Anti-Zionism: Does the History Hold Up? | Benjamin Moser | Live From the Table

"I've done thousands of interviews in my life. I've never been talked over quite as much as I have tonight." - Benjamin Moser

Moser came on to defend his new book, Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History. Noam Dworman came with Moser's own sources and a list of what he says the book gets wrong.

Was Herzl an antisemite who wanted the Jews to disappear, or a man flailing for any way out of European antisemitism? Did Iraq's Jews leave because of Zionist bombs or because of official persecution, and what does Avi Shlaim himself say? Who started the Six-Day War: the side that fired first, or the side that closed the Straits of Tiran? Should Balfour be judged the way Frederick Douglass judged Lincoln? One thing neither disputes: Jews had a right to come to Palestine as immigrants. Moser's objection is to coming "as conquerors."

Also: Theodor Herzl, Lord Balfour, Abraham Lincoln, Derek Penslar, Benny Morris, Norman Finkelstein, Anwar Sadat, Nasser, the Kishinev pogrom, the Farhud, the Nakba, Gaza.

Benjamin Moser won the Pulitzer Prize for Sontag: Her Life and Work. Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History is out now from Doubleday.

0:00 Noam: "This interview did not go as I hoped"

2:16 "Moserism": the opening statement on Lincoln and Balfour

14:55 Herzl's "genitals" line: diary or letter?

22:41 Herzl's mass-conversion plan and the Penslar tape

31:01 "Did European Jews have the right to come to Palestine?"

49:56 Why did Iraq's Jews leave? Avi Shlaim and the Baghdad bombs

58:42 Who started the Six-Day War?