Editor’s note: This interview was conducted on 22 September.

PP: The US was the only vote against the resolution for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire, and the Commonwealth states just recognised what they call a Palestinian state. What does it mean? What should we make of it? What do you think?

EW: I find it very curious that so many countries are intent on wanting for the Palestinians what they’ve never wanted for themselves, which is a state—if it has to live next to a Jewish state.

To the credit of the Palestinians, and long before they were known as Palestinians—just as the Palestine Arabs—they made it very clear that they are not interested in another Arab state on the lands of the defunct Ottoman Empire if that state has to live next to a Jewish state. They’ve made it repeatedly clear, and I wonder why no one is willing to give them the respect of taking them at their word.

The only kind of Palestinian state that Palestinians have enthusiastically embraced is one that I’ve come to call Schrödinger’s Palestine. Meaning: Is Palestine a state for the purpose of accepting responsibility for having invaded Israel and butchering Israelis? Is Palestine a state for recognising that no one in Palestine is a Palestine refugee into the fifth generation? That would be weird. Is Palestine a state for recognising that its people do not have a right to settle in another state of which they were never citizens—what they call the right of return? Is Palestine a state for all these adult, responsible purposes? No—the cat is dead.

Is Palestine a state for the purpose of harassing Israel in international bodies? Then yes—very much. Palestine is a state and the cat is alive. Even today, as Palestinians welcome the recognition, officials basically say: “Thank you, and now we need to work to isolate Israel in every way possible—and the US if it continues to support Israel.”

So, as far as they’re concerned, the value of the recognition is the only value they’re really interested in: the value of harassing Israel.

If the Commonwealth countries and others pretend that this promotes the two-state solution—one Jewish, one Arab—fine. Then be consistent. Create a recognition package. Say the following: “We recognise Palestine. We are therefore defunding UNRWA, because it’s really weird to claim that you’re a refugee into the fifth generation in your own country.”

“We are issuing a formal legal opinion of the Commonwealth that there’s no such thing as a right to settle in another country of which you were never a citizen—what Palestinians call the right of return. We reiterate that the Jews are indigenous, have a historical connection, and the right to self-determination.” That would be our recognition package.

Had they done that, it would have been a real, consistent recognition with the idea of a two-state solution—one Jewish, one Arab—and I doubt there would have been a single Palestinian celebrating it. I’ll correct: there would be four Palestinians whom I know and admire who would have welcomed such a recognition, but no official Palestinian would have. Who are those four?

By name: one of them is Mohammad Dajani. He’s been active for many years, trying to promote an Arab and Muslim vision of moderation.

It’s interesting—his family, the Dajani, were charged by the Ottoman Empire with guarding the tomb of King David. Maybe that helped him recognise that the Jews are not foreigners in this land; they have a historical connection. We’ve written and spoken together.

John Aziz is very active online and, to his credit, repeatedly makes it clear that the vision of peace is next to a Jewish state. There are people like Bassem Eid, Ahmad Abu Tamah, but they live in East Jerusalem.

And then the last one who joined the people I mentioned is Ahmad Faud Al-Hateeb. He’s not making it easy—he often makes incendiary claims at Israel—but, to his credit, he makes it very clear that he wants Palestinians to forgo the vision of return and what he calls endless resistance. He makes it clear it has brought nothing good to the Palestinians. He’s the first Palestinian in a century to establish an NGO that actually calls for changing the Palestinian ethos. It’s called Realign for Palestine.

Other than them—courageous individuals—who would have welcomed a recognition package that makes it clear there are no refugees, no right of return, and it’s about living next to a Jewish state? The Palestinian ethos remains, unfortunately, tied to the negation of a Jewish state in any borders, in any size.

PP: You mentioned two people in East Jerusalem. What is the intricacy of the fact that they’re in East Jerusalem?

EW: Sometimes in East Jerusalem—because they’re actually part of Israel. Israel annexed many Arab villages after 1967 and turned them into the municipality of Jerusalem. They can become citizens if they want; some are. In general, with Arab citizens of Israel—whereas the Palestinian ethos outside Israel and outside East Jerusalem is uniformly organised around the negation of Jewish sovereignty—Arab citizens of Israel, including some in East Jerusalem, have more of a spectrum.

You still have those who, despite being citizens of Israel, would very much like to see the Jewish state disappear, or at best see the Jews as a minority in an Arab state. But you also have what I’ve come to call—though they might not—Arab Zionists: Arabs who acknowledge the Jewish right to self-determination in the land. It doesn’t have to be an exclusive or superior right, but they recognise it as an equal right; that the Jews are not foreigners; that they have a historical connection; and that Israel is the modern political expression of the uninterrupted connection of the people of Israel with the land of Israel.

PP: What were the conditions for the recognition of the Palestinian state? Were there any? Did they say the recognition was immediate with no conditions? What were the terms?

EW: There were no conditions. There were no terms—not even, for example, releasing the hostages unconditionally.

If anything, there were opposite terms. The declaration of the Saudis and the French reiterated this right of return—even though there’s no such right—which means the only recognition they really had was of two Arab states: an Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza with no Jews, and another Arab state that will replace Israel through the settlement project of millions of Arabs—what they call the right of return.

What you did have—I wouldn’t even call it a condition—was an excuse: “We’re recognising a Palestinian state with no Hamas.” But this doesn’t exist. Even the French president tried to pretend there’s no Hamas in the West Bank. The reason Abu Mazen is in the 21st year of a four-year presidency is that everybody knows if elections are held in the West Bank tomorrow, Hamas wins handsomely.

So where exactly is that Palestine without Hamas? We saw on October 7th the euphoria—the ecstasy that day among Gazans—when they thought Hamas was about to succeed in realising what I call the Palestinianist vision of no Jewish state.

Hamas is not some alien body to the Palestinian vision. Hamas is the most recent and brutal executor of that vision. It gives it an Islamist cover, but it’s the same vision, for decades. I always bring the quote by Ernest Bevin—since we’re talking about the Commonwealth—the British Labour foreign minister after World War II. He explained why Britain failed to fulfill the mandate unanimously given by the League of Nations to help the Jewish people achieve sovereignty on one sliver of the Ottoman Empire. They didn’t betray the Arabs—the Arabs got plenty of states on the lands of the Ottoman Empire—but the Jews, who are a people of the Empire, should have received their fair share proportionally. Israel would have been multiple times the size of what was proposed.

To explain the British failure—Britain: only the Jews didn’t get a state, and this is Britain’s failure to fulfil the terms it received from the League of Nations—he said: “The conflict in the land between Jews and Arabs is irreconcilable.” He called it irreconcilable in February 1947—before any excuses: no occupation, no settlements, no Netanyahu, no displacement.

He continued: “For the Jews in the land, their top priority is to establish a sovereign Jewish state.” Self-determination for the people of Israel in the land of Israel. “For the Arabs, their top priority”—the point of principle—“is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land.”

He’s saying this is a conflict between the Jews wanting a state and the Arabs wanting the Jews not to have a state. Back to the present: this has always been the Palestinian vision long before Hamas. Hamas is merely the most recent executor. If there’s no Hamas tomorrow, this remains the Palestinian vision—what I call Palestinianism. They will always produce organisations to realise it. Nothing in the recognition or in UN declarations put a stop to Palestinianism. No one said, “Enough. You can live next to a Jewish state, but not on its ruins.” They continued to fuel the vision that the Jewish state can one day be gone.

PP: Why do you think that is?

EW: It’s a question I’ve struggled with, because to the credit of Palestinians, they’re very clear and consistent.

On this issue, they don’t lie. They lie about famine, genocide, open-air prison; when one lie is revealed, they turn to another. But where they do not lie is that their identity is wrapped up in the rejection of a sovereign Jewish state. Even when they embrace recognition, they make it clear it’s on the path to isolating Israel; that there will be return; that their vision remains “from the river to the sea.” Give them the respect of listening and taking them at their word. Why is that not happening? I've been at it for at least fifteen to twenty years. The facts are so clear that the most benign explanation is inertia.

I’ve drawn a distinction between feeling good and doing good. Most foreign policy—and people—want to feel good, not do good. Doing good—health, parenting, governance—requires hard things that don’t feel good.

People don’t want to do the hard work. They don’t want to say: “We recognise Palestine. There’s no right of return. You’re not refugees. This is the package.” That wouldn’t feel good, but it would do good. That’s the benign explanation.

The less benign is a kind of neocolonial attitude that refuses to see Palestinians as agents of history. One message always meets a wall: Palestinians are adults. They know what they’re fighting for, they are dedicated to the non-existence of a Jewish state, and they’re willing to sacrifice for it. The darkest explanation—and it’s a thought I let in after October 7th—is this: it’s not that the West or Europeans don’t know what they’re doing when they fund UNRWA or recognise Palestine with return or without limitations. Perhaps they do know. There is still something deep in the Western mindset that feels uneasy with the existence of sovereign Jews.

PP: Going back to what you said earlier—then I want to come back to that—the various conditions for Schrödinger’s Palestine. Some of the things you said may be unfamiliar—for example, the multi-generational refugee status. Just go through those elements.

EW: Sure. The 20th century has a simple political arc: it begins when much of the world is divided between empires and ends when much of the world is divided between states. When lucky, those are nation-states with coherence of ethnicity, nationality, religion, language.

PP: Go back for one second. Most people who object to Israel say they object to nation-states, to ethno-national borders. But you just said “if they’re lucky.” What’s the benefit?

EW: When I first heard the word “ethnostate” spit out, my response was: that’s the norm. Typically it’s Americans who say otherwise, not recognising their national project is the exception rather than the rule. We can discuss how much America lives up to a post-national, post-ethnic democracy, but leave that aside. The principle of self-determination governing the transition from empires to states recognised nations—peoples—with coherence in language, ethnicity, religion. Even in nominally secular Scandinavia, the underlying religion is still clear.

Self-determination meant peoples self-organise to govern themselves free from empires. Why “when lucky”? Because the spread of democracy went hand in hand with the spread of nationalism in nation-states. People think nationalism is against democracy. It was the opposite. Full suffrage democracy is very recent and radical: one person, one vote. My willingness to give you equal power over my life comes from a basic trust—built on language, history, nation, ethnicity, connection to land. That trust enabled democracy and one person, one vote in nation-state political units.

When unlucky, receding empires drew lines in the sand, threw together multiple nations and religions, and declared: “You’re a state.” The trajectory of those states has been civil wars and dictatorships—Syria, Iraq, many in Africa. They didn’t go through self-determination.

Broadly, the transition from empires to states was bloody: two world wars, numerous regional and local wars. Tens of millions became refugees. They fled across new borders—typically to sides more similar to them ethnically, religiously, linguistically. Some were expelled, as Germans after WWII, to prevent renewed war. The message to all was: it’s sad and tragic—move on. Moving on was how you achieved peace. Empires are gone; the new system is states with borders. If people don’t move on, there will be war forever.

Indeed, the one place with perennial war is where one group—the Arab refugees from a war that should not have happened—refused to move on. They could have said yes to another Arab state on Ottoman lands, but it was more important to ensure the Jews have nothing.

As a result of that war—failing to prevent Israel declaring independence—they became refugees. Nothing special—refugees in war are common, certainly in an unnecessary war.

What is special is that those Arab refugees are the only refugee group in the world indulged to maintain themselves for generations, saying: “We refuse to move on. We refuse to settle because the war didn’t go our way.” Only when they win the war of no Jewish state will they call it quits.

An organisation was established to settle Jewish and Arab refugees from the war. There were Jewish refugees; many Arabs remained in Israel; but wherever Arab armies conquered territory—the Gaza Strip and the West Bank—no Jews remained: full ethnic cleansing. Israel settled Jewish refugees; “we’ll manage.” The Arabs were to be settled by a temporary organisation—understood to need only eighteen months.

I like the example of another temporary organisation at the same time—UNKRA for Korea. There was a war at the same time; 3.1 million became refugees—more than four times the Arab refugees. UNKRA settled all Korean refugees. No one went home; they were settled in South Korea in three years with a third of the budget. Look at South Korea today. That could have been the Arabs. But no—the Arabs, for whom there was an agency, UNRWA, hijacked it to ensure it never settled a single Arab refugee—using violence to ensure that.

PP: Explain that.

EW: Initially, when UNRWA was established, it was staffed by Westerners—many from the New Deal in America. The idea was to create development projects for Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, where the Arab refugees were, and settle them that way.

The Arab refugees themselves—adults, not yet called Palestinians—burnt down UNRWA offices and attacked staff, making it clear they refused to allow UNRWA to do its job of settling them.

PP: This is not Hamas? This is not—

EW: No—there’s no Hamas yet. No PLO. They weren’t even organised. But they already held the view that the Jews must not have a state, and they understood that if they were settled, the Jewish state gets to live. That outcome was unacceptable.

As soon as it was clear UNRWA was a failure—by the 1950s—everyone knew it. The West knew; Arab countries knew. They knew what success looked like—Europeans being settled and moving on. Not a single Arab refugee was settled, and they wanted to close UNRWA. But the Arab countries blackmailed the West—Cold War, oil leverage—saying: you’re never closing this. It will remain open—hence UNRWA is still a “temporary” organisation after 75 years.

They also ensured a loophole: in the late ’40s and early ’50s the UN created the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to deal with all refugees under the Refugee Convention, which prioritises ending refugee situations. If return—great; if not, resettlement or local integration. Make sure they’re no longer refugees.

Arab countries understood that if Arab refugees were subject to those norms, they would be settled. So they created a loophole: UNHCR deals with all refugees except those that already have an agency. And they made sure their agency never closes, so the loophole remains.

That loophole allows them to register—contrary to international norms—millions as refugees, even though they’re not by any international standard. Nearly half are citizens of Jordan, born there. Nowhere else are people both refugees and citizens. The other nearly half live in the West Bank and Gaza—into the fifth generation. According to them, they live in Palestine—the same Palestine the world is asked to recognise. How are they still refugees?

I’ve seen itineraries of the Pope and Prince William saying they were visiting Palestine. First stop? A neighbourhood misnamed a refugee camp—but no one there is a refugee. They were born there, never left. They’re not refugees.

This loophole lets Palestinians avoid international norms, keep the notion alive. It’s not innocent—you can read texts where they state clearly it’s to continue the war they failed to win in ’48–’49, for the undoing of the Jewish state.

PP: You’ve been saying this for fifteen years, but it was only October 7th when you had the darker thought. Knowing that the UN understood UNRWA’s purpose, understood the loophole, and that Western countries understood there was a special refugee definition for Palestinians—even if they didn’t grasp the depth of ties between terrorism and UNRWA—how did you not think those darker thoughts?

EW: When I started—together with my co-writer Adish Swarts—the one thing we’re very proud of is that the book is unassailable on facts. Many dislike its recommendations—there are no refugees, no right of return, dismantle UNRWA—but it’s never been challenged on the facts.

So for fifteen years we went to European capitals, diplomats, parliamentarians: “Look at what you’re funding.” The Palestinians themselves say it undermines your own policy of a two-state solution. On one hand you claim your vision is two states—one Jewish, one Arab. On the other, you pump billions into an organisation whose purpose is to undermine the idea that the Jews should have a state.

We came with a rational mindset: show them the facts; show them Palestinians say this. When President Trump defunded UNRWA, the Palestinian response wasn’t “How will we pay teacher salaries?” It was: “The American president is trying to undermine our right of return.”

We said: “Look—Palestinians view your UNRWA funding not as humanitarian. They view it as a global guarantee that one day there will be no Jewish state.” Many replied, “That’s not what we mean.” But that’s how they understand it.

At some point, you must assume responsibility for how your actions are understood. Even now, the Brits try to ignore that Hamas welcomes this recognition, pretending it’s about “no Hamas.” Accept responsibility for the perception of your actions. You can’t keep saying, “This is not what we mean,” when you don’t even have the courage to say that.

We told officials: “Fine—don’t defund UNRWA. But tell Palestinians: this dollar is not a guarantee of a right of return. You don’t have such a right. We’re giving it because we think you need it.” That costs nothing to say. Even that they wouldn’t do.

It wasn’t just October 7th per se; it was years of logical, fact-based arguments relying on what Palestinians say and do—and seeing Europeans’ response after the enmeshment of UNRWA and the butchers. It wasn’t just that a few people directly paid by UNRWA participated in the massacre—you could call that a fluke of euphoria. Palestinians are usually careful because they know the West wants to ensure money doesn’t go to terror. The way they do it is: the wife is a teacher at UNRWA, salary enters the family; the husband is a Hamas butcher—supposedly the money doesn’t go to terror. But on October 7th, a few directly salaried took part; they wanted in.

That’s not the issue. My criticism in Israel: we should have asked three questions—how many who participated, planned, and financed the massacre were educated in UNRWA schools on the vision of return and no Jewish state? How many were falsely registered as refugees despite living in Gaza (Palestine) and never being displaced? How many live in neighbourhoods misnamed refugee camps? The answer would have been: everybody.

Years of bringing this message and meeting disbelief—I named it Westplaining: “They don't really mean it.” European diplomats would say, “Palestinians know they’re not returning.” No—they’re very active to achieve it. The combination of October 7th and the response to UNRWA’s enmeshment is what made me let in the darker thoughts: the facts have been out for so long that ignoring them is wilful.

PP: There’s an additional post-October 7th—really October 8th—moment. It used to be that when people said “From the river to the sea” and someone replied, “That means all of Israel,” others would argue, “No, it doesn’t.” After October 8th, people say, “That means all of Israel,” and the reply is, “That’s right, because Israel is illegitimate and doesn’t have the right to exist.” That became a legitimate claim—no longer morally unthinkable. What do we do in that moment?

After October 7 with Pamela Paresky

Pamela Paresky interviews Israeli intellectuals, politicians, servicemen, and others in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel.

QuillettePamela Paresky

EW: Be afraid. Very afraid. I’ve been working on and following what I call the placard strategy for about twenty years. You see it on placards in anti-Israel demonstrations—built like simple equations: “Israel,” “Zionism,” sometimes a Star of David, then an equals sign. The strategy has been so successful that no one thinks the accurate definition: “Zionism equals the political movement for self-determination and liberation of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland.” Instead, it’s ten words everyone knows: imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, racism—then ethnic cleansing, Nazism, genocide.

In 2020, at the height of Black Lives Matter, a new placard appeared: “Zionism is white supremacy.” I joke: finally the Jews are white—they weren’t white when it mattered. They’re white exactly when whiteness is presented as the greatest evil. That’s the strategy. Those words—certainly for Jews—are the inversion of reality. Zionism is the most anti-imperial, decolonial movement of an ancestral people re-establishing themselves in an ancient homeland. It saved Jews from apartheid-like conditions in the Arab world, from ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Arab world and Europe. It’s not about Jews being white, regardless of origin. Ashkenazi or not—Jews are not “white” in that frame. Jews are their own thing. The words are chosen not for truth but because they are synonymous with evil.

For decades the strategy repeats: “Israel/Zionism/Star of David = evil.” It’s on placards, in media, social media, and—most importantly—in institutions of prestige: academia and the UN. You’ll get a PhD for “Israel is an apartheid state,” tenure for “Zionism is colonialism,” UN resolutions laundering “Zionism is racism.” Few know the UN General Assembly is one-country-one-vote; you can pass anything against Israel there, yet the UN carries prestige.

A former Soviet operative—an expert in mass manipulation—said mass manipulation needs simple messages, simple symbols (the placard strategy), repetition, and prestige, because prestige suspends judgment. Every ad executive knows: bring a celebrity; people buy it.

We’re surrounded—360°—by “Israel/Zionism/Star of David = evil.”

After October 7th, a new placard said: “Keep the world clean,” with a Star of David or Israeli flag in a trash bin. This became legitimate—the culmination of decades of manipulation.

The idea: we’re on the cusp of a clean, better world—utopia—and the only thing standing in the way is the collective Jew.

This explains “Queers for Palestine” and “Feminists for Palestine.” People say that’s stupid—don’t they understand the values of that society? My argument: they’re operating on a deeper logic of utopia. It’s no coincidence that all the evil words are on the side of Israel/Zionism, and all the good words—freedom, equality, justice, rights—are on the side of its negation, Palestinianism.

The ancient, dangerous idea is that the collective Jew stands between this messy world and utopia—racial salvation, human-rights utopia, whatever the utopia du jour is. Many watching Hamas GoPro cameras on October 7th saw the birthing of utopia—which sounds insane. But that idea is the ideological basis for atrocities against Jews. It’s the source of the global ecstasy that day. One of my favorite writers, Hussein Abu Bakr Mansour, called the October 8th euphoria in the West a “symbolic participation in the pogrom.” They thought doing that to the Jews births utopia. That is the logic under “Queers for Palestine.”

So when people now openly say, “A world without Israel would be a better world”—a headline in an Egyptian newspaper a week ago—this is treated as a noble goal. We should be deeply concerned. Once societies fall for the mass psychosis that the only thing between them and a better world is the collective Jew, we’re in very dangerous territory.

PP: So for Jews in the US, we’re on the precipice of a likely Zohran Mamdani mayor in New York, and at the same time President Trump has been wielding a hammer rather than what, in legal terms, ought to be a scalpel with universities and their problem with antisemitism. There are various terrorist-supporting legal immigrants the administration is attempting to deport, and free-speech advocates are defending them on free-speech grounds. What do you think of the situation in the US?

EW: My sense is we’re not even close to understanding how grave the danger is.

When people say “the antisemitism problem in the university,” they think: some Jewish students are harassed with “Free Palestine.” Unpleasant. But universities have served as institutions of prestige to launder the idea that the collective Jew stands between this world and utopia.

So I’m not sure we’re in a “scalpel” situation. When it started, people asked, “How could it be among the educated?” Did we learn no history? Mass psychosis can only proceed once it’s among the educated, because that gives it prestige to go to the masses. It now proceeds under the respectable mask of anti-Zionism—of Palestinianism—but universities are the places.

Antisemitism is not a student being harassed with “Free Palestine.” Antisemitism is the mass psychosis of a society that the collective Jew stands between it and a better world. That’s where we are. We’re not at the point of free speech. For Jews, this is a very different situation.

On the other side: Mamdani as mayor—is that who should be mayor? He’s building on a tried alliance: the red-green (and Jewish liberal) alliance—Marxists/communists/woke with Islamists, and Jews who fall for the belief that together we’ll build a better future for all.

It has always been the alliance that throws Jews under the bus. It’s the alliance that in Iran brought Khomenei to power—Jews of Iran are in LA; you cannot stay in those places. It’s the alliance that corrupted the UN and laundered the placard strategy—57 Muslim countries in the General Assembly plus Soviet and non-aligned—repeatedly laundering it through prestige institutions.

It’s a convergence of dangerous elements. The feeling among Jews of being politically homeless—both right and left—is not small. Political homelessness precedes civic homelessness, precedes general homelessness. The golden era where Jews could vote for people who shared all their values is over. Some Jews voted survival rather than values; even that may be undermined.

A thought I’ve been reflecting on: my imaginary but typical Viennese Jew. He’s 37, it’s 1902—best place and time ever for Jews before 20th-century New York: Vienna at the end of the 19th century. There’s this Herzl guy saying it will end badly and proposes a Jewish state. Suppose our Viennese Jew died in 1932—had a great life; Herzl still seemed crazy to him. Would he have been better off leaving in 1902—leaving cosmopolitan Vienna where Jews were arbiters of taste—for a malarial-infested land in the Ottoman Empire to build a Jewish state, or better off staying in Vienna?

I think about this for Jews around the world. Before—and certainly after—October 7th, communities are playing Jewish Sudoku: “Canada is going downhill—go where? Australia? Not great. Israel is surrounded.” The difference between “Keep the world clean” in 1930s Europe and today is that today it’s global. That makes it more concerning. The Jewish community in Australia told me: “Australia was supposed to be far away. It’s here.”

The logical conclusion is terrible. If I try to be optimistic: the only country with a chance is America. No country that submitted to this mass psychosis—Europe, the Arab world, Iran, the Soviet bloc—ended well, for them or for Jews. America has a foundational common sense. We saw it when college-educated people tore down hostage posters and two working-class people told them, “This is wrong.” I hope America will not submit to this psychosis.

I told a delegation of Republican members of Congress about a year ago: you think you won the Cold War, but you might wake up to discover that even though the Soviet Union is gone, they defeated you—like they did to the Germans—by inserting into the bloodstream of your most hallowed institutions and educated elites the one virus cloaked in respectability: as with the Germans and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and in the West with anti-Zionism as respectable academia. They’ve inserted the one idea known to drive societies mad. See it and stop it.

PP: I’m speechless—sorry. What I’ve been saying about antisemitism is that it rises when it’s popular. We all live in a prestige economy, and when people gain social currency with antisemitic attitudes rather than losing it, more people adopt those attitudes. It’s only by playing that game of prestige that we can defeat it. How do we make antisemitism unpopular again?

EW: I’ll start by saying I don’t like being this person. I wish I could say different things, but this is what I see.

I see only two paths. The terrible one is how antisemitism became discredited in the past: it was followed to its horrific logical conclusion, and people said “Okay,” and then it had to be couched in new, respectable terms because the old antisemitism was discredited. One path is to let it go to its logical conclusion. In a 2019 speech opening remarks on whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism, I said: when this goes through its full arc, the world will wake up and say “Never again.”

The other path: enough people in countries where Jews live—America, Canada, Australia, France, Britain—who possess prestige and common sense (a rare combination) will stand up and say: “Not here.” We will not live through this going to its logical arc. Those are the allies we need: non-Jews with prestige and common sense who, with our help, can see where this leads and will stand up to it. We don’t have the numbers. That’s our only chance.

PP: I hate to leave it on that note, but it seems like that is the place to leave it. Thank you.

EW: Thank you very much.