Juan Cole: Israel, Gaza and Campus Protests, Part II

Sea Change Radio

This week on Sea Change Radio, the second half of our discussion with Middle East expert Juan Cole of the University of Michigan. In this episode, we talk about some of the problems presented by certain trigger words when discussing Israel and Palestine and look at the handling of recent campus protests by police and college administrators. Then, we revisit part of our 2022 conversation with Prof. Cole to examine environmental and energy-related issues in the Fertile Crescent. Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise. Juan Cole (JC) | 00:19 - I don't see how anybody can investigate what's been going on in the Palestinian West Bank since 1967 and not come to the conclusion that this is an, is an apartheid arrangement. Narrator | 00:33 - This week on Sea Change Radio, the second half of our discussion with Middle East expert Juan Cole of the University of Michigan. In this episode, we talk about some of the problems presented by certain trigger words when discussing Israel and Palestine and look at the handling of recent campus protests by police and college administrators. Then we revisit part of our 2022 conversation with Professor Cole to examine environmental and energy related issues in the Fertile Crescent. Alex Wise (AW) | 01:05 - I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Juan Cole. Juan is a professor of history at the University of Michigan. Juan, welcome back to Sea Change. Radio. Juan Cole (JC) | 01:26 - Thank you so much. Alex Wise (AW) | 01:27 - Let's talk about the language for a second, because I think there are these trigger words like anti-Semitism and genocide, and Zionism, which can be in the eye of the beholder used either as a cudgel, a pejorative, but also a compliment. There's a lot of wiggle room within these words, and I think they're, they're lightning rods for a lot of misunderstanding. For example, what you just said, if somebody is protesting what's happening in Gaza, does that make them anti-Semitic, some people would say, yes. You talk about Trump. There's that refuge that they constantly seek in victimization, right? He's always the victim when he's in court. He wants to be a martyr, even though he's, he's led one of the most privileged lives anyone can possibly consider. Antisemitism is also, it's used to be victims when there's not necessarily anybody being victimized in this sense, except that you happen to be Jewish and you disagree with me. It's difficult because I want to respect the people who have had to deal with a lot more antisemitism than me, for example. But I can't help but draw some parallels with the MAGA victimization and some of American Jewish people who are very quick to assign this term to people. And on the flip side, I think genocide is a trigger word, like apartheid was, it's not necessarily inaccurate, but it's a trigger word because people think, "oh, well, genocide is.. that's the holocaust. That's not war." It definitely can incite, escalate the rhetoric, I think sometimes unfairly and to a level that I think is counterproductive. Juan Cole (JC) | 03:17 - You're right, these words, are not used in the same way by everybody. And the differences in nuance can cause problems. There are people who would say that Zionism is a settler colonial ideology. And if you identify as a Zionist and you're identifying with, with a historic wrong, I think for a lot of American Jews who say they're Zionists, what they mean is they're proud of Albert Einstein, and they're proud of the accomplishments of, of the Jewish people by saying they're Zionists. They don't mean that Itamar Ben-Gvir is allowed to invade a Palestinian's property in the West Bank and usurp it. AW | 04:00 - I think it's such a hard word to generalize. I just have family members, for example, who might think they're Zionists because they think that Israel has a right to exist versus somebody who thinks that Israel has a right to the whole...