Transcript - America This Week, May 3, 2024: Gaza, Columbia, and More, in "I&P"

Walter and Matt finally talk about a long-avoided subject. Plus, John Updike's "A&P"

Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: All right, so we’re going to dive into our favorite subject, Israel and Palestine and the protests here in the States, and a number of things that have happened in rapid succession that are alarming, including a bill that just passed in Congress that seems remarkable on many levels. But maybe we should just start with the whole question of why we haven’t talked about this bill so much or this issue so much in the past. Do you want to start? I’m happy to go there, but...

Walter Kirn: Well, yeah. I’ll-

Matt Taibbi: I think we feel similarly. Yeah.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. I’ll let you start.

Matt Taibbi: Okay. So, I’ve seen a lot of criticism. I’ve seen people going after me online and on social media talking about how I must be afraid, even as an independent, to talk about this issue, because I’m afraid of Israel. Like, are you kidding? Fuck Israel. I’m not afraid to talk about any issue. And then there’s a secondary thing that comes after that where people think, “Well, it must be a financial motivation. You make money from subscribers, you’re afraid to offend X number of people who subscribe to you, so you don’t want to talk about the issue and on this issue, you’re going to lose some people who feel very strongly about it no matter what your opinion is.” But that’s not really true either. For somebody like me, the way you lose financially in commentary, as well as journalism, is to be wrong about something.

Walter Kirn: Correct.

Matt Taibbi: And the big reason that I don’t talk about Israel and Palestine is because I don’t fully understand it. I can react emotionally to seeing the bombing of civilians, as well as the terrorist attacks, but there’s a hundred years of history, there’s a million moving parts. There are things that have happened in the last 20 years, efforts to construct a two-state solution that have failed, the introduction of Hamas as a player into all this. There’s just tons of background that I don’t know, I don’t feel on solid ground talking about a lot of these things. So, it’s just not something that I willy-nilly feel like diving into. This job is about being careful with words. And so when I have something I feel confident in saying, I’ll say it. That’s the reason that I don’t like this issue.

That, and there’s another element to the story which I think is unique, which is that the people on both sides of this issue, I don’t like the way either of them talk about the other. And there is an emotional tenor to this entire affair that makes it difficult to even ask questions without people accusing you of being on the wrong side, and I don’t like that. And we’re going to get into some of that, because we’re going to talk about what’s happened with the protests here in the States. And you can see how the attitudes around debating this issue have turned in a dark direction all around, and that has made me nervous. I’ve been assigned to cover this story a couple of times and have always been leery of the way activists involved with this issue talk about it. And so it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t feel confident about the history. I’ve never been there. So that’s part of it for me. But Walter, how about you?

Walter Kirn: Well, first of all, the show is called America This Week, not Israel this week. But I think we’ve decided to cover this, because that has come home to America with these protests.

Matt Taibbi: Absolutely.

Walter Kirn: So I think it’s appropriate. But like you, I’ve never been to Israel. I’ve never been to Gaza. I don’t consider myself a student of the conflict, though it’s been going on in the background all my life. I’ve been aware of it in some form or another, not necessarily the Gaza conflict, but Israel’s wars with its neighbors. To make a confession, or just a simple acknowledgement of personal history, I grew up in the ‘70s at a time when Israel was under siege and was quite celebrated in the American press as a holdout against regional terrorism and so on. Terrorism, as I knew it before the 9/11 style was the hijacking of planes-

Matt Taibbi: Right, Munich. Yeah.

Walter Kirn: ... and Munich, the PLO killing athletes.

Matt Taibbi: Black September.

Walter Kirn: Exactly. So, I will freely acknowledge that I was predisposed to the Israeli side of this argument as a young man. I’ve tried to educate myself, as time has gone on, but not sufficiently to have real clear beliefs and prescriptions about the situation. But since October 7th, and especially since the Israeli incursion into Gaza, I’ve realized that it’s an unavoidable topic. It’s now polarizing people here and I’m willing to wade in, but with the proviso that I don’t weigh in from a stance of expertise. I’m learning as everybody else is, I suppose.

Matt Taibbi: Well, yes and no, because maybe we don’t have expertise about Israel and Palestine, but when we start moving into speech in America and what is and isn’t part of our tradition, what is and isn’t acceptable, what’s good and what’s bad, that’s an area where I feel much more comfortable talking about. I understand the laws, I understand the history.

Walter Kirn: Sure. me-

Matt Taibbi: I’d probably come at this.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, me too. And that’s one of the reasons that I think we agreed to do this, because it’s starting to impinge on freedoms and rights in America in a way that I think is not just worthy of comment, but obliges us to comment if we’re to be consistent with past conversations and positions we’ve taken.

Matt Taibbi: Right. And to speak to something in the same way that you did, I probably came at this from a slightly different direction than you did. I’m a little bit younger and I was probably much more leaning in the direction of sympathizing with Palestine. I had Palestinian friends when I studied overseas in St. Petersburg as a young person. So, I heard a lot of stories back then. And my general inclination about this issue has always been toward condemning the blockade.

Also, Israel has really been a pioneer in the development of the model of modern digital censorship. Glenn Greenwald did one of the earliest stories about this in 2015 where he talked about Facebook making a deal with the Israeli Government and the Mossad, where basically 95% of the requests that the Mossad made to Facebook for moderation were honored. And from what I understand, Facebook was really one of the only ways that people can communicate in Gaza. They don’t have very many press organs that really work. There’s significant digital censorship of outlets, like The Electronic Intifada. And so this was a big deal and that basic arrangement that they had, which was, “If you want to make money having Facebook in Israel, this is the price that you’re going to pay. You’re going to allow us to control content that means a lot to us.” And I think since then, you’ve seen that model replicated to various degrees in other countries and it’s starting to come a little bit to the United States.