Ilan Goldenberg

Sure.

So the problem with, I think, Hassan's argument on that, and thanks for having me, Tommy, was

You know, he talked about Israel and Zionism as essentially an ethnostate with superior, you know, essentially looking at what you'd call a supremacy ideology.

And if you actually look at the founding documents of the state of Israel, for example, and you look at the history of Zionism, you know, Israel is intended to be a Jewish democratic state.

It was also to be, in its Declaration of Independence,

described as a state with equal rights for all of its citizens.

That's what the vision of the state was.

Now, that's been incredibly imperfect and huge efforts still need to be made to move it in the right direction.

That's one of the reasons J Street exists, right?

I mean, we exist

Because the view before us was, you know, you just got to support Israel and everything.

Israel is the perfect democracy in the Middle East, the only American democracy in the Middle East, the only democracy in the Middle East, really.

And, you know, our argument was, no, there's all kinds of problems that need to be worked out.

And we need to be honest and critical with a friend of ours in Israel.

But the answer isn't to tilt all the way in the other direction and to say, well,

Bye.

you know, Hamas and Israel are, Hamas is a lot better than the Israeli government.

And I'd much rather have Hamas than I would the Israeli government and treating it as uniquely evil.

Because look, Bibi Netanyahu is a fascist, potentially authoritarian.

Donald Trump is also a fascist and authoritarian, right?