Foundation for Middle East Peace Podcast Interview, 7/20/26

Transcript of my interview with Occupied Thoughts, the podcast of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, recorded on July 20, 2026. I’ve condensed and edited the transcript for concision and clarity.

[Occupied Thoughts podcast is available on Youtube, Spotify, etc.]

Ahmed Moor:

Hello, and welcome to Occupied Thoughts, a podcast brought to you by the Foundation for Middle East Peace. My name is Ahmed Moor and I’m a fellow at the foundation.

Today is July 20th, 2026, and I’m delighted to be here with Seth Ackerman, editor at Jacobin magazine. Welcome, Seth.

Seth Ackerman:

Thank you.

Ahmed Moor:

We’re talking because of a piece that you published in Jacobin, using the recent Rahm Emanuel speech as a foil, to make the argument that, as the title says: “We Have the Chance to Reel in Israel Right Now.”

I want to get into that, but first, what is Jacobin? I mean, I know what it is, but a lot of our listeners live abroad. How would you describe the political context for a magazine like Jacobin today in the United States?

Seth Ackerman:

Well, we’re a socialist magazine, and we like to think we’ve played a role in reviving the position of the socialist left in mainstream political dialogue in America.

So, on this issue, where the left has been galvanized by the horrors of Gaza, where we’re on the verge of having this big 2028 debate within the progressive coalition, if you want to call it that, this is the kind of debate we’d like to intervene in. And that’s what I was trying to do with this piece.

Ahmed Moor:

And it is an intervention. You go directly to sanctions. That’s at the heart of the piece here. But let’s stay on the context for a bit.

Rahm Emanuel’s father was a member of the Irgun, the pre-state militia that engaged in lots of terrorist activity in Palestine in the Mandate period. He was born and raised in the United States, became a very successful political operative here, formerly mayor of Chicago.

But notably, he volunteered for the Israeli army in 1991 when US troops were fighting in Iraq, in Desert Storm. That hasn’t come up much, and I haven’t seen it come up in any of the reporting. Do you think the salience of that biographical fact about Rahm Emanuel will grow over time, as we approach 2028?

Seth Ackerman:

It might. On the other hand, if you look at the prediction markets, right now he’s generally seen as such a long-shot candidate that these kinds of biographical details might not matter very much. I think he’s at, like, 3%.

What concerns me is that, as a result, people are underestimating the significance of this speech and the policy orientation he’s presenting. It’s being seen mainly as a sort of sign of the times, that Rahm Emanuel of all people, who has this staunch pro-Israel background, is taking such an admonishing tone with Israel. It’s being taken as an indication of how far the politics have shifted against Israel.

I think that’s a big mistake. Because even if Emanuel is not going to be the Democratic nominee, I think you’re going see the 2028 candidates basically sorting themselves into two lanes on this issue, one of which is going to be the Rahm Emanuel lane.

And I think it’s going to be a very crowded lane. On this issue, I think a lot of the top-tier candidates are going to end up sounding just like Rahm Emanuel. If I had to guess, that would include people like Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttigieg.

So, even if it’s unlikely that Emanuel will be the next Democratic presidential nominee, it’s not at all unlikely that he’d be the next secretary of state, or the next national security advisor, if a Democrat is in the White House. His last job, under Biden, was ambassador to Japan. He obviously has a strong interest in foreign policy. I think that’s the job he wants. I think he’s not just running for president, he’s running to be the guy who shapes the next generation of Democratic foreign policy.

So I’m surprised there’s been so little attention paid to what he actually said in this speech, as opposed to just the few bullet points that were pulled out of it. Clearly Emanuel saw this as a major policy statement. He went to Israel to deliver the speech. He leaked drafts of it to reporters beforehand. He gave interviews to Israeli media afterwards.

And it’s a pretty well thought out approach. I say this, obviously, as someone who’s not a fan. But I do think it can “work” — politically, and, in a sense, as policy — unless an alternative is presented.

Ahmed Moor:

What are the attributes of that approach?

Seth Ackerman:

If you look at the speech, although the intended audience is presumably American, in the text he addresses Israelis directly. And his stance is: “You, Israel, need to get your head out of the sand. You’re heading towards pariah status. There will come a point where even friends of Israel, like me, won’t be able to help you.”

So, if Israel won’t change on its own, Rahm Emanuel, as president, will force it to change. That’s the headline most people took from the speech.

But for Emanuel, the top priority is to remove all the pressure that has piled up on Israel over the past few years, as the world has watched the horrors in Gaza. And the way he’s proposing to do that is — quite audaciously — by shifting the pressure onto the Palestinians.

This is the centerpiece of his policy. He’s proposing to go to the Arab states and tell them that the US now expects them to be, as he puts it, “the adult in the room with the Palestinian leadership.” Remember, the Arab League has had a formal position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a long time now…

Ahmed Moor:

Since 2002.

Seth Ackerman:

Since 2002, called the Arab Peace Initiative. It was originally a Saudi initiative but it’s been unanimously endorsed, again and again, by all 22 Arab states. By now, it’s a well-established consensus position.

And the essence of the position is the Arabs saying: “We’re willing to make peace; we’re willing to recognize Israel; we’re willing to normalize relations with Israel; all of us, unanimously. All Israel has to do is comply with its obligations under international law.”

So that means: withdraw from the occupied territories, dismantle the settlements, allow the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, negotiate a resolution of the refugee issue with the Palestinian leadership.

And in exchange, the Arabs promise full peace and normalization for Israel. Which is supposedly what Israel has always wanted. Since 1948, Israel has been saying that all it wants is to be accepted in the region, to have normal, peaceful relations with its neighbors. Well, for almost 25 years now it’s refused to even talk about the Arab Peace Initiative.

So, Emanuel is proposing a new approach. The US will go to the Arabs and basically tell them: change your position. The position you have now isn’t going to work. You should offer Israel full peace and recognition and normalization, but not demand that it withdraw from the territories or dismantle settlements. Instead, the only demand should be that Israel commit not to further expand the settlements, beyond their existing boundaries.

And if the Arabs agree to that, and if Israel agrees to make that commitment, then at that point — he doesn’t say this explicitly, but I think it’s implicit in the logic — the US would recognize the “Palestinian state.” Israel itself wouldn’t. But the US would recognize it, and it would be granted UN membership by the UN Security Council and recognized by countries around the world.

And then, from Rahm Emanuel’s point of view, the conflict is over. All the Arab states have now recognized Israel and you have, in theory, “two states.”

Now, somebody listening to this will say, wait a minute, isn’t there a step missing here? What about Israel’s withdrawal from the territories and the settlements? Well no, that doesn’t happen here. Instead, what happens is that the Arab states are supposed to — this is how Emanuel phrases it — “stand up a Palestinian governing authority” in the territories.

So, essentially, this would be a kind of Palestinian South Vietnam. That’s how I would put it. You know, South Vietnam in the Vietnam War was a kind of diplomatic fiction. It had little domestic legitimacy, a very narrow base of support, it could not have survived on its own. Its main purpose was to serve as a diplomatic fig leaf, so that there’d be an “independent, sovereign state” to invite the Americans in, so that they could fight the communists.

Well, here the Arab states would be like the US in Vietnam. They would be assigned this nation-building task of propping up this artificial Palestinian state that has no domestic legitimacy. And the Arabs and the Israelis would then collaborate in waging a counterinsurgency campaign against whatever Palestinian opposition emerged.

Ahmed Moor:

What’s surprising, or notable, to me, is the desperation that seems to underpin this entire vision: this hope that somebody like Emanuel, by articulating this vision, can turn time back to October 6, 2023, where Israel was not a pariah, where Israel’s bad behavior was accepted as a matter of course.

Is that basically what Pete Buttigieg, Rahm Emanuel, Josh Shapiro, whoever else, are hoping? That we can put this issue to the side and run on the kinds of things that mainstream Democrats typically run on?

Seth Ackerman:

Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Lately, there’s been a sort of meme on Twitter among people who are in more or less the same space as Rahm Emanuel, people like Dan Shapiro, who was Obama’s ambassador to Israel. They’ve been saying that the goal needs to be getting back to a situation where, if, say, Israel’s prime minister makes a state visit to the United States, it’s barely mentioned in the newspapers. It might as well be Finland.

In other words, to anesthetize, or euthanize, the Palestinian issue in American politics, so they can get back to business as usual.

Ahmed Moor:

So then, what’s the other lane?

Seth Ackerman:

Well, the other lane will be all the candidates who want to demarcate themselves from the Rahm Emanuel lane in a more progressive direction. And clearly some will want to do that. But so far I haven’t seen much evidence that a lot of strategic thinking has been done about what an alternative to the Rahm Emanuel line would look like. That’s why I wrote this piece.

I’ve seen attempts by some of the likely candidates, or people around them, to appeal to the progressive base with what you might call policy slogans. Often these are things that play well on social media but don’t necessarily advance the ball when it comes to building an alternative policy framework.

Now, to be clear, most of these things are, in and of themselves, very valuable. For example, people will demand that politicians recognize the genocide in Gaza as a genocide. People will demand a recognition that apartheid in the West Bank is apartheid. That’s great.

Or they’ll demand that politicians promise not to take money from AIPAC. The other day I listened to your show where you had on the duo behind Track AIPAC. They’ve done incredible work. They’ve really transformed the landscape of this issue.

But I think they’d be the first to acknowledge that just having candidates pledge not to take money from AIPAC is not, in itself, going to change the reality on the ground for the Palestinians or anyone else. So, this is why I wrote the piece. Because the time to start thinking about this is now.

Ahmed Moor:

I appreciate that, going from a kind of concave policy lens to convex, where we’re proposing a positive vision and a platform.

So, I’ll read to you from your own piece: “Emanuel’s speech does register a bona fide political shift, and that shift represents a genuine opportunity. But right now that opportunity is going to waste because critics of Israel have failed to advance a policy agenda commensurate with the scale of the problem.”

Before we get to the policy prescriptions here, you use the words, “the scale of the problem.” What is the problem here, from your perspective, when we talk about Israel?

Seth Ackerman:

If I had to put it in one word, it would be impunity. You know, Israel has systematically violated international law in ways that have been recognized by international institutions, whether it’s the United Nations Security Council or international courts, but without any action taken by those who have the power to take action.

So, you don’t have to start from square one. A lot of what needs to be done has already been laid out by international institutions that have simply noted what Israel must do to be in line with its obligations under international law. It’s just that nobody’s done anything about it.

Ahmed Moor:

But then, why international law? Why pull international law into the conversation when we’re talking about American politicians and American policy in this country?

Seth Ackerman:

Well, I bring up international law not to be legalistic or to say we should all be sticklers about international law. In a presidential election, people are going to be talking about what kind of foreign policy the United States should have based on an understanding of American interests.

But this is not a particularly new or original idea: for years, administration after administration in Washington has talked about the instability generated by Israel’s occupation, which creates violence that often spirals outward in many directions — for example, to Lebanon, which can then cause further problems with, say, Iran.

That’s why all administrations — Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, every administration since 1967, except Trump — have called the settlements an obstacle to peace. And if peace and stability in the Middle East are considered important American interests, and you’re running for president, then there’s an obvious case for enforcing international law here.

The point is not to say that our mission in the world should be enforcing every provision of international law. It’s to say that the lawlessness that has spiraled out from this conflict represents a problem for America, and when it comes to resolving that conflict, the obvious arbiter — the obvious source of the terms of settlement — would be law. I mean, that’s how we arbitrate disputes in a “rules-based international order,” right?

So, that’s why I talk about international law. Not because international law is an end in itself.

Ahmed Moor:

In the piece, you put forward two proposals. You write:

First, the United Nations Security Council must finally vote to enshrine and enforce the 2024 decision of the International Court of Justice, a court to which Israel is a party by treaty, which ruled, inter alia, that,

• “The continued presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal”;

• “This illegality relates to the entirety of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in 1967”;

• “The Gaza Strip is an integral part of the territory that was occupied by Israel in 1967”;

• “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the régime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law”;

• “Consequently, Israel has an obligation to bring an end to its presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible.”

Seth Ackerman:

Yes. And I’d add that, ideally, it should be a resolution framed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which deals with threats to international peace and security. That’s how resolutions are usually framed to make it clear that something needs to be enforced.

But in a way, what’s even more important is simply the fact that this would now be the declaratory policy of the United States. I think it’s important to have the highest body of international governance saying this. But in a sense, I’d almost say the Security Council resolution is secondary.

It’s important, in and of itself, for the United States to be saying: “This is our policy now. These are Israel’s obligations.” This would be a way of resetting the framework of US-Israel relations. To say: Israel is not in compliance with its obligations and as long as it remains non-compliant, that is going to affect the entirety of the US-Israel relationship.

Now, that doesn’t mean Israel is America’s enemy. It doesn’t mean we’re going to start a war with Israel. If there are areas where we have overlapping interests, we can cooperate with Israel in those areas.

But as long as Israel flouts its international obligations in ways that undermine American interests, it cannot have the kind of partnership with the United States that it wants, and that it’s had in past decades. And that will remain the case as long as Israel remains non-compliant.

By the way, before we get to the other proposal, let me say that if I were to redo the article, there’s a third point I would add. And this ought to be a very low bar for candidates in a Democratic presidential primary: a demand that Israel permit free and fair Palestinian elections if the Palestinians want to hold them, including in East Jerusalem.

This would probably require international monitors, because Israel has shown that it’s not able or willing to provide the kind of security in Palestinian areas that would be necessary to hold free elections. And if Marwan Barghouti chooses to submit his candidacy, if there’s a presidential election, Democratic candidates should certainly be calling for Israel to release Barghouti, who is apparently being tortured to death in one of Ben-Gvir’s prisons.

Palestinian elections are important, in this context, in part because they contrast with Rahm Emanuel’s vision, in which the territories are a Palestinian South Vietnam where the wishes of the population are treated as irrelevant. This is a clear alternative based on respecting the democratic rights of Palestinians. So, if they want to have elections, Israel must permit that, and the US must do what’s necessary to facilitate it.

Ahmed Moor:

So, what do you propose to do to bring Israel into conformity with international law? This is fairly radical.

Seth Ackerman:

Just to preface this, I have to say: I’ve always been a bit mystified at the way people on all sides of this issue talk about the settlements, as if they’re irreversible “facts on the ground.”

People say, “Oh, at this point, there may not be any solution; we may need to stop thinking about a two-state solution at all.” What I’m saying is: whatever your opinion about a one-state solution, two-state solution, it’s a myth that the settlements are irreversible. They’re reversible.

As I wrote in the article, the US president can issue an order that says anybody who takes possession of property, whether by purchasing title or entering into a lease or a rental agreement, on illegally occupied land in the Palestinian territories, will be subject to Treasury Department sanctions. Whether it’s an individual or a company, they would be put on the Specially Designated Nationals list, which is administered by the Treasury, and cut off from the international financial system.

Now, I can promise you, the minute that happens, you’re not going to see anybody, or hardly anybody, moving into those settlements anymore. In any town there are always some people moving in and some moving out. Well, now people will be moving out but nobody will be moving in. If a supermarket closes, it’s not going to be replaced by another supermarket. So — you can do the math.

For decades, the United States has been warning Israel that it regards the settlements as an obstacle to peace. For decades, the UN has been warning Israel that the settlements are illegal. Israel chose to build them anyway. That was Israel’s choice.

And by the way, if you go to the Treasury Department’s website and look at the list of entities and individuals it already sanctions, it’s a long list and, like, 80% of them are Israel’s enemies.

Ahmed Moor:

Let me ask a hard question. Why stop at the settlements? We know that the settlements are an extension of the state. We know that the armed settlers are functionally paramilitaries. They’re armed by the police, the border police, whomever.

It’s all the state. Why not say we’re going to sanction the banks which are domiciled in Israel, whose headquarters are in Tel Aviv, at the outset? Why play this gradualist game, trying to arrive at a more just outcome?

Seth Ackerman:

Well, the question I’m trying to address is: what is the best thing for people who might have some influence over the course of this presidential contest, to be demanding from the candidates?

I have no problem with sanctions on Israeli banks or other institutions. In fact, that would have to be on the table if an agenda like the one I’m proposing were actually implemented, because history shows that when the Israelis find themselves in such situations, they often escalate.

They’ll often say, “Oh, you want to take us on? Well, we can create a lot of havoc in this region. Do you, the US administration — which presumably prefers peace and quiet — do you really want to deal with the kind of mess we can create?”

And at that point, the threat of counter-escalation may be necessary. Sanctions on entities like Israel’s biggest insurance companies and banks and the Tel Aviv stock exchange — those would be a powerful deterrent to dissuade Israel from engaging in that kind of destructive behavior.

So, if we’re asking, “what is the best thing to demand from the candidates,” it seems to me that this is the most promising option, given its clear grounding in pre-existing rules and laws and policies. Sanctioning illegal settlements because they’re illegal, I think, makes a lot of sense. But I’m open to alternative ideas.

Remember, in the real world, any administration will have a lot of other things it cares about. Any president wants to have a successful presidency. The number one priority is domestic policy. The Israeli-Palestinian issue is just one issue on their plate. So, whatever Mideast initiatives they undertake, they’ll want them to be, number one, as successful as possible, and number two, to present as little of a problem, or risk — as little of a mess for them to clean up — as possible.

So, from a statecraft perspective, I think there’s an advantage, with sanctions, in leaving room for escalation, so that you can escalate in both directions, as a means of exerting coercive leverage over the Israelis, to get them to do what you want them to do, and to dissuade them from doing what you don’t want them to do.

Ahmed Moor:

Thomas Massey and Ro Khanna recently went on a show together. They’ve been doing a lot of work on accountability together. What do you make of that coalition? Is it a hopeful coalition for you, or do you watch this a little bit warily?

Seth Ackerman:

I think it’s great. You know, we recently had this vote on the Massey Amendment. In practice it was largely symbolic because it had no chance of passing. But it gave an opportunity for Democrats in the House to vote, in theory, for ending US military aid to Israel. And you ended up seeing more than 100 Democrats voting for it.

But I’m trying to send out a warning here. A lot of people are looking at these roll-call votes and thinking: “Wow, a hundred Democrats voting to end military aid to Israel! The political landscape is changing so fast!” Well, I regret to inform you that, right now, the emerging policy of the Democratic Party is the Rahm Emanuel policy. It’s not the Massey Amendment.

Right now, the policy Emanuel is outlining — a policy for teaming up with Israel to try to bring about some final, historic defeat of the Palestinians — is the emerging Democratic policy, simply by default, because no real alternative has been proposed. And yet it seems like a lot of people are under this impression that, “Gee, we’re on a glide path towards real change in US policy.” I’m saying that’s not the case.

This speech, in which Emanuel outlined this audaciously pro-Israel policy, was not perceived as such by most commentators. It was understood as marking a shift against Israel, admonishing Israel, reframing the relationship with Israel. And that’s probably how the average Democratic primary voter heard it. Because Emanuel is trying to make it sound like he’s getting tough with Israel.

People need to realize that they’re hearing one thing but the reality is something different.

Ahmed Moor:

That’s a really sobering note. Because I looked at the chorus of approbation on Twitter, the op-eds and so forth — calling this a come-to-Jesus moment or however you want to describe it — as a manufactured reaction by people who’d like to see the status quo persist. People in media, people in policy.

It didn’t occur to me that that may be how the lay Democrat, the primary voter, may react. But you’re saying that that is, possibly, how they’d react.

Seth Ackerman:

Absolutely. Here’s the thing: When Emanuel says “we need to get tough with Israel,” you don’t have to see that as, like, dishonesty or subterfuge, necessarily. It’s not purely a facade. There’s an important sense in which “getting tough” works very well for both sides, both the Israelis and the Americans.

As you know, Israel is going to have an election in October. And right now the frontrunner is Gadi Eisenkot, who represents a sort of pragmatic, centrist politics in Israel…

Ahmed Moor:

He’s known for the Dahiya Doctrine.

Seth Ackerman:

Yes, and the Dahiya Doctrine is very much a part of the mainstream national security consensus in Israel. Eisenkot was a top general, he spent his career in the IDF. He’s like a pragmatic national security centrist.

Now, if you imagine Rahm Emanuel as president or secretary of state or whatever, the things he’s proposing in this speech just wouldn’t fly with the current Netanyahu government. The current government couldn’t survive if it cooperated with that program.

But suppose there’s an alternative government led by someone like Eisenkot. My sense is that if Eisenkot reads Emanuel’s speech, he’s thinking: wow, this is an incredible deal for Israel. This is offering Israel basically a historic knockout victory against the Palestinians in exchange for very little.

The problem is, it would still be extremely controversial in Israeli public opinion, because it means the Israelis would have to negotiate with the Palestinians. It means there would be talk of Palestinian sovereignty at some point in the future. These things are no-no’s in Israeli politics.

So, while someone like Eisenkot might see this as a fantastic opportunity for Israel, the problem is, it would be very difficult, or at least a challenge, to get it through a government, given the opposition from parts of Israeli public opinion.

What better way to solve that problem than to have an American administration, led by Secretary of State Rahm Emanuel or whoever, coming over and saying: “Israel, we’ve had it with you. If you don’t change, we’re going to force you to change, we’re going to apply pressure.”

In the speech, Emanuel talked about things like imposing sanctions on “violent settlers,” or imposing sanctions on construction companies involved in “illegal settlements” (which clearly refers only to unauthorized, or future, settlements).

In that kind of situation, you can see how it could be very advantageous for, say, a Prime Minister Gadi Eisenkot to be able to tell his own public: “What can I do? My hands are tied, we have no choice. We can’t fight the American superpower. We have to accept this thing the Americans are proposing.”

You can see how that could work out very nicely for both sides. On one side, you have a Democratic administration that gets to pose as “getting tough” with Israel, which is what Democratic voters want to see.

And on the other side, you have an Israeli government that gets this fantastic deal, but it’s a deal that’s challenging in domestic political terms. And Emanuel can come over and help them deal with that political challenge by saying: “I’m the American superpower and I’m forcing you to do it.”

Ahmed Moor:

To be clear, this is not a just outcome, but it’s also a fundamentally destabilizing outcome. So, even if you don’t like the Palestinians, this is not going to resolve anything.

Seth Ackerman:

Exactly. I mean, think of it this way. The Israelis had to deal with the First Intifada, and then the Second Intifada. They crushed the Second Intifada by, like, the middle of the 2000s…

Ahmed Moor:

2005, I think, is when people think it ended.

Seth Ackerman:

Right, so 20 years ago. Then Israel had almost 20 years of relative peace and quiet. Not much trouble from the Palestinians. And during those years, they felt triumphant. Their attitude was like, this is fine; this shows we don’t have to worry about the Palestinians.

And the US went along with that. So, just days before October 7th, infamously, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, published an article in Foreign Affairs about the administration’s Middle East policy, in which he bragged about how the region was the quietest it had been in years. What a triumph, what an achievement. That was, like, October 6.

But they managed to buy themselves almost 20 years. I think Rahm Emanuel surely knows that the policy agenda he’s proposing is a long shot, in practice, even in the short term. I mean, I still don’t see how he would get the Arab states to agree to what would seem like the really unappealing prospect of being the Americans in South Vietnam, having to nation-build this state with no legitimacy, having to be in a permanent counterinsurgency campaign against the Palestinians. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

But he might manage to get back to something like the Oslo negotiations treadmill, where you have negotiations for the sake of negotiations, where the main subject of negotiations is the next round of negotiations. You could keep that going for a while. That might buy the Israelis some time. I think Emmanuel would see that as a big success. It would remove all the pressure. Maybe he could get try to get a few more Arab states to normalize relations with Israel during that time.

And I have to warn people: As long as a Democratic administration can get some Palestinian with a pulse, who’s been labeled a Palestinian leader, shaking hands every few months with some Israeli official for the cameras — with lots of activity by US officials shuttling back and forth between Ramallah and Jerusalem and so on — I promise you: you’ll see all those progressive members of Congress who in the last few years have been really frustrated with the Biden administration and with the congressional Democratic leadership, now turning around and telling their constituents: “This administration is working tirelessly for peace in the Middle East.”

And you almost couldn’t blame them. Like, if some hand-picked Palestinian “leader” is choosing to engage in these negotiations, who am I, as a member of Congress from Seattle or St. Louis or Chicago, to say this Democratic White House is wrong to pursue this policy. And the White House, meanwhile, would be saying, “don’t upset the apple cart, these negotiations are very important.” That could certainly buy Israel some time and remove the pressure.

Ahmed Moor:

And you use the word “tirelessly,” which I think is going to dog AOC for a long time, from when she described Kamala Harris as “working tirelessly for a ceasefire.”

Seth, I’m so grateful to you for your time. Thank you for presenting these ideas. I think it’s a very sharp analysis and you identify the points of risk for people who are working for justice, and ultimately stability. Because I think you get peace and stability through justice, and not by any other means.

Thanks to everyone for listening to this episode of Occupied Thoughts. Thank you, Seth.

Seth Ackerman:

Thank you.