reporting on “Epstein and Israel” by Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussein“The Right Kind of Continuity,” Ari Brostoff and Noah Kulwin, Jewish Currents“The worst thing about Davos? The Masters of the Universe think they are do-gooders,” Hamilton Nolan, The GuardianSpyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence by James BamfordThe Power Elite by C. Wright MillsDoppleganger by Naomi KleinThe art of Marc Lombardi“Jeffrey Epstein Claimed to Have Meddled in Israel’s Elections,” Branko Marcetic, Jacobin“JPMorgan Alerted U.S. to Epstein Transfers Involving Wall St. Figures,” Matthew Goldstein, David Enrich, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and Steve Eder, The New York Times“The Book of Epstein,” Chapo Trap HouseSupermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America's Hidden Power Brokers by Gus Russo Transcript forthcoming.

On November 11th, Israeli soldiers who had admitted to raping a Palestinian detainee at the now infamous detention camp Sde Teiman were met with applause and a standing ovation as they entered an Israeli courtroom. The scene ricocheted around the world, the latest portrait of the depravity that has gripped Israeli society. Accounts of the torture taking place at Sde Teiman were among the first things to emerge from testimonies collected from soldiers by the Israeli group Breaking the Silence in the aftermath of October 7th. The 21-year-old group has long encouraged soldiers to speak candidly about what they have perpetrated during their service; for this, they have been vilified and discredited within Israeli society, which largely prefers to celebrate the soldiers as heroes—a narrative that can only be maintained through their silence.On this episode of On the Nose, Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel speaks with Breaking the Silence executive director Nadav Weiman about the testimonies they have collected over the last two years of the Israeli army’s annihilatory campaign in Gaza. Breaking the Silence’s testimonies have uncovered clear evidence that contrary to official reports, many of the war crimes we have seen are not the result of rogue soldiers, but protocols that come straight from command. In this episode, Weiman details the dehumanizingly named “mosquito protocol,” in which soldiers used Palestinians as human shields in Gaza—a chilling echo of the Israeli government’s oft-repeated accusation about Hamas. Weiman paints a picture of the mindset of the average Israeli soldier, ensconced in a “bubble” of support. He also fields questions about what accountability might look like for those who have perpetrated the genocide in Gaza—not just for top brass but for foot soldiers—and what the deradicalization of Israeli society could entail.Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”Articles and Media Mentioned and Further Reading“Abuse in Israeli jails caused deaths of more than 90 Palestinians,” Simon Speakman Cordall, Al Jazeera“Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers: Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center,” CNN“Mosquito Protocol: Ex-Israeli Soldier on Army’s Systematic Use of Palestinians as Human Shields,” Democracy Now!“Some Israeli soldiers traveling abroad face action for alleged war crimes in Gaza,” Molly Quell, PBSTranscript forthcoming.