 So let's talk about Zionism. So let me start by saying Zionism is a package deal. Now what is a package deal? A package deal is when you have a concept and in the file folder under this concept, in what goes into the concept are legitimate things, valid things, basically good things, and invalid things, bad things, illegitimate things. And there was no question that Zionism as a concept is a mixed bag. It has good things, which we will talk about. But it certainly has in there, in this concept, in the way it is used, and by the people who use it, some pretty bad things. And there's no question that it's hard or maybe impossible to really disentangle this, particularly given that the Zionists don't seem inclined to want to do that. So let's talk about some of the bad things that are in Zionism. Well, in the concept of Zionism is a certain collectivism. There's something about Jews and about, you know, the Jewish identity. And that identity has some real meaning, influence, significance. And that, you know, being, you know, and there's no definition of Jew, of course. Is it a religion? Is it a nation? Is it a tribe? Is it a ethnicity? And of course, ethnicity is, as I mentioned, called it, is a package deal as well. It's an anti-concept. It doesn't really represent, it doesn't capture anything. It's a culture when we talk about Judaism. So there's very difficult to define what it means to say one is Jewish, right? And I will, when we talk about the positives, I will give you my view on this. So Zionism is a movement of Jews, for Jews, nobody else. And it is a movement that basically says it is a movement, an ideology, if you will. That basically says the Jews, and this is again in various iterations of the movement, the movement basically says, the Jews must go back to their, you know, the land that they occupied 2000 years ago. So they were kicked out of this land by the Romans in, I don't know, 70 AD or some years after 70 AD, after there was a revolt against the Roman Empire. And that is their home. That's where they should go back to. And they have a right to that land, a collectivist, collective right to that land, because they were there 2000 years ago. They were there first. And since then, by the way, since the Roman Empire ruled over Palestine, they called it Palestine at the time, there has been no nation state in that territory. It was the, it was the Romans, then it was the Byzantines, then it was a variety of different Arab Empires, the Abbasids, the Amniads, the Mamluks, I think. And then it was the Ottomans, and then it was the British. But it never, there was never a state there, never a country belonging to a people. And therefore, we are the last people to have a state there. And therefore, it's ours. That is collectivist, that is ancient history, that is irrelevant to anything. But that is part of a big part of Zionism. So this is a Jewish movement to bring Jews together in a land, in the land of their ancestors to form a state. And if that was it, then Zionism would be a bad thing, just in and of itself, if that was all of it. And I can understand why people think of Zionism as an ethnocentric, nationalistic, collectivistic, and for some people, certainly religion-based ideology. And that is, that is, for a lot of, unfortunately, Zionists, that's exactly what it is. But Zionism did not start out like that. And I don't think that the the main push of Zionism was really that. There were always elements of collectivism. There were some elements of religion. And there was always elements of this ancient land that belongs to us. But that is not true for the founder of the movement, Herzl. Herzl is the man who founded the Zionist movement in the final decade of the 19th century. And Herzl was a completely secularized and, from his perspective, assimilated Jew who lived in Austria. He thought of himself as an Austrian, as a European, as a man even of the Enlightenment. He was a liberal, liberal in the sense back then. And he was, you know, I don't think he considered himself much of a Jew at all until he was assigned to France where he was assigned to cover the Dreyfus trial. And Dreyfus was a senior officer in the French Army, a well-respected officer in the French Army, you know, admired, respected, had done a good job. And then Dreyfus was accused of spying for the Germans. I think the trial started in the 1890s. The whole affair only ended in, I think, 1902, 1903 because there was a retrial and then there was a pardon by the President of France. It was a complicated episode. But in the trial it became evident, it became, you know, obvious that the reason Dreyfus was being persecuted was not because he was guilty, but the reason he was being persecuted and the reason prosecuted and the reason he was being persecuted and the reason he was found guilty was because he was Jewish. You know how Tchaikovsky said about Ben Shapiro the other day, he's a Jew first and an American second. He's got split alliances. Well, that was accusation made against Dreyfus. We can't trust him as a Frenchman because he's a Jew and his alliance, first of all, is to the Jews and he would sell us out to the Germans in this case even if, even if it served the Jewish interests. So, so, so this in, so this the Dreyfus trial and he came to the conclusion and a pretty stunning conclusion at the end of the 19th century that if France, the most liberal of countries in a sense or maybe second to England, a country that had, you know, egalitarianism and that had dismissed religion, that tried to strive towards viewing people and judging people as individuals if in France anti-semitism was alive and well, then anti-semitism was somehow endemic to Europe of the time and probably of the future. Now, just to be clear at the same time as this was happening in Russia, in Ukraine, in Lithuania, in Poland, regular pogroms against the Jews, where Jews were killed in, you know, on large scale, raped, butchered, looted, were happening. Jews were fleeing the mass migration of Jews to places like the United States during this period. A direct consequence of the pogroms going on in Eastern Europe during this period. So, but that's the attitude, well, that's Eastern Europe. They're a little barbarian. They're a little barbaric. That doesn't count, right? Even then, Russia was not a great place. But it's France. It's Western Europe. It's the peak of civilization. And anti-semitism is here as well. And it was vile. I mean, there's literally a publication in Paris, a newspaper called The Anti-Semite, that published vile stories about the Jews, the Rothschilds, and published, I think, translations of The Elders of Zion, this booklet about the conspiracy of the Jews to take over the world that was created by the Russians in Odessa, actually, today, Ukraine, to justify their anti-semitism and their hatred of the Jews. So, it came to the conclusion, look, the Jews need to leave Europe. The Jews need to get out of here. Anti-semitism is everywhere. It's only going to get worse according to his analysis. I don't think he really foresaw, the Holocaust, but he foresaw something very similar. And he realized that Europe was heading in that direction. And for that, it really is amazing that he managed to see that. And what he said was, in order for Jews to defend themselves, they must come together as a nation, not a religion. He was completely secular, not a religion, not some collectivistic attitude, but a nation in order to defend themselves, in order to stand up against the world. And he foresaw such a nation as being a nation that was liberal, again, in the classic liberal sense, a free nation, a nation that wherever it was geographically, the native people would be part of this nation. It wouldn't be just Jews. It wouldn't be a nation that discriminated. It would be a free, liberal, not perfect, he believed in public education and government education and government investments and all kinds of mixed economy stuff. But as good as it got in kind of the late 19th century, early 20th century in terms of perspective on politics. Originally, he was really serious about an idea of doing this in South America. He thought South America was this vast expanse where there was a lot of open space. And he thought it was possible to negotiate a deal with Argentina or Brazil or somewhere around there and establish a Jewish state in South America. And a lot of his writings describe this Jewish state that's going to be in South America. And he talked to kind of the wealthy Jews about the potential of, in a sense, bribing a country. You know how in Honduras now they're trying to set up a free, independent city state within Honduras that will have its own laws and all of that. Well, there's a sense in which also wanted to do this in South America for Jews. On the principle of, Jews can come there, but it's going to be a kind of a European country. It's going to be a civilized, free, liberal country. When South America turned out not to work, and he appealed to the British and there was discussions with the British, the British at some point offered Uganda. And Herzl got all excited about Uganda and it actually came to a vote among the Zionists about whether to go to Uganda or not. And it was voted down. But Herzl voted for it because he didn't care about where it was. It was the principle was vote. It wasn't about the land. It wasn't about the geography. It wasn't about the holy land. But for some in the Zionist movement, it was. This is why it's a mixed bag of good people and bad people. And a movement that doesn't have a clear unequivocal agenda. Finally, it was obvious that the most successful attempt would probably be to go to Palestine. By that point, there were ready significant numbers of Eastern European Jews moving to Palestine and trying to create a, to build, start building agricultural institutions and other kind of institutions in Palestine. So Herzl accepted that. He spent a lot of time trying to lobby the Ottoman Empire to allow for expanded Jewish immigration and ultimately to provide some kind of autonomy or sovereignty to a Jewish state in Palestine. That failed. And he died very young. So he never actually saw the development of the state of his dream. He never saw it come to reality to reality at all. Indeed, 50 years after he wrote something like, you know, 50 years from now, you know, I will not see this, you know, the Zionist dream become a reality. But I think that 50 years from now, it will be a reality. And exactly 50 years later, after he wrote that pretty much, yes, it was 1948, Israel came into existence. So he was a bit of a prophet, right? He was very observant and had a keen sense of the future of the future. So that is a positive strand within Zionism. It's secular. It's liberal in the positive sense of liberal, generally pro freedom, generally pro individual rights, not consistently nothing like what we would want. But but in that kind of direction, politically free, treating everybody equal before the law, generally respecting property rights, and free speech and other, of course, individual rights. That is the positive aspect of Zionism. And ultimately, that is what got manifested in the creation of the state of Israel. It's that Zionism that is Israel today. I mean, when you remember when the demonstrations were happening against the legal reform in Israel, I did a show on that. And I said, you know, one of the question is, is Israel a Jewish state? Or is Israel a state for Jews? And I think this interpretation of Zionism is a state for Jews. And there is a religious, nationalistic, messianic even interpretation of Zionism that is for a Jewish state. And that is definitely attention within Israel. And the more Israel becomes a Jewish state in the sense of a religious state and nationalistic state, a state where people don't have equal rights, the state that might discriminate against some because of their religion, or because of their national origin or whatever. To that extent, it is it becomes a legitimate. But as long as it stays a fundamentally free state with equality before the law, that it's only its primary way in which it is Jewish is that is committed to defending Jews around the world. And the primary means by which it defends Jews around the world is that allows them to emigrate there. Then to that extent, it is a legitimate project and a praiseworthy state, a praiseworthy state, a moral state, because it is fundamentally protective of the rights of the individual.