 Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of DM 25's coordinating collective meeting. Today, as usual, we'll talk about Europe's burning issues, the top issues of the moment and what DM can do about them. And then as last week we discussed identity politics. This week we're going to tackle another issue that's important for our movement and important on the left, how we deal with the tension between being critical of Israel's policies and fighting anti-Semitism. And we have a couple of other updates afterwards on the agenda. But why don't we jump right into it? Europe's burning issues. Yanis. Thank you, Myron. On days like today, it's crucial that we put all the emphasis on the one event which is quite revealing of everything else. Ada Lee has a new prime minister designate. Somebody I know personally, unfortunately. Mr. Mario Draghi, a very smart man, not an unpleasant man. Let me share an anecdote with you and with everybody who's been watching. Last time I spoke to him, face to face, it was in a lift in Brussels. We were just exiting a pretty dramatic and horrible Eurogroup meeting, during which the president of the Eurogroup, a certain Dutchman called Dijsselbloem, the finance minister of Holland at the time, decided that I, as a representative of the Greek government, will be excluded for the meeting, because I was not succumbing to the will of the trika. So, just like that, they decided, Grexit, Grexit from the Eurogroup. And of course, you know what happened immediately after that. We had the referendum, then we had the surrender by Tsipras, the rest is history. But the reason I'm mentioning that is because, as we were leaving that awful meeting, which was, you know, a scourge, a blot on the history of the European Union, you know, a government is excluded because they are not doing as the lenders tell them to do. I wasn't going to say anything to Draghi, because Draghi was on the other side. I mean, he was the one who was instrumental in shutting down our banks in order to blackmail people, to accept the trikles' will. So I was going to be just, you know, just quiet. I was going to smile politely and say another word. And as I confronted him, face to face, we were actually, we got into the lift together, we said, not another word. And as we were getting out, he turns around to see me and he says, what is Dijsselbloem doing? And he said this with passion, with youth concern. And I said, well, injuring Europe, Mario, injuring Europe. And I walked away. Why am I saying this? Because it is important for activists like us to understand what we are facing. These are not bad people. They're not good people. They're banal people. They're cogs in the machine. There's a machine there which, you know, it's called the European Union. Not the union of people and parliaments and democracies. No, no, no. I'm talking about, you know, those who are actually running the show. People like Draghi when he was there, Selmaier, you know, Ursula, these people. And these people follow an algorithm. It's an algorithm. The purpose of the algorithm is to maximize the economic grants, the profits of a particular cartel of big business. And to, you know, absorb the shocks that this cartel is creating. And if they don't do it, they're out of the way. If they do it well, they get promoted. There are revolving doors and so on. And that is the banality of evil as Hannah and put it in action. Now, that's what Draghi is. He is one of the smartest, nicest, certainly one of the most capable, and one of the few people who understand economics in there. Right. But what is happening is that exactly as in the Euro crisis, we saw motivated idiocy, motivated idiocy was idiotic what they were doing, but it was motivated. People were making a lot of money out of it. There was a whole machinery in action. Okay, that that took them from, you know, from denial of the situation to massive intervention, authoritarian intervention in the end to a fiasco. Because the Euro crisis was a fiasco. We see the same thing now with the vaccination process, denial at first, every country for itself, then massive intervention brushes acting on behalf of everybody, then fiasco. Right. And on, you know, what we had yesterday was a combination of the fiasco the Euro crisis, which led to Italy's stagnation, which led to the ungovernability of Italy. Right. With the pandemic and the fiasco of the deal of the handling of the pandemic. But with the same solution. The solution is the Italian people again, just like back in 2012 with Mario Monte, another stooge of the system. Nice man, very nice man. I actually like Mario had dinner with him a number of times. The other Mario Monte, he was put in there to do one thing to ensure the immunity of the European Union from the virus of democracy. And to ensure that while this immunity strengthened from democracy, right, the line, the party line of Brussels is inflicted upon the Italian people in a manner which and mark my words for this. Mario Draghi is going to sign very social democratic from now on, once he becomes Prime Minister, he will keep blaming all the failures of the system on Brussels, he will do it. And while demanding of the Italians that they submit to it. So, you know, I think that that story is quite indicative of where Europe is today and why DM is essential. Thank you, Janice. Anyone else have comments, burning issues to put on the agenda Renata. I think you had something you wanted to add, no. I want to add later to it. Okay, any other any reaction to what you said or any other burning issues anyone wants to chime in with. Yeah, maybe can I add something. Well, completely agree on what Janice said, but if I can add something of course concerning Italy is that we always had to call someone like Draghi today, Mario Monti yesterday, one of our problem in Italy is that we don't have a real ruling class. We don't have politics. We always have to ask some help to technical people, because that's the real tragedy of this country. And I do believe that now, more than ever, there is a space for a new political proposal. Again, I really agree that DM 25 can do his part right now in Italy, because effectively what Draghi has showed us is that we always have to call someone to ask someone else to help us. Because politics in Italy is not able to face our emergencies. And that's, it's a fact, it's a point we should react in a way. Thanks. Thank you, Patricia. Yeah, I think that Italy has not ruling class, because it's not supposed to have politicians have no real power to do anything. But complying with what the financial oligarchy wants from us, so we only can have puppets or good functionaries of this situation. And claiming for a new ruling class is not so can lead to anything. We need to, we need DM because we need an alternative to this theater. And we need to put the scenario of this theater down and put back reality, reality in Italian politics. Thank you, Samana. Fortunately, we have a significant presence in Italy and thanks to good people like Simone and Patricia. I think this is a challenge that we're going to be taking head on any other comments on this or any other burning issues to put on the table. Nobody. Okay. In that case over to you, Renata, you had a comment. Yes, I mean it's a critical moment right now in Ecuador and of course from the progressive international David Adler and others are already on the ground and also lots of you know like people sympathetic to progressive movements and democracy and the 37 year old economist is leading the polls and it is amazing to see all the attacks from Western media, especially American media against him, you know, like, even if he's program resembles things that the press has praised like you know assistant cash assistance to the people to reactivate the economy right now, universal healthcare and so on. It has been like a portrait as Maduro 2.0, you know, as something that will turn Ecuador into Venezuela. All sort of misleading attacks on the one hand. On the other hand, all sorts of misinformation against him. And so that's very telling of the relationships of the West and Latin America. And I think that the contribution of the end and the contribution of the progressive international is to break that dynamic between Europe and Latin America. And if he, if he is elected president, I think it would be open. A lot of opportunities of dialogue and co creation of better public policy and also a better understanding of and reframing of the relationships between Latin American countries and European countries, especially because the, the Mercosur EU agreement is still not signed. And there's still a lot of space, you know, to, to, to bring our idea DMS idea of a green new deal into into this new dynamic I think I think that we are very worried because there have been attacks of law for attacks. And it is even possible physical attacks on my pledge to all our membership or DM membership will be to be with the eyes open. So this election is not stolen. This election is conducted late not peacefully. And if successful that we as progressive support in this small country, a progressive project. And if, if it goes to a second round, it's a great opportunity to start building to be prepared to start building this platform of dialogue. And I think that it is a great opportunity to start a new era and to bring our ideas beyond borders basically. Thank you, Renata and please follow progressive international and DM 25 for updates from David Adler our colleague is monitoring the election. Since we are expanding our focus now beyond Europe, perhaps we can also talk about the protests in Istanbul. Bural, would you like to comment on that? I'm sorry, I need to step in. Turkey is Europe and definitely Istanbul Europe. And I stand corrected. Bural. Okay, okay. And thank you Yanis for the guardian piece I forwarded it to many people. So they could see that we are also mentioned in the international since a couple of hours all TV channels are discussing positive university protests and it's after effects. But I must say since a couple of days I am quite sad and anxious about the developments. And I'm seeing how the students are being treated by the police, which is quite, I mean, it's evil, you know. I think Yanis has described the profile of the positions just a moment ago. And, you know, we have many examples of these profiles here. And, but I'm sorry to say that we are with all these developments we are still too far away from the end. We have to work as much as we can to bring DMS objectives goals to Turkey. What is going on now at the moment is there are still some students under custody. And I think some of them will be in the, I don't know, convicted probably. There is no other way as far as I can see because there must be some kind of governmental, you know, power to be visible. And some students will be victims as far as I can see. And what protests intensified first of February and all university students over 150 was 150 students were taken, arrested. And some of them are in house arrest. What it means, I don't know, but it's something like that. And Sunday there was a big demonstration in Kadıköy. Kadıköy is one of the most democratic districts in Istanbul and the same police action was seen there too. I mean, almost many students were arrested again. The lawyers are representing the students and they said, of course, they are defending that it is illegal to ban the protests according to the Constitution. But the Constitution is now a discussion issue by the president. He says that the Constitution is not enough. It should be changed, but this will be the third transformation of Constitution under his rule. It was at the beginning 2011 then in 2017 and now probably the Constitution will be a change so that a complete one man Constitution will be formed. So Boazici University protests and this Constitution issue is a kind of, I don't know, there is a political issue which the victims are the students, unfortunately. Thank you, Baral. Okay, Srećko has another topic, a declaration that we're signing from the Zapatistas in Mexico that we signed last week. Srećko. Yes, indeed. I think that's really good news, not just for our members in the end, but also for Europe that the first organized big official Mexican delegation from the Zapatistas is coming to Europe. I think so far is scheduled for July, August and September, but of course it depends on the pandemic. I'm really glad that we signed the declaration for life among hundreds of grassroots organizations from across the world, especially at this moment. You know, this declaration was published on the 1st of January this year, but in the meantime, there is a lot of violence going on against the Zapatistas. I think Simona can speak more about that. So I think at this time it's also a big, it's a support for the Zapatistas, maybe just a few words more. Why did we sign it and why are we looking forward to it and what our members and those who are watching us could do about it. Well, the Zapatista movement for decades already is not just, you know, discussing, debating. Well, they are very good at exchanging ideas and developing a poetry from the future, but they are really grounded in a concrete struggle in a very militarized zone in Mexico. At that time they have succeeded to reinvent in which way the local community functions, in which way mutual aid functions, in which way resistant functions and throughout the decades they have been inspiring groups around Europe. So I think I'm really happy that we signed it. I think we should in the following period, everyone can read the declaration also on our page on the M25 web page. And I think now we should open a debate among our members how we can support it. I hope very soon we will also get the coordinates and the calendar where exactly when the Zapatistas are coming. And ideally we would welcome them with broad and open arms because I think we can learn a lot from the Zapatistas and we have to learn a lot. And we have to build the bridges between Europe across the oceans and across the generations. Thanks, Francisco, Renata. Yes, just to add to that, I think that Europe has a lot to learn from the Zapatistas and that means it will be like the most important thing will be like that, how to build a resilient movement and sustain that movement through the most like, you know, the harshest difficulties. I think that we need to learn from that struggle and that would be like a great intergenerational also cross cultural exchange. So that would be like the framing from our movement I think of shared learning and shared lessons and common struggles. Thank you, Renata. Any other comments for this part of the agenda? Burning issues, not Europe's burning issues, not EU's burning issues, burning issues, global burning issues. Any other comments? Yes, I would add, talking of keeping our eyes open, Zapatistas communities are the victims of aggressions and violence and kind of nothing in torture. And what happens to them is hidden by what they call a circle media media media blackout that cancels news about paramilitary aggressions to these communities. So our solidarity and our learning from them is also spreading the news about these attacks, like the last one that is from the regional organization of coffee growers of Ocosingo in the community of Manchester Gandhi, but there are many others and we should keep our eyes open on what happens. Thank you. Okay. Well, unless there are any other comments I propose we move to the next part of our discussion which is a discussion on the topic of how do we deal with the tension between being critical of Israel's policies. And fighting anti Semitism, an important topic for the left there are several pieces on our site, arguing for different aspects of this discussion. If you have any comments you watching out there on this please put them in the chat and I'll be reading out comments in between people's interventions here's how it's going to work. Five minutes maximum per intervention, you do not have to use all of it, if but five minutes maximum and elected members first. So with that, we will kick this off starting with Ivana. And I would like to go first, because I feel very much out of my comfort zone on this subject, because it is yet another divisive topic and the slippery terrain and taboo within the left. But first and foremost, I would like this debate to result with some conclusions that we as DMS can all agree on, and we should not even have to debate. I think that we should begin with the least divisive position which is that the international laws must be respected, and human rights of all refugees and human beings must be respected. And in short, we as Europeans must follow our own guidelines, our own laws and conventions which say that weapons cannot be sold to countries in conflict, yet Germany, France, you name it, are selling weapons, not just to Israel, but to other countries in the Middle East as well. We as Europeans must understand the context of the relationships of the countries in the Middle East and our governments should stop selling the arms to both Israel and the Arab states, and the rest should be resolved internally. Furthermore, anti-Semitism, which is a term too lightly thrown at anyone with a critical thinking about Israel, should not be taken out of the context and used so easily. Criticism of Israel government is not anti-Semitism and it must not be mistaken for it. Instead, we might consider that most of Jews who are likely to experience anti-Semitism are not living in Israel. For example, being a Jew in Ukraine today is extremely dangerous. I don't think that it's a role of Europeans to solve the conflict, but we should stop contributing to it. We as Europeans are responsible for what is going on in the Middle East, therefore it's not the role of Europeans to solve the conflict, but they should stop contributing to it. And to finish whatever the history, whatever the claims, whatever the arguments, one party oppressing the other is indisputable, and that's an injustice that any progressive would have to admit. Thank you. Thank you, Ivana, Renata. Renata? Renata, you had a stack. You don't want to intervene? I think we've lost Renata, maybe technical problems. Anyone else? Who's next? Renata, you're back. Yeah, I'm back. And I didn't hear half of what my internet connection is unstable. I apologize. So I will turn off the video. I think Renata is having some technical problems with Zoom. Maybe we can move to someone else and bring in Renata afterwards. Who else would like to speak? Not much of a discussion this. Yanis? No, I was going to say I want to speak, but I saw Rosemary putting up her hand before me. Ah, forgive me. I didn't see. Please stack in the chat. I have a stack as well. Okay. Rosemary and then Yanis, go. Thanks. Um, I mean, for me, the core of this, and the obstacle that we have to overcome is the whole question of the nature of the Zionist state. And I think until there is a better understanding between all the parties that are involved in these disputes of that, the nature of the Zionist state, I don't see us being able to move forward. On either front in Mehran's opening premise. The problem from the beginning for this part of European history is the definition of anti-Semitism, which has been extremely problematic history. I don't know how much people have followed it. But for me, that begins with an OSCE process leading to the Berlin Declaration 2004, which then adopted what was then called the EU MC definition of a new anti-Semitism. It was protecting a new anti-Semitism. It meant a new definition of anti-Semitism. And this EU MC definition was the one drafted by Tina Porat from Tel Aviv University and Kenneth Stern from the American Jewish Committee. And it was designed precisely in order to be able to include criticism of Israel in accounts of what was anti-Semitic. And I think this through a series of examples, but it was very fastidious actually that original report about saying that those examples had to be understood in context that they were sometimes anti-Semitic, if you trace the context, and sometimes not anti-Semitic. That whole aspect of the first version of this new anti-Semitism definition was dropped by the time it arrived at the IHRA definition. Which Theresa May adopted with great zeal, particularly because it was being weaponized by the Jewish Board of Deputies and by the right wing in the Labour Party as an attack on Corbyn's leadership of Labour. That definition was just absolutely straightforwardly there in order to make sure that this campaign against the nature of some state wouldn't gather more political force. And you have to remember that the OSCE process I'm talking about was in 2003, 2004, so it's just after 9-11, but it was also within a decade of the dismantling of the apartheid state in South Africa. And if you see the roots of this working definition, you can see that their new concern with criticism of Israel in the context of the war on terror was a very big political act. And right at the beginning of that history, a lot of progressive Jewish people across Europe complained that this was dragging Middle East conflict into all the lives of Jewish people around the world. And I have to say that I think that that has now been borne out. The IHRA definition in Britain is now used to threaten university departments that they won't get funded unless they sign up for it. So this is an ongoing battle. And as I say, the whole thing is channeled into a disciplinarian project, which is about particularly anti-Semitic speech, hate speech acts, which is always impossible to define who is the authority in any speech act. But this has been channeled as a way I think of avoiding the political debate that we really need about the nature of the Zionist state. Thank you, Rosemary. Yanis. Thank you, I think I muted myself. Comrades, allow me to go a bit deeper or more macroscopically further away to gain a bigger perspective. Last week, you will recall we had a long discussion, the good one, of competing identities. And in that context, I argue that it is unacceptable to compare and to contrast the suffering of different oppressed communities. I said that no one can tell a trans person that the terror they feel in this society is worse or better than an Amazon warehouse workers exhaustion, alienation and poverty. The same principles must truly apply to different types of discrimination that involve gross violence. So the point I'm making for instance is that it is senseless, unnecessary and offensive to compare the suffering of a tootsie victim in the Rwanda genocide to that of an Armenian victim during the Armenian genocide and so on. For that matter, it is senseless and offensive to compare a black American suffering today, you know, to that of a persecuted wigger in China or indeed of a Jew. However, this is a personal view. I truly believe that there is one historic persecution that stands above all else. Not because its victims are more worthy, or that they have necessarily suffered more than others. I am not into making these comparisons. But because of its nature, and that is antisemitism in general, and the Holocaust in particular, what makes the Holocaust exceptional from where I'm standing, exceptional and unique is that the Nazis approached the Jews with a mindset of a stamp collector. Like a stamp collector that will never rest until he has, usually he but not always, every single stamp of every single, you know, collection ever printed by any post office. The same thing applied. You know, they came to the San Runiki here in Greece, they went to Bordeaux, they went to Italy, and they had a complete list of every Jewish person and they needed to collect them all and execute them. This has never happened before in human history. The Turkish authorities undoubtedly immediately after the First World War committed genocide against the Armenians. The French army did a similar criminal act in Algeria, the Houda in Rwanda. But in all those cases, there was no plan to kill every single living and breathing Armenian, Algerian, Tutsi, Greek, whatever, on the planet. And to do so calmly, efficiently at an industrial scale. Of course, the exterminated alongside with the Jews, the Roma, leftists, the disabled, Slavs and so on, people that they also consider winter mentioned. But let's be clear, the infrastructure for the Holocaust was created for the Jews. And then it was used for other people as well. So it is perfectly possible, I believe, you know, I think I was winning my right to say that yes, we do not compare suffering between different people. But yes, again, we can unequivocally say that the Holocaust was exceptional and unique in the whole history of human in humanity. And thus that antisemitism, which was the ideological driving force behind that Holocaust is a cut above all other forms of racism. That's my personal view. Now we can see that too in the fact that it's so easy to infect people with antisemitism, people who are not generally racist in other respects. I remember one as a young person watching Sergei Eisenstein's The Strike. Do you remember the movie? There is a scene where there's a fiery speech amongst trade unionists by a trade union leader against the bankers who are sacking people and communities dry. You know, I'm sure you have seen the scene. And Eisenstein, you know, being a good, lefty progressive, the director has one of the members of the audience a man jumping up and say, hey, the Jews. At which moment, the director ensures that the people around him, you know, sort of pull him down and carry him off. Okay. And one of the union members says the Jews set up our trade union. Indeed, the trade unions in Greece, and indeed the communist party was set up by Jews of the Seleniki, by the way. I'm setting that aside. Look, antisemitism is deeply ingrained across Europe, across the different political movements. And therefore, we need to consider it, not just as a form of racism, but as a very special kind of racism. I've used up my five minutes, but Michael just give me a bit more because I only made half of my point. Antisemitism is an exceptional form of racism. Not just because of the calculus of the suffering, but because the Jews are the only people to have been despised, both for being capitalists and bankers, and for being revolutionaries and workers and trade unionists. Okay, that's half my point. The other half is that, you know, commerce as a Greek Patriot, as a Patriot and an internationalist at the same time. I made it the role of my life, you know, I've spent all my life charging the Greek state with authoritarianism and institutionalized racism. I cannot that therefore accept the criticism that it is in any way antisemitic to criticize Israel. I mean, let's think about it. Criticism of Israel is and can never be a criticism of the Jews, when the remarkable people like, you know, my heroes, personal heroes, Hannah and Albert Einstein question the very idea of a Jewish state of Palestine, because they thought, and I think quite rightly so, in a sense, even though I don't have a definitive view on this, that to talk about the Jewish state in Palestine, you need to create apartheid. Because what do you do with the Arabs? Unless you simply create genocide and ethnic cleansing, it wasn't for all. Speaking of apartheid, apartheid is another unique crime against a people. It has been practiced nowhere except in South Africa and now in Israel. And I say this in the full knowledge of the charge that I am laying. apartheid is not simply ethnic cleansing, it's not simply getting rid of people in order to take their land. It is to use architecture, town planning, education policy, the army, the police, the universities, every vestige of power and state authority in order to create banter stands in which you put a population that you use as day laborers. Okay, you deny them all rights. You deny them anything except a quasi autonomy, the purpose of which is so that you don't have to deal with them. You don't need to vaccinate them. You don't need to provide health education and so on. This is a civil rights issue. And it's only in South Africa and now in Israel that this state of apartheid has been created by the state of Israel. Now we have a duty to reject the view that speaking of apartheid, of the apartheid that Israel is building in the land of Palestine is anti-Semitic. We have a duty to reject the view that speaking of apartheid in land of Palestine is anti-Semitic. I remember where I was in Israel some years ago and I visited the occupied territories as well as well. I was accompanied by Israeli comrades from Bethlehem, the wonderful organization that is keeping the flag flying of anti-racism and of solidarity amongst all the people in the region across the planet. Those Jewish comrades of mine of ours in Bethlehem were taking enormous risks with their lives to fight for everyone. They call the policies of Israel apartheid policies. So I have a duty to defend our Israeli comrades from those undermining them by claiming that speaking of apartheid as an Israeli state policy is somehow anti-Semitic. Personally, I think that the last three decades since the Oslo Accords have been a complete catastrophe. Our party and me personally, I tabled a question to the Prime Minister in the Greek Parliament asking the question, when is Greece going to recognize the state of Palestine like Sweden has? But comrades deep down in my heart, I tend to agree with Edward Said, the great scholar, that maybe it's too late for a two-state solution. I don't know, I don't have formed views on that, but maybe now we can only look forward to a unified, homogeneous state where Israelis and Palestinians, Arabs and Jews can live side by side. It seems to me that this civil rights line is the right one to take now, but I'm not sure. So to conclude, and so sorry for overrunning my run, but this is very, very close to my heart. Speaking of my heart, I'm carrying in my heart the start of David, because I know that Jews around the world are threatened by anti-Semitism. But at the same time, I adore myself with the Palestinian flag as a symbol of solidarity to people living in an apartheid state, built by reactionary Israelis, damaging my Jewish and other brothers and sisters, and stoking the fires of racism. The fires of racism, which ironically always ensure that the worst kind of racism is forged, which is of course anti-Semitism. Thank you. Thank you for that, Yanis. A comment from the chat from Jack Seven, talking about the Palestinian boycott by vestment and sanctions movement. BDS is nonviolent, and it is related to a very specific human right request. So why can't DM 25 just stick with it and support BDS. Over now to Eric. Thank you, Yanis. It's really a desirable thing to follow Yanis, especially in conversations like this. I subscribe to everything said so far by all the coordinating collective comrades. A small point that I'll try and add to this conversation from my side, and then I'd like to read out a statement from another comrade of ours. Specifically, thinking now about the M25 and what the M25 represents, if you like, we're a movement of Europeans and not only and we come together from all sorts of different cultural, social and political backgrounds and what brings us together is our ability to reach an agreement or at least to put us on a common foundation based on our evaluation of people or organizations or nations and evaluation specifically based on the actions and the effects that those actions have of those organizations and whether or not those actions are in keeping or in opposition to our principles and our politics and our ability to continue having conversations on that basis is fundamental to our ability to maintain DM and to us proving that such a thing as a transnational political movement can exist and can be successful and to be relevant. So of course there are biases, of course there are stereotypes and often they are based in awful, awful kinds of racism in the case of the Israel-Palestine conflict, antisemitism. But we cannot allow, of course they need to be confronted when we engage with these topics, but we cannot allow our concern for the complexity surrounding these topics to undermine our determination to condemn and fight against injustice and in humanity wherever we see it. In this case, in the criminal and inhumane treatment of Palestinians by the state, by the government of Israel and those who support it. So I think this is an important point that we need to be able to continue having those discussions on that basis, evaluating the actions that we see and the effects that those actions have. And that is a connecting link for a transnational political movement across various taboos, especially now in a continent like Europe, which is riddled with them. Now I'd like to read out a statement sent to us by David Adler, who is the former policy wizard of the M25 and the current coordinator of the secretariat of the Progressive International on this matter. David writes, Throughout my childhood as a Jewish kid in Los Angeles, I struggled mightily against the accusation of my self-hatred. The Jewish diaspora is overwhelmingly Zionist. Israel is our right, they say, our holy land, our heritage. As hard as I tried, I could never understand these ancestral claims. States do not have rights, I thought, people have rights. We are a people of compassion, I thought. How can we override that culture to demand the annihilation of Palestine and the persecution of Palestinians having fled the same ourselves? These questions were never welcome in my school or my synagogue or my summer camp. I was estranged as a self-hater, an anti-Zionist that didn't have the best interests of his community at heart. As I grew older, however, I found new communities of like-minded Jews, of humanists and socialists who shared my sense of indignation at the suffering that we, as Jews, had created, were creating in the land of Palestine. And so I entered this conversation with a sense of sadness and confusion. Here David is referring also to the continued discussion that we had on this topic within the M25. Never did I expect that here in our own the M25, a home to radical internationalism, founded on the premise that borders are scarce on the face of the planet. That I would again find accusations that my anti-Zionism actually amounted to a form of anti-Semitism. I will be honest with you, I consider this an affront to our values and I consider it an affront to me and my family having forged our resistance to the project of a Jewish state in the furnace of the Holocaust right here in Europe, which taught us so much about the role of nationalism in the destruction of our basic humanity. I will close then by turning the tables. The problem of anti-Semitism in our circles is not located in the opposition to the state of Israel. On the contrary, it is the conflation of Judaism and Zionism that is guilty of erasure, of denigrating our people, our politics and our struggle. And any decent conversation inside this movement must listen to the Jews it considers its members and reflect on what has made them feel alienated from the very politics we espouse on the European stage. That is it from David and that's it for me. Thank you Eric. David referring to some of the debates we've had inside our movement on this topic. Another comment from the YouTube chat criticism of Saudi Arabia is not Islamophobic so criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic. Let me give it to you Simone. So, I am worried of using the term Holocaust and calling the Nazi extermination. I think that concerns Jews, especially. I prefer very much the word extermination, Nazi extermination, because what happens, what happened in Lagos was exactly about, was not about the Jews or the homosexuals or the Roma people. It was exactly about ripping a part of humanity out of the humanity itself, because of one definition or another. It is the claim that people can be denied of their humanity under whatever level, what makes the Nazi extermination special and above all other violences of history. And it is this very denial what we have to fight everywhere and in any case, the right of a person to be safe, to have a shelter, to be not under the menace of violence should not be linked to any identity or to belonging of any group, ethnical or religious or whatever. In identity can go under any level. I like very much a tale from Dr. Seuss, I don't know, about the niches with star, with star bellies or without star bellies. He talks exactly about this, the fact that it doesn't matter with what is the label you take to rip a part of humanity out of the humanity in general. The problem is the label is is claiming rights or denial or right of rights under any level. So, when, when it is said that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitism. You, when you criticize Israel, you are denying the Jews the right to have a state based on their ethnicity when it is not safe, as Ivana said before, to be a Jew in Ukraine, for example. The problem is you are, you should not need a state under the label of Jew to be safe, or this state is doomed to become an apartheid. We need, in Italy we had a long debate and heated debate about youth sanguiness and youth solace. Your right to be a citizen is about the place where you are born or the place where your parents were coming or who was your mother. If you take youth solace and the state, the political organization is about those who share a place and must set rules for this place. You have a human place, a place for people. If the state is the group of those who belong to an ethnicity, a nation, who are Italian by birth or, or Jew by birth, you have a racist state. And Italy is a racist state in, in as much you are Italian if your mother and father were. Thank you, Samuna. Renata. Let's try it again, hopefully. Let's try to wrap it up and wrap it up with a positive note, what I was trying to say when my connection got disrupted is that we have members in Israel. I think that positive the parting point, and not the parting point but something that we need to allocate more time and resources in is building a national collective over there. I think that it's, it, I have a lot, lots of hope. I know, I know how is to try to build a political movement and to struggle in a racist and divided country because I come from Guatemala and we share many of the struggles and complexities that Israel shares with less resources of course and less international visibility but from that perspective I think that the formalities and understanding the local struggles and the right now from the progressive forces over over there in Israel is what we will give us better access better understanding and better bridges of solidarity to to build a progressive movement and so I cannot wait. From Israeli friends from all the ethnic groups and composing the state of Israel and listen to us and willing to form the national collective and that so after the summer maybe we will have a solid national collective in Israel and we can start working and sharing our agenda learning from them and and and and building together understanding better and combining you know the political changes that will lead to better policies over there with a better understanding less polarization on the side of the word. So that's that's all. Thank you Renata for that constructive note. Unless anyone else has any other comments to make I think we've we've one. Yep. Go for it. You can imagine how the Jewish community in Turkey have suffered since so many years. In. They left Turkey. There are only a few thousand Jewish people now living in Turkey, but in the past, it was over. So during the 20th century, they left Turkey and went to Israel. So there is a district. Where the Jewish people from Turkey have emigrated and during nineties I was in Israel many times I was invited for exhibitions and for cultural affairs. And I made a show in Batya for the Jewish Turkish Jewish origin people. I think and I can understand all how they suffered and how they still suffer because what is happening now in Turkey is another kind of apartheid. Yanis is has been describing. I talked about racism in the last meeting our meeting. And I think the reason are not only race, but also religion. So we have to concentrate on these two issues and enlighten the people what is a religion what is race because there are so many people who are stuck to these. These dogmatic and these very fascist ideas about these two issues. And I have a daughter in law who is Jewish and she's now with my son they are living in New York. Thank you, Baral. Yanis, you had a comment. Just very quickly because it's important from a dim perspective to wrap it up again holistically. There is no country that I know of where anti-Semitism has not produced incredible suffering amongst Jews. Not a single country. And we all carry this guilt. Non-Jews. We carry this guilt. The fact that I won't give you examples. But let's be clear comrades, if we continue to remain silent, why the Palestinians are being subjected to apartheid, then we are going to be carrying that guilt as well. And we're not, we're not, I'm not Catholic. I'm not in, I don't enjoy guilt. I have a duty and like every DM has a duty, including Catholic members, we have a duty to confront all kinds of suffering and oppressions. This is why I second Renata's point that let's, you know, we need to build DM up along the villages and the towns and the cities of the land of Palestine, because it is Israel proper as it said called or the West Bank or Gaza, more broadly even, and have made no mistake. The DMDCs and the DMNC is going to be a place of solidarity, like Bethlehem is in Israel. And I have no doubt that as a movement we're going to oppose the government of Israel. We will oppose the Palestinian Authority. We will oppose Hamas because this is what we do. We go against all illegitimate forms of state power. Thank you, Janice. And I think that will conclude this part of our agenda today. Thank you very much for you guys out there listening and for feeding us with your comments. The conversation will now continue for us when we talk about boring internal stuff and the topic that we just discussed, if you want to be part of that discussion. Join DN 25 get involved in our forum, submit pieces for our site, because we're only just touching on it today and there's a lot more to unpack with.