Oct 16 2026
Join Tadhg Hickey and Nicole Jenes for NOOW LIVE — a brand new live show delivering sharp political commentary with humour, satire, and zero filter.
This week, Tadhg is joined by British-Palestinian political commentator Kieran Andrieu.
Transcript
Chapter 1: Introduction and reunion
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Okay guys, welcome back to Now Live Interviews. Very, very special guest today. I think and I will confirm with
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the wonderful young man when he comes on camera now in just a moment, but I think the last time I possibly spoke to this
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glorious human being was in an Israeli prison. I’ve been kind of scouring my mind. I think it was we were in Ket
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together. We were part of the global Sumud Flotilla in 2025.
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We will get into that. But I also want to speak to him about the constrnation that the Zionism is racism motion led by
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the Green Party UK, so-called UK, um has caused across the media landscape in Britain. I, as an Irish
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anti-imperialist, I just can’t understand it. I don’t understand what Zionism is if it’s not racism. Um, so
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maybe I’m an idiot or maybe I’m just indoctrinated. I don’t know. We’ll get into all that. I will read his bio before he comes on. I’ve decided to start doing this lately as it’s slightly
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less intense and also if I make a mistake you can’t see his face. Kieran Andrew is a British Palestinian journalist, political economist and
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activist who holds a doctorate in political economy. He has contributed to Novara Media, Al Jazera and other outlets. As I say, in 2025, he joined
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the global Simoon flotillaa to Gaza where he was detained by the Israelis and was forced to occupy a cell with me,
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which I think is is enough punishment for anyone. A Green Party member and a spokesperson for Greens for Palestine, Andreu was a prominent advocate of the
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successful Zionism is racism motion. He argues that confronting Zionism as a political ideology is essential to
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addressing the historical dispossession of Palestinians. Karen, it is my honor, it is my joy to see your beautiful face.
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How have you been?
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Well, it’s an honor and a joy to be here and I’m all the best of seeing you. And I would say that that you’re you’re almost right. We had a long phone call
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after Kio, but it was in the immediate I mean, it was like two weeks after, right? So, I think our heads were still in bits. That’s true.
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And other than that, the last time we saw each other was in prison. And I just want to say this, I don’t mean to embarrass you, but if you asked me, you
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know that old game uh dream, you know, a dream kind of dinner date or whatever or or or uh yeah, my I would
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say if you did a version of that with prison and who would you most like to have in in a prison cell with you, you
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would be in my top three. Tig I’m in the surreal position of being able to say I actually got to do that.
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So Yeah. Oh, bro. Far from embarrassing me, man.
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That’s that’s one of the highlights that’s going on my posters. You got to go to prison with this guy.
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Um, but Ditto, man. Ditto, I think, you know, without overegging it and obviously like, you know, we we’ll probably get into the fact that you’re
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Palestinian and there’s people close to you have been in those um, you know, dungeons and whatnot. Um, but it is a
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kind of a survival moment where you kind of need to get on with people and you need to try and make the best of the horrific situation that you’re in. So,
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you do I think you see a lot of people’s sort of humanity in prison. You see like where people are at mentally and um
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yeah, and I suppose we’re we’re on like like it’s pretty much been a year just over a year um since we had that experience, you know. What are your
Chapter 2: Reflections on activism
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reflections before we get into the Zionism is is racism? What are your reflections? How has that year been since? Um I know for me people had said,
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you know, are you kind of looking after yourself in the aftermath? Cuz again, what we went through is a thimble full compared to what Palestinians go through
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every day and what Lebanese go through every day. But we did go through something and we had a mantra on that mission which was it’s about Gaza. It’s about Gaza. And it was about Gaza, of
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course. But I definitely had family members saying to me afterwards, you know, are you considering that you’ve been through something there though because you just seem to be brushing it
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under the carpet. Um I have a delayed reaction mentality to things like what was your experience after? Well, so there’s a couple of things.
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First of all, you’re absolutely right about the camaraderie or solidarity that people experience in those situations. I
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would say that the first thing it did for me was give me a profound respect for people like my own brother who who
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have survived being in Ket prison among other Israeli prisons, my younger brother, Palestinian um younger brother,
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but also people in the abstract. So people like Nelson Mandela who you know it gets critiqued from the left sometimes because he didn’t share the
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resources after apartheid fell among among the black majority and that’s a legitimate criticism but but I think what is unimpeachable about somebody
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like Mandela and people who who spend lots of time in prisoners political prisoners we were there I was there for two days t you were there for a bit
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longer than I was I’m not actually sure how long you were there for. Was it four days?
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Yeah, before double the amount of time I was there. I was just under two days and it felt like two years.
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It felt like felt like two years. So, so it really sharpens the first thing is it really sharpens my respect, my profound
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respect for people who could go through that and refuse to capitulate, you know.
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Um, so that’s the first thing. I mean, I can’t two days felt like two years. I can’t imagine what 27 years, which was the amount of time that Mandela spent on Robert Island like that’s the first
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thing. The second thing is I personally don’t feel that I have had any trauma
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from what has happened and that in itself almost feels loaded to say sometimes I almost cringe saying that to people so bluntly but I’ve learned to
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say it bluntly because I think it’s the truth. Now what that means maybe it means nothing. Uh maybe it means that
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I’m in store you know there’s going to be a delayed reaction. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it just means that for some reason I haven’t had any kind
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of traumatic response to it. But uh it’s certainly what I would say is that’s certainly not a a kind of moral
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pronouncement on anybody else who spent time in there. Uh you know yeah there are lots of people who have I’m sure experienced nightmares, night terrors,
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all sorts of kind of the manifestation of all sorts of forms of trauma and that is totally legitimate. I think that there is a tendency sometimes in the
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kind of activist movement especially when there’s things like genocide going on to sort of think that we need to be that people need to be masochistic that
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they need to put themselves in order to show the Palestinians how much they love them and how much they apologize for the actions of their government. I can’t
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speak for every Palestinian, but I I’ve never met a Palestinian who wants people to suffer simply to know what they feel. Yes.
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You know, unless it’s a I don’t know, I soldier or something, you know, it’s it it doesn’t help because even if
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you’re looking at it strategically, forget the kind of monkish morality, if you’re looking at it strategically,
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each of us has a limited shelf life as an activist, you know, and a limited shelf life on this earth. If what we
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really want to do is maximize our utility as activists for Palestine, for the liberation of Palestine, then we need to make sure we understand that it’s a marathon and no sprint.
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Yeah. So interesting, bro. And actually on that, you know, the the mission that went just after us, I mean, there was
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people came back from that mission, I would say, definitely had trauma. There was people had the kicked out of them. There was rapes. Um, at what point
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then do you feel like it gets to the point where you are leading people into a sort of a masochistic situation? You
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know, and this is a real tough one for me because I have friends who are, you know, still part of the movement. I
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absolutely respect the movement and certainly sort of support the foundation for the movement that was going a lot
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longer than you or I were were on a boat to Gaza. But if the brutality escalates, which it feels like it is escalating, at
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what point then do you say, “Well, actually, we’re just sending people to be brutalized, and that’s not actually what Palestinians want at all.” What’s your what’s your take?
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My view is is I was against the last mission. That doesn’t mean I was against the people who did it. I I wanted to throw my weight and support
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little that I have, but I wanted to throw it all behind the people, the individuals who went on that mission.
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And most of the vast majority of them if not you know almost all of them were doing it for the right reasons and I love and support them and I value what
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they did and it’s only my opinion but I think the weight the strategic
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weight of gain and loss was in favor of the latter on the on the last mission and that for that reason I was I didn’t
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feel great about it and part of the strategic calculus around that is of course the danger the harm to activists
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Then there’s other questions about money. You know, could the money be better spent elsewhere? That doesn’t just mean sending it to to Gaza and to
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Palestine through kind of charitable channels, although that’s part of it. I mean, I think that is a serious question needs to be asked,
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but also, you know, are there better direct action strategies? You know, could we have put the money into closing down ports and, you know, breaking the
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supply chains of genocide and of the war machine? I think those are really, really important questions. And I think I think once you get into a kind of
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rigid, you know, you you set up an institution, you create path dependencies, the thing becomes rigid.
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The strategy risks becoming rigid. We have to keep doing flutilla. We have to keep doing flutilla because you’ve got all that accumulated institutional
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memory and knowledge. So people want to do the same thing over and over again because it’s what they know by now. And that’s a risk because I think every
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single mission, no mission is beyond reproach. every single mission, every strategy needs to be continually reappraised and reappraised in the
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material conditions of the day. And I think I I would say this, but actually I wouldn’t. I think I I like to think I’d be very brutally honest. I think our mission was justifiable strategically.
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And I think it but I think it actually it it kind of manifested itself in such a way that actually the mission that
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came several months afterwards was to some extent obsolete or redundant and that’s for various reasons. That’s not just because of our mission. It’s for
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various shifts in whatever the discourse and public attention you know the need for money elsewhere the need for resources elsewhere. So I think I think
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a forever flatillaa strategy was never something I I wanted to subscribe to.
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Yes, it might be that in a year’s time there’s there’s justification for another one. It might it might be that there’s never justification for another
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one. U but I think all of these things need to be rigorously assessed strategically.
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Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating, Rob. Um okay, so on the Zionism is racism front. Um,
Chapter 3: The Zionism as racism motion
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you’re a humble guy, but you’re you’re right in the middle of it. Like, can you just take me back to, you know, when this was first mooted and maybe bringing
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it all the way? I’m sure it must have been an exciting sort of experience. I And I’d imagine it took out it took an awful lot out of you, but it would be a
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very exciting sort of thing to be involved in to try and bring, correct me if I’m wrong, but the first sort of officially anti-ionist Green Party in
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Europe. That’s where you were trying to bring your party. So, so take me to the beginnings and then maybe we’ll talk about the the fanfare and hysteria that has now sort of Yeah.
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about it.
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Yeah. Um well, so I should say that I’ve come in relatively late in the day on this. Um there were people who have been working on this within the Green Party since 2024.
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Um they form the steering committees of the Greens for Palestine caucus um which
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is a influential caucus within the Green Party. team players, but obviously the the clue is in the name. They have a
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focus on Palestine. Yeah. And they’ve been working on this since 2024. I came in relatively late in the day. Um and I
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can’t take credit for everything they did. So, but what they did was they crafted a motion through, you know, a
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kind of collective input. It’s a motion that you anybody can read it online. It’s now
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party policy. Of course, it simply acknowledges that Zionism and Jewishness or Judaism or both are completely
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distinct from one another. That Zionism is a political ideology predicated on the displacement of an indigenous
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population. That that is how it has operated in the real world. So it’s not just a kind of theoretical vacuum. Yes.
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Which I think is really key that that the Palestinians are the victims of this ideology first and foremost
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and that um and that that that the solution is not for two for there to be two states, one built on Zionism and one
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not built on Zionism. The the solution is there for for is for there to be one state in all of historical Palestine in
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which a very radical thing is done. It’s called one person, one vote.
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And this is the point I kept making to all the journalists who who you know point their jab their finger at you and say you don’t want Israel to exist. So what happens to all the people? What
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happens to all the Israelis? You say I mean I’ve said to them on multiple occasions, you know, Europeans are always banging on about their great achievements and their gifts to
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humanity. And I’m not very oame with all of that. But but let’s say for a second I am. I’ll grant you that you invented
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democracy. How’s that? I’ll grant you you invented democracy for a moment.
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Okay. So take that and then simply map it onto all of historical Palestine.
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Radical. Very radical idea. And they don’t tend to know what to say.
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So yeah, it’s very simple. It’s a it’s a very well-worded, pretty straightforward motion. And you know, I’m heartened to
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hear what you say about being an Irish anti-imperialist that it’s seeming a complete no-brainer. A complete no-brainer.
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Well, the thing that has kind of blown my mind, right, so I’ve done I’ve done a little bit of research now before coming on to to speak with you because I was
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trying to get to the nub of the hysteria. And again, I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but I I just seem to be
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unable to get past the fact that the hysteria and all the push back really uh
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from Zionist quarters conflates Zionism with Judaism. So, the whole hysteria on talk TV, like the whole hysteria
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everywhere, it wasn’t just talk TV. I mean like you’ve got like opeds in the Guardian talking about how dangerous this motion is. But the danger seems to
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be that this is a danger to Jewish people and yet again I think Greens for
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Jew Jewish Greens about about 50% of them would support the motion and 50% wouldn’t. So, the 50% of people who do
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support the motion and view Zionism as racism, which to me, again, like we’re saying off camera, from an Irish
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anti-imperialist perspective, what is Zionism if it’s not racism? If at its very foundation,
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it needed Palestinians, the Arab population to be base minimum dispossessed, and if they were kind of
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fighting back in any way, they were getting slaughtered. Like as you beautifully put it in that interview that I referenced earlier, I think it was with the news agents. You said if it
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was your family, you know, if it was your friends, if it was your community that had had this violence meated outward for the last 100 years, it would
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bring you to a crossroads, I think was the way you put it. And you’d have you’d kind of consider, well, the people doing this, they need to either then be sort
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of indoctrinated and and thus racist or they’re evil, which is a really interesting sort of philosophical debate. But but yeah so just just talk
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about that then you know for me it’s just a conflation issue again. Yeah, I think the criticism falls into three
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categories, right? So number one, you have the kind of Caroline Lucas line which is that there are multiple
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Zionism. Sism means different things people.
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The second one is the kind of left there is a left backlash within the party and
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beyond the party which basically says this is not strategic electorally. We’re going to compromise votes. We’re going
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to, you know, there’s a bi-election coming up. This is speaking at the time of conference. There’s a bi-election coming up. Yeah. Our party leaders standing in it. You’re going to
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that up. There’s going to be, you know, electoral price to pay for it. So, those are the first two. The third one is is the slightly crudder. The one that you
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outline is the crudder kind of, and this is the way they tend to put it now, is that is that it’s not that anti-ionism
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is necessarily anti-semitism. They’ve kind of moved on from that because I think they understand that that especially after a genocide really isn’t
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going to hold. Now what they say is twothirds of British Jews say call themselves Zionist. Are you saying that
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they are all racist? That’s the question that’s put to us. Right.
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So I’m just going to quickly go through each of those to ask your questions as well. So on the on the multiple Zionisms thing, we know we know that that’s not true.
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It’s it’s I think comforting revisionism for people who you know Carol Lucas was
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my mom’s MP for many years Brighton pavilion she would turn up for the Palestine demos and she was wearing her she would you know at conference she was
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wearing her free Palestine page I think the way she’s behaved conse subsequent to the conference has been really quite
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disappointing around the leadership around Zaplansky I think she’s been it’s been very disappointing to say the least But but prior to conference, I wouldn’t
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have said, “Oh, Carol Lucas is a Zionist or anything like that.” But I have to say this, she is just completely and utterly wrong about the multiple
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Zionisms thing. It’s incumbent upon anybody who makes that argument to show us where these multiple Zionisms are.
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Who are they great? Who are they? Who are their intellectual progenitors? Who came up with these alternative Zionisms? Where have they ever been manifest?
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Where have they ever been real?
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What what difference have they created for Palestinians? What difference have they created for Jews? The reality is,
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and we don’t have time for a very long laborious history lesson, but in its DNA, in its bone marrow, from the very
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earliest moments that Zionist political ideology, both in theory and in practice, Zionism has been explicitly
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predicated on the removal of the indigenous population of what they consider to be, they being the Zionists, historical Judea and Samaria and the
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surrounding area, right? historical Palestine and people would say they try and be clever about it. They say, "Oh,
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but but but no, but you you know it was about Jewish safety." Nobody nobody
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nobody remotely moral or sane denies that anti-semitism was a scourge, but it was a European scourge. It was a
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European vial of poison, a European evil that the Palestinians were forced to pay for. And so it’s totally disingenuous to
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conflate that with Zionism. Zionism, it’s true that in about 1903, there was a near split within the Zionist movement. Some people said,
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"Well, we can’t we can’t we can’t have a state there because there are 600,000 plus Arabs as they called us,
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Palestinians." And that so we need to go we need to go somewhere else. And these this was a a very brief moment. They were called territorialists.
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Territorialists. And they, you know, there was some, they looked at parts of Australia, they looked at parts of UK. Argentina, was there? Argentina was one of them as well.
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Modern day Kenya, which was Uganda, then it died at the wayside. It faded at the wayside of history within minutes really
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in the lifespan of the ideology. the the hedgemonic Zionism, the vastly dominant Zionism, the one that won very very
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quickly and the one that’s always existed ever since it existed before is the one that views the indigenous
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Palestinians as in the words of the father of Zidus and Fidor that’s all barbarians you know savage
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people that would be happily iterate anywhere inde indifferentiated Arabs who could just be put into
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or Syria or Iraq who wouldn’t miss their home because their itinerant and they don’t have a connection with the land and they’re not full three-dimensional
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people. In any case, that has always been indivisible and inseparable from Zionism. And anybody who wants to deny that is living in cloud cuckoo lands.
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It’s just fantasy. The other point about ideology and sort of purity of concept stuff is
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scholars still can’t agree what fascism is. You know, people have been arguing about what the anatomy of fascism is for
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hundred years. And there are very, very clever, very, very learned, very, very well- read scholars who have been bickering over this for 100 years. But
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none of them dispute that fascism is racist.
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And the same goes for Zionism. You know, you can you can say that uh in the vast abstract, you know, the great cosmic
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abstract, Max Norau thought we should priv privilege this aspect of Zionism over this aspect, which Zangil thought
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we should. This is just so obscure. It’s got absolutely no bearing on reality.
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The reality of Zionism is that it was absolutely fundamental to the creation of the Zionist movement which was
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indivisible from the dislocation and displacement of the Palestinians and the Zionist movement itself and Zionism
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among the Pittigut was indivisible from the creation of the state of Israel which was predicated on the ethnic cleansing of 3/4 of a million of uh my
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ancestors and their and their ethnic community and Thereafter the manifestations of Zionism are the manifestations of the state of Israel.
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You know the two things can’t be separated. So to say that there are multiple Zionisms is as good as saying there are multiple fascisms.
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The so that is so well laid out. And I would say that the third sort of um you
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know the third aspect of the hysteria the third element of push back being
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it’s making Jews unsafe has become the most predominant one though like it’s the least sort of intelligible one and
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it’s the least nuanced one but but from the British establishment like right up to Andy Burnham saying this motion is
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anti-semitic that again seems to be the only manner of getting this sort of, you know, the
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great unwashed as they would see it to kind of get behind the idea that this guy is not fit to to lead the party anymore and this party has now become
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like, you know, sort of uh errant in some way cuz I again I think like Andy Burnham put it in a way of you know we
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won’t be doing sort of deals we won’t sort of you know even countenance um coalition with this party as long as it
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is this kind of racist anti-semitic party just mad stuff. Amazing coming from a party that’s up to its neck in it um with you know
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with gen genocidal complicity you know I mean I mean we the idea that people who very
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recently were quite blightly selling arms and are still selling arms and are still sharing military intelligence
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which is resulting in the deaths of Palestinians in the context of a genocide that those people can then say
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to the only Jewish leader of a political party in Britain, by the way. I mean, Andy Bernham ain’t Jewish, as far as I’m aware.
24:29
24 minutes, 29 seconds
Uh, Nigel Farage certainly isn’t Jewish, as far as I’m aware.
24:32
24 minutes, 32 seconds
Uh, Kevin Bnock isn’t Jewish, as far as I’m aware.
24:36
24 minutes, 36 seconds
U, Ed Davyy isn’t Jewish. Zaplansky is, and there they all are lining up to tell
24:43
24 minutes, 43 seconds
him what anti-semitism is. It’s absolutely extraordinary. Well, I think what’s so powerful about it as
Chapter 4: Challenging the establishment
24:51
24 minutes, 51 seconds
well though is that like it cuts through all the And I feel like I I remember reading this somewhere which has gone out of my head exactly where
25:00
25 minutes
now, but they were kind of saying, you know, that Zionism is founded on obfiscation. It it can only survive by
25:07
25 minutes, 7 seconds
sort of getting you in the grasp of these discussions so that you’re not looking at the fundamentals of what of it and and the consequences of it. as
25:15
25 minutes, 15 seconds
you say, right from the start, anybody can go go back to Palestinian scholars and indeed Israeli scholars like Elon
25:22
25 minutes, 22 seconds
Papape and the very foundations of of Zionism are about this type of of violence and dehumanization as you say.
25:30
25 minutes, 30 seconds
But I think this is my own personal take is the hysteria from the British establishment now to me smacks of a
25:38
25 minutes, 38 seconds
genuine panic because if this motion sort of inspires other motions like it um around Europe
25:47
25 minutes, 47 seconds
and and in Britain, it will sort of force people’s hand that the idea of liberal Zionism is was was always a
25:55
25 minutes, 55 seconds
fantasy, but now in a time of genocide, it’s just not a coherent option anymore. Totally. And I totally agree with you.
26:03
26 minutes, 3 seconds
And the next the point of this motion is not just to draw attention to the Green Party and say, “Look at us. We’re really radical.” The point of it is to
26:10
26 minutes, 10 seconds
normalize the notion that Zionism is racism. That’s the whole point because and the reason that that’s worthwhile
26:18
26 minutes, 18 seconds
and this kind of joins or speaks to the point that the kind of second criticism, the the left if you like criticism, which is that this isn’t electorally
26:26
26 minutes, 26 seconds
viable. There are all sorts of problems with that. We can come on to them in a moment. But but but the I think the point that that people maybe are missing
26:35
26 minutes, 35 seconds
like I’ve heard it from people on the left who are against this motion in Britain who have said I can’t imagine there are many people in Ireland on the left who are against this motion.
26:44
26 minutes, 44 seconds
No. But there are some in England and Wales and maybe Scotland who say you
26:52
26 minutes, 52 seconds
know we are proudly anti- genocide party. We’re proudly anti-thnic cleansing party. We’re proudly critical of the state of Israel. We’re proudly pro propal.
27:00
27 minutes
But this is all Zionist stuff. This is what Zanism is.
27:03
27 minutes, 3 seconds
This is it. So, so why can’t we just focus on the material things like this, this, and this thinking that it’s purely discursive or abstract. I think you’re quite right. I totally agree with you.
27:11
27 minutes, 11 seconds
What that misses? And what that frustratingly misses is that all of those things are extrusions. They are
27:21
27 minutes, 21 seconds
byproducts of a state which labors under an ideology which gives them as far as they’re concerned license to dehumanize.
27:31
27 minutes, 31 seconds
Yes. To the extent that they commit genocide.
27:33
27 minutes, 33 seconds
And so all of this kind of all of this kind of like Ed Milliban style thing of of sanctioning the settlements, you
27:42
27 minutes, 42 seconds
know, I’m not against sanctioning settlements, but it’s like it’s like attacking a symptom rather than the gore.
27:47
27 minutes, 47 seconds
Yeah. Yeah. The whole point is you’ve got to you’ve got to you’ve got to strike the cause. And I think you and I both know that the whole project of the
27:56
27 minutes, 56 seconds
state of Israel in its nature because of the things we’ve discussed and described is is rotten. It’s wretched. It’s inherently a
28:04
28 minutes, 4 seconds
part state. It’s built on ethnoism and ethno supremacism. It’s built on dispossession and ethnic cleansing. It’s
28:11
28 minutes, 11 seconds
never going to be reformed. So, so actually the only thing that is going to precipitate, you know, a democratic
28:20
28 minutes, 20 seconds
solution for everybody in the region and I in include Israelis in that a democratic truly democratic solution for everybody in the region is the collapse
28:28
28 minutes, 28 seconds
of the state of Israel as presently constituted. And the way that you do that is through isolation. You isolate it politically, you isolate it
28:36
28 minutes, 36 seconds
diplomatically, you isolate it economically, and you isolate it culturally. and that expedites the
28:42
28 minutes, 42 seconds
process of collapse that leads to their the uh clearing of the way for something
28:49
28 minutes, 49 seconds
quite different namely democracy for everybody there. I think what some people on the left are failing to understand is that you cannot just be
28:57
28 minutes, 57 seconds
like let’s attack genocide, let’s attack the ethnic cleansing, let’s attack the XY Z. You’re you’re you’re kind of, as I say, fighting the symptoms. What you
29:05
29 minutes, 5 seconds
need to do is strike at the heart of the cause. And the cause is that there was an ethnostate created that behaves as
29:12
29 minutes, 12 seconds
ethnostates do. And until that ethnostate is isolated through things like acknowledging that Zionism is
29:19
29 minutes, 19 seconds
racism and then and then normalizing that seeing that ripple through country after country, political party after
29:27
29 minutes, 27 seconds
political party. Until that happens, I think we’re going to have to carry on fighting symptoms. I don’t want to do that for very much longer. Thank you very much.
Chapter 5: Media narratives and polling
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29 minutes, 34 seconds
Yes. Yeah. We’ve done enough of that.
29:38
29 minutes, 38 seconds
Yes. Um, so, so tell me what is the mainstream media getting wrong? Right. Because if
29:45
29 minutes, 45 seconds
you have access to the internet, as I proudly do, right? And if I Google Zionism is racism, Green Party UK, you’ll get BBC News. You’ll get even, as
29:54
29 minutes, 54 seconds
I was saying to you off camera, really bizarre piece on Al Jazzer uh, with no Palestinian on on the panel discussing
30:01
30 minutes, 1 second
this. And the basic thrust of it is that you know whatever you feel about the the sort of philosophical
30:08
30 minutes, 8 seconds
basis of you know declaring Zionism as racism and whatever you feel about anti-ionism the one thing that they’re
30:14
30 minutes, 14 seconds
all sure from the talk TV to even Al Jazer BBC news is that the Green Party is because of this right that’s
30:23
30 minutes, 23 seconds
the the one thing that they’re very clear on the that this leader who’s brought the Green Party from kind of relative political obscurity
30:31
30 minutes, 31 seconds
into like a mainstream leftwing force is just absolutely destroyed by this motion. So, give me give me your take on that.
30:39
30 minutes, 39 seconds
Well, they wouldn’t be they wouldn’t be there wouldn’t be a consensus on that if if if it were true.
30:46
30 minutes, 46 seconds
They wouldn’t need it. They wouldn’t need to go on there and say, "Right, they’re trying to make it a self-fulfilling pro prophecy. That’s
30:52
30 minutes, 52 seconds
what they’re trying to do." And I first of all, there’s there’s there’s zero evidence to that effect. There is
31:00
31 minutes
evidence actually very recent Yuggov evidence hardly a Marxist polling hardly hardly a Marxist sephological
31:09
31 minutes, 9 seconds
organization there is Yugov polling that shows that nothing has changed in terms of the Green popularity it’s polling at
31:16
31 minutes, 16 seconds
about 9%. Is 9% correct? No. I’d like it I’d like to see it pull higher and I think it will. I think it will. But but
31:24
31 minutes, 24 seconds
the the key point is is not, you know, is the Green Party doing well overall.
31:28
31 minutes, 28 seconds
It’s it’s has this motion impacted the Green Party adversely in its electoral standing or in its polling. The latest
31:37
31 minutes, 37 seconds
evidence suggests it hasn’t actually nothing’s changed. So I think I think the the burden of proof and this goes
31:45
31 minutes, 45 seconds
beyond the usual suspects to those on the left that are saying, “Well, we support the idea that Zionism is racism.” Of course it is. But but but we
31:53
31 minutes, 53 seconds
don’t need to have this conversation right now. It’s not going to play well with the electorate. Those guys have to produce evidence. I think if they
32:01
32 minutes, 1 second
believe if if they’re really sincere that they believe that Zionism is racism and that the only problem is electoralism and electoral strategy they
32:08
32 minutes, 8 seconds
really it’s incumbent upon them to produce evidence that this has actually impacted the Green Party standing either with the wider electorate or within the
32:16
32 minutes, 16 seconds
party i.e. its hemorrhaged members no doubt some people will have left some people will have joined the the the figures on that haven’t settled yet. The
32:24
32 minutes, 24 seconds
owl of Manurva hasn’t flied out. I thought I’d say that now it’s because it’s now your show is now. I thought I’d try and get a reference to an owl in
32:31
32 minutes, 31 seconds
there. The owl of Manurva hasn’t flown out yet on that. We don’t know.
32:35
32 minutes, 35 seconds
Beautifully beautifully done. I’m a big fan. I’m a big fan.
32:40
32 minutes, 40 seconds
And so, but truly though, you know, uh the the burn the proof is on them.
32:46
32 minutes, 46 seconds
It’s really on them. And so far, they haven’t met that burden the proof. And I don’t think they will. I think even if there is a small debt, I think, you
32:53
32 minutes, 53 seconds
know, we have this conversation in six months or a year. I think that everything will have will have changed.
33:00
33 minutes
I think the conversation will have moved on, but that that the idea that Zionism is racism will be more normalized and uh
33:08
33 minutes, 8 seconds
I think that the Green Party is suffering at the moment in the polls simply because the the the country has a
33:16
33 minutes, 16 seconds
new prime minister and that prime minister at the moment is riding a high.
33:20
33 minutes, 20 seconds
He’s in his high period. Um, so, so it’s extremely difficult and everybody acknowledges that. I mean, everybody
33:29
33 minutes, 29 seconds
acknowledges that Andy Berlin right now, wrongly in my view, but but what do I have to say about it?
33:35
33 minutes, 35 seconds
Andy Berm at the moment is extremely popular. Maybe it’s anybody but Kier type thing or maybe it’s just the the kind of good grace that somebody coming
33:44
33 minutes, 44 seconds
into a job for the first six months tends to get. Um but one way or another regardless of the
33:51
33 minutes, 51 seconds
reasons you know there is this kind of big overriding structural factor which is depressing the Green Party’s polling
33:58
33 minutes, 58 seconds
which is that there is a new prime minister. He’s shiny and new. He’s popular with a lot of the electorate.
34:04
34 minutes, 4 seconds
Give it time. I think that polish will come off.
Chapter 6: Closing and future book
34:07
34 minutes, 7 seconds
Yes. Yes. Karen, final question because I promised you a tight half an hour and I’m I’m I’m on the verge of lying to you. But I h I have lied to you cuz
34:14
34 minutes, 14 seconds
we’re over the half an hour. But um uh but guys, I hope you’re enjoying this interview. It’s not it’s not every show that you get guests like just easily and
34:23
34 minutes, 23 seconds
breezily referencing Hegel. Like you don’t you don’t get that just you you won’t get that on the BBC. Um you maybe
34:31
34 minutes, 31 seconds
you used to but um so you have written a book though my friend. Would you would you mind telling us a little bit about about your
34:40
34 minutes, 40 seconds
book and when it comes to coming out like sure we’ll talk again closer to the time. I’d love that. I’d love that.
34:44
34 minutes, 44 seconds
Give me uh give me a give us give us a little sense of it though, please.
34:47
34 minutes, 47 seconds
Well, if anybody’s ever read Elan Pepe’s 10 myths about Israel. It’s by the same publisher and it was conceived
34:55
34 minutes, 55 seconds
by the my publisher who’s a very clever man. He he conceived of it as he said to me, why don’t you do a 10 myths about
35:02
35 minutes, 2 seconds
Palestine? So the concept is the idea is a kind of conceptual mirror image of Elan’s book but by a Palestinian i.e. me.
35:10
35 minutes, 10 seconds
Now beyond that I have to say you all the myths are mine. The style is very different to Elan’s. Huge respect to
35:17
35 minutes, 17 seconds
Elan Pupp one of the best historians of our era but it’s quite a different book but basically the concept is is is very
35:24
35 minutes, 24 seconds
similar. So it’s called 10 myths about Palestine. Um, and I’ve kind of organized the myths in such a way that
35:32
35 minutes, 32 seconds
allows for a relatively chronological unpacking of the history. So, the first myth, for example, is Palestinians don’t exist, which allows me to go back 4,000 years.
35:41
35 minutes, 41 seconds
Um, yes.
35:42
35 minutes, 42 seconds
And the last myth is um, history began on October 7th, or Gaza began on October 7th, which allows right
35:51
35 minutes, 51 seconds
up to the present. Right. So, there you have the whole sweep of history in 40,000 cool words.
35:57
35 minutes, 57 seconds
That is mad. And the way that the writing of that has sort of paralleled what’s going on in the Green Party is mad. Like that must have been some
36:05
36 minutes, 5 seconds
journey for you. Like you’re writing you’re basically writing your argument for convincing probably people around you in a way. This Yeah.
36:13
36 minutes, 13 seconds
It was helpful. It was helpful in that way because although as somebody whose dad is Palestinian, I have always been well acquainted with the history. It’s
36:22
36 minutes, 22 seconds
allowed me to go into a level of depth that I hadn’t been, you know, accustomed to a year ago or whatever. And it came at the right time with regards to the motion. You’re absolutely right.
36:34
36 minutes, 34 seconds
Kieran Andreu, an absolute pleasure. I will speak to you again very soon. And I hope to be in prison with you again someday. I hope to see you soon. I hope together.
36:43
36 minutes, 43 seconds
I also hope we have a dinner party, you know, so that we can test both of those. Oh, I love it. I love it. Thanks, bro.