Is Israel's War Just? Eli Lake and Michael Moynihan v Briahna Joy Gray and Jake Klein

05/26/24 • 64 min

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A few weeks ago, there was an awesome event in Brooklyn in partnership with UnHerd called Dissident Dialogues. It was exactly what it sounds like: debates and discussions on the most pressing questions facing our society today. Questions like: Have we reached peak woke? Can universities be saved? Can liberalism be saved? Is government censorship justified? Is this the end of mainstream media? and What is the future of feminism? So basically, just the light stuff.

But probably the most contentious debate of the weekend was: Is Israel’s war on Hamas a just war?

This is not an easy debate. Emotions run hot, the stakes are high, people’s morality is called into question, and there are a lot of competing narratives. Which is all the more reason to debate the topic in public, something we always advocate for at The Free Press.

Arguing no, that Israel’s war on Hamas is not a just war, are Briahna Joy Gray and Jake Klein. Briahna was the national press secretary for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign, and is host of the Bad Faith podcast. Arguing alongside Briahna is Jake Klein. Jake is a content creator for the Foundation for Economic Education, and he is a co-founder and editor at The Black Sheep.

Arguing yes, that Israel’s war on Hamas is a just war, are two of our very own Free Pressers, Eli Lake and Michael Moynihan. Eli is a columnist at The Free Press and a longtime journalist covering foreign affairs and national security. And Michael Moynihan, who you’ve heard guest-host Honestly, is a veteran journalist, having spent years at Vice, The Daily Beast, and Reason magazine. He is also a host of The Fifth Column podcast.

The debate is moderated by the one and only Russian British satirist, co-host of the Triggernometry podcast, and Free Press contributor, Konstantin Kisin.

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But probably the most contentious debate of the weekend was: Is Israel’s war on Hamas a just war?

The debate is moderated by the one and only Russian British satirist, co-host of the Triggernometry podcast, and Free Press contributor, Konstantin Kisin.

Facebook: Dissident Dialogues

Instagram: @dissident_dialogues

X: @diss_dialogues

YouTube: @dissidentdialogues-qm3gm?si=f-hldBmIK9CnGqRn

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previous Episode

Nellie Bowles Knows Why So Many Progressives Lost Their Minds—She Almost Did, Too

Nellie Bowles wasn’t always the TGIF queen you know and love at The Free Press.

In fact, Nellie was, for a very long time, deeply embedded in the progressive left.

Before Bari and Nellie met—and fell in love, blah blah blah—in 2019, Nellie was nothing short of a media darling. She had the right ideas, she wrote the right stories, and NYT readers ate it up.

But Nellie is a reporter. And being a reporter—a great one—forced her to confront the gap between what an increasingly zealous left claimed were its aims. . . and the actual realities of their policies.

People don’t usually change their minds. At least not on big-stakes political issues, and not when their jobs are at risk, or their social acceptance is on the line. And people certainly don’t change their minds publicly.

Nellie did. And she chronicles that change in her new book, Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History.

The book is a collection of stories from her reporting during the years she started to question the narrative. These were stories people told her not to write. People said, Don’t go to Seattle’s autonomous zone; there’s nothing to see there. They said, Don’t report on the consequences of hormone therapy for kids; it’s not important.

But as Nellie writes, “I became a reporter because I didn't trust authority figures. . . . As a reporter, I spent over a decade working to follow that curiosity. It was hard to suddenly turn that off. It was hard to constantly censor what I was seeing, to close one eye and try very hard not to notice anything inconvenient, especially when there was so much to see.”

That curiosity is what got Nellie kicked out of the club. But it gave her a place in a new club, the one that we at The Free Press think that the majority of Americans are actually in.

On today’s episode: What does it mean to walk away from a movement that was once central to your identity? How does it feel to be accused of being “red-pilled” by the people you once called friends? How did the left become so radical and dogmatic? Why do people join mobs? And how did Nellie come back from the brink?

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Next Episode

Jerry Seinfeld on the Rules of Comedy—and Life

The first episode of Seinfeld aired in 1989. Thirty-five years later, the show remains at the apex of American culture. People speak in Seinfeld-isms, they flirt on dating apps over Seinfeld, they rewatch old episodes of Seinfeld when they’re feeling down. And, in the case of the Weiss family, Lou still watches it every night from 11 pm to 12 am on the local Pittsburgh station before he goes to sleep. People around the world even learn English watching Seinfeld!

It is not hyperbole to say that Seinfeld is one of the most influential shows of all time.

Seinfeld was supposedly a show about nothing, but that’s what made it so universal. Everyone can relate to trying to find your car in a parking garage. Everyone knows the feeling when their book is overdue at the library and they don’t want to pay the overdue fee. Everyone can relate to the frustration of waiting for a table at a restaurant. If you didn’t—or don’t—laugh during Seinfeld, something was wrong with you.

All of which is why it was a bit strange and unexpected when a few months ago Jerry Seinfeld suddenly became “controversial.” In early October, Jerry—along with 700 other Hollywood stars—signed a letter condemning Hamas and calling for the return of the hostages. For that crime—the crime of saying terrorism is bad and innocent people should be released—crowds started protesting the events he was attending, the speeches he was giving, and heckling him in public.

A few weeks ago, when Jerry gave the commencement address at Duke University, some students walked out in protest. Then, his standup set was disrupted by protesters, to which Seinfeld quipped: “I love a little Jew-hate to spice up the show.” The crowd applauded.

Jerry Seinfeld made the most successful show about a Jew to ever exist. This was no small feat. In fact, one NBC executive, after watching the Seinfeld pilot for the first time in 1989, didn’t think it should even go to air. He said it was “too New York and too Jewish.”

And yet...it worked. And as Seinfeld spent years making Jewishness an iconic part of American pop culture, Jerry says he experienced not a drop of anti-Semitism.

But now, during a time that is supposed to be the most inclusive, the most sensitive, the most accepting, and the most tolerant time in human history, Jerry Seinfeld is targeted for being a Jew.

Jerry often says that the audience is everything. That’s the whole point of comedy. There is no joke if nobody laughs. But today on Honestly, we ask Jerry if he still trusts the audience in an age where the audience can start to feel like a mob?

You’ve probably heard or seen Jerry somewhere recently—from The New Yorker to GQ to... every podcast in the world. That’s because he has a new movie out called Unfrosted, which you should definitely go watch on Netflix. It’s hilarious, heartwarming, and you will love it.

But today’s conversation with Jerry is unlike the ones you’ve heard. He’s unfiltered. He’s emotional. And he’s speaking his mind.

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