In this wide-ranging conversation I spoke with Hakham Esther Azar—a Syrian American rabbi, social worker, writer, and educator raised in Brooklyn's Arab-Jewish community—to explore the psychological, historical, and spiritual foundations of Zionism and the systems of domination that sustain it.

Esther offers a deep framework rooted in collective shame, trauma, colonialism, and identity. She shares her own journey from growing up in a deeply Zionist environment to questioning everything she had been taught, while reflecting on Arab-Jewish identity, Christian supremacy, Western empire, and why she believes Zionism ultimately reproduces antisemitic logic rather than protecting Jews from it.

This is a fantastic episode and I learned a lot. Multiple listens probably warranted!

For this episode we are drawing attention and support for The Sumud School, a grassroots educational lifeline for displaced Palestinian children in Gaza.

HAKHAM ESTHER AZAR
WEBSITE
INSTAGRAM

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In this episode of The Thin Veil, Ezra speaks with Israeli writer and activist Einat Temkin—a former United Nations communications officer (2008–2025) and former IDF member—about her journey from growing up in Israel in a liberal Zionist family to becoming an outspoken anti-Zionist Jewish voice.

Together, they discuss Israeli society, military indoctrination, Zionism, Hasbara, the decline of the Israeli left, current Israeli politics, and why Einat believes a single democratic state is the only just long-term solution for both Israelis and Palestinians.

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EINAT'S ONE DEMOCRATIC STATE POST

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• (00:00) - "The Israeli Left Has Disappeared"
• (00:00) - Chapter 2
• (01:00) - Introduction
• (00:00) - Chapter 4
• (02:35) - Growing Up Israeli
• (00:00) - Chapter 6
• (05:35) - Indoctrination & Israeli Education
• (00:00) - Chapter 8
• (09:45) - The IDF, Oslo & Rabin's Assassination
• (00:00) - Chapter 10
• (12:45) - Leaving Israel & Working at the United Nations
• (00:00) - Chapter 12
• (15:00) - Why I Became Anti-Zionist
• (00:00) - Chapter 14
• (18:10) - Inside Israeli Politics Today
• (00:00) - Chapter 16
• (20:00) - Has the Israeli Left Disappeared?
• (00:00) - Chapter 18
• (25:40) - Dr. Abu Safiya & Gaza's Medical Crisis
• (00:00) - Chapter 20
• (28:30) - Standing Together & Liberal Zionism
• (00:00) - Chapter 22
• (38:25) - What Is Hasbara?
• (00:00) - Chapter 24
• (41:45) - Debunking Common Zionist Arguments
• (00:00) - Chapter 26
• (46:45) - Section 219: US–Israel Military Integration
• (00:00) - Chapter 28
• (50:55) - Can Israelis Accept One Democratic State?
• (00:00) - Chapter 30
• (54:20) - What Can Americans Do?
• (00:00) - Chapter 32
• (55:45) - Closing Thoughts

What happens when a Palestinian writer and an anti-Zionist Jew agree on the destination—but disagree about some of the language and tactics we use to get there?

In this conversation, I sit down with Palestinian American filmmaker, writer, and speaker Mo Husseini for a thoughtful and challenging discussion, filled with agreement, but also some respectful tension.

We explore Palestinian identity, Zionism, Jewish historical trauma, empathy, antisemitism, the weaponization of antisemitism, as well as "the weaponization of the weaponization of antisemitism" (you read that right), power, language, and what genuine liberation might look like for both Palestinians and Israelis.

This isn't a debate. It's an honest conversation between two people committed to justice who occasionally disagree about strategy, framing, and communication.

Mo's Website

The Path Forward - 2024 Film on Israel and Palestine Directed by Julie Cohen and Mo Husseini

Mo's Substack

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Rabbi Cat Zavis is a spiritual leader, activist, attorney, and rabbi at Beyt Tikkun — an anti-Zionist Jewish congregation in the Bay Area.

In this episode, we explore the process of untangling Judaism from Zionism — and what it means to reconstruct Jewish moral and spiritual life in the aftermath of deep political and theological rupture.

We discuss her personal journey through social justice work, Jewish education, Palestinian solidarity organizing, and rabbinic leadership, as well as the broader tensions inside contemporary Jewish life.

Topics include:

- childhood moral formation and empathy
- confronting Palestine within Jewish institutions
- "liberal Zionism" and its limits
- fear, propaganda, and institutional pressure
- Jewish identity, empire, and political theology
- moral courage, repair, and spiritual reconstruction

BEYT TIKKUN SYNAGOGUE
https://beyttikkun.org/

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Yassar Dahbour is a Palestinian refugee from Haifa, a Sacramento-based political organizer, president of the Palestine American League, and co-founder of the Sacramento Regional Coalition for Palestinian Rights.

Born in a refugee camp in Syria after his family was expelled from Haifa during the Nakba, Yassar grew up surrounded by Palestinian political life, refugee memory, and the dream of return. His father, Ahmad Dahbour, was a renowned Palestinian poet whose work was shaped by exile, revolution, and the longing for Palestine.

In this episode of The Thin Veil, Yassar shares his family’s story of displacement from Haifa, his childhood in a refugee camp, his father’s poetry and role in the Palestinian movement, and what it felt like to finally visit Palestine using an American passport.

We also discuss why Oslo did not offer return for Palestinians from Haifa, the experience of being detained at Ben-Gurion Airport, the destruction of his family’s apartment and archive in Gaza, the collapse of Western media narratives, and what a free Palestine means to him.

At the center of the conversation is a story from Yassar’s grandmother: when the children cried in the refugee camp, she would tell them that tomorrow, a bus would come and take them back to Haifa.

YASSAR'S ORGANIZATIONS
PALESTINIAN AMERICAN LEAGUE
SACRAMENTO REGIONAL COALITION FOR PALESTINIAN RIGHTS

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Filmmaker, musician, writer, and abolitionist Matthew Solomon joins Ezra to discuss his new documentary Seeds for Liberation, a film that centers Palestine while tracing the connections between Zionism, U.S. imperialism, policing, Black liberation, the Chicano movement, Indigenous resistance, and broader anti-colonial struggle.

Matthew’s previous documentary, Reimagining Safety, explored abolitionist approaches to policing, prisons, crisis response, and community care. In this conversation, we talk about how that work shaped his understanding of Palestine, what he had to unlearn as an anti-Zionist Jew, and why the fight for Palestinian liberation is inseparable from other struggles against empire, racial capitalism, militarism, and colonial violence.

We also discuss Jewish deprogramming after October 7th, the limits of conditional solidarity, the question of who Seeds for Liberation is for, and what real safety might look like beyond police, prisons, punishment, and fear.

Seeds for Liberation Film
Reimagining Safety Film
Matthew Solomon on Instagram

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Julie Wolk is a facilitator, strategist, and creator of Ashkenazi Ancestral Journeys, a spiritual pilgrimage and heritage program that brings Ashkenazi Jews to Poland to reconnect with ancestral lands, Jewish memory, diasporic culture, grief, and political histories that Zionist narratives often teach us to bypass.

In this conversation, Julie and Ezra discuss what it means to turn toward Eastern Europe not only as a site of Holocaust memory and “the dark place,” but as a place of Jewish life, culture, language, resistance, food, medicine, prayer, and song. They talk about March of the Living and the weaponization of Holocaust trauma, the Jewish Labor Bund and the concept of doikayt, the erasure of Ashkenazi culture through Zionism, and the possibility of building a Judaism rooted not in nationalism or fear, but in solidarity, memory, and accountability.

At the heart of the conversation is a question Julie’s work asks with urgency: can Jewish historical trauma be metabolized rather than weaponized — softening us into empathy and “never again for anyone,” rather than hardening us into victimhood, nationalism, militarism, and the dispossession of Palestinians?

Julie is also the Co-Founder, former Co-Director, and current Board President of Wilderness Torah, now Adamah-SF. Earlier in her career, she worked as an environmental and social justice organizer with USPIRG and Rainforest Action Network.

More about Julie Wolk
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Learn about Ashkenazi Ancestral Journeys

Additional Resources Mentioned

Molly Crabapple - Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of The Jewish Bund

Naomi Klein - How Israel Has Made Trauma a Weapon of War

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