John Mearsheimer

There were all sorts of European Jews who were opposed to Zionism.

Were they anti-Semites?

I don't think so.

But we've gotten to the point now where people are so interested in stopping any criticism of Israel that they wield this weapon of criticism.

calling people anti-Semites so loosely that the term has kind of lost meaning.

So I think Netanyahu is wrongheaded to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

Well, I think until there is a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there's no hope of putting an end to this nonsense.

No, it's the silence people.

It's very important to understand that one of the lobby's principal goals is to make sure we don't have an open discourse, a freewheeling discourse about Israel.

Because they understand, people in the lobby understand that if you have an open discourse, Israel will end up looking very bad, right?

You don't want to talk about the occupation.

You don't want to talk about how Israel was created, right?

All these subjects are ones that will cause problems for Israel.

See, just to go to the present crisis, okay?

When you have a disaster,

And what happened on October 7th is a disaster.

One of the first things that happens is that people begin to ask the question, how did this happen?

What's the root cause of this problem?

This is a disaster.

We have to understand what caused it so that we can work to make sure it doesn't happen again.