Join us for a thought-provoking conversation as we explore the intricate layers of the Israeli-Gaza conflict with the help of Tamara Kayali Browne and Zohar Lederman. Their unique insights as a Palestinian bioethicist and an Israeli emergency medicine physician with a bioethics background guide us through the turbulence of war, politics, and the ethics of healthcare under fire.
The moral maze of warfare challenges us to confront harrowing bioethical dilemmas, from the deliberate targeting of medical facilities to the withholding of life-sustaining resources. The experiences of vulnerable populations, like pregnant women and healthcare workers, underscore the intersection of human rights and public health, demanding a critical look at our ethical responsibilities. Our dialogue traverses the potential biases in global conflict coverage, urging healthcare professionals and academics to rise above the fray and champion human rights in their spheres of influence.
**the above was generated by AI with some editing from CM**
Resources discussed:
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Join us for a thought-provoking conversation as we explore the intricate layers of the Israeli-Gaza conflict with the help of Tamara Kayali Browne and Zohar Lederman. Their unique insights as a Palestinian bioethicist and an Israeli emergency medicine physician with a bioethics background guide us through the turbulence of war, politics, and the ethics of healthcare under fire.
The moral maze of warfare challenges us to confront harrowing bioethical dilemmas, from the deliberate targeting of medical facilities to the withholding of life-sustaining resources. The experiences of vulnerable populations, like pregnant women and healthcare workers, underscore the intersection of human rights and public health, demanding a critical look at our ethical responsibilities. Our dialogue traverses the potential biases in global conflict coverage, urging healthcare professionals and academics to rise above the fray and champion human rights in their spheres of influence.
**the above was generated by AI with some editing from CM**
Resources discussed:
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Undisciplinary is recorded on the unceded lands of the Wadawurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation in Geelong and the Gadigal peoples of the Eora Nation in Sydney. Welcome to Undisciplinary, a podcast where we're talking across the boundaries of history, ethics and politics of health, co-hosted by Chris Mayes and Jane Williams. Okay, so welcome to another episode of Undisciplinary. Today we are going to continue at greater depth some of the conversations that we have had around Gaza and Israel and the unfolding atrocities and the situation over there, and I think it's important to note the date that it is the 15th of February when this has been recorded, considering how things develop and change so quickly. But, jane, fortunately today we are it's not just you and I talking about this. We've got some guests.
Jane:That is fortunate.
Chris:Who have greater insight into this topic. I mean, calling it a topic also seems a bit strange, but anyway, let's, without me waffling on further. Who do we have to talk about this? And we have two people. This is the first time we've had two guests which is really exciting as well.
Jane:Yeah, hopefully we can wrangle it. Anyway, we're very excited to have two guests. So we've got Tamara Kaya li Browne. She's a bioethicist and philosopher of medicine. She is a senior lecturer in health ethics and professionalism in the School of Medicine at Deakin University and an adjunct research fellow in the practical and public ethics research group at Charles Sturt University. Tamara completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge and her primary research expertise is in the ethics of non-medical sex selection, mental illness and gender. Her book, depression and the Self, published with Cambridge University Press, focuses on issues of control, responsibility and the self in depression and uses qualitative interviews with women to explore this topic. Thank you, chris. Welcome to. Our second guest is.
Chris:Zohar Lederman, who's an emergency physician, emergency medicine physician with a PhD in bioethics from the National University of Singapore and formal undergraduate training in the humanities with focus on philosophy. He's currently clinical practitioner in the Department of Emergency Medicine. Whenever not hiking or running, Zohar research has several topics in bioethics, including loneliness and one, health ethics. His work has been published in top bioethics journals, including Journal of Medical Ethics, bioethics and Public Health Ethics. So thank you, zohar, for joining us.
Chris:And I guess, just to kick things off, you know part of this. I guess the first sort of question is sort of how did you come and to think about, talk about, be concerned by the Israeli-Gaza conflict? And I had, prior to just to sort of put myself in this, prior to, I guess, going to the recent Australasian Association for Bioethics in Health Law Conference, I had read one of Zohar's paper about loneliness. In the other one, yeah, in Israel, Gaza conflict, and this was written in 2021. And and it was talking about, yeah, the way that bioethicists have not really given much attention to this, to this area. And anyway, long story short, I met Zohar at the conference and I asked him, you know, to talk more about this and his sort of immediate question to me was why am I interested? Which sort of put me back a little bit. And then we got interrupted and I don't think I've fully got to sort of answer that and I'm not going to sort of start off by giving a full answer to it now.
Chris:But I guess my interest came to it from a variety of areas, having grown up in a neighborhood with a lot of Jewish friends, and that was something that we sort of talked about Zionism, Israel, Palestinian conflicts over that time, and then also growing up in a Christian community where on the fringes I'd say more so than the center there was this idea of Christian Zionism and that Christians should have this special affection and this special desire for Israel to flourish as a state.
Chris:And I remember sort of in my late teens, early 20s more, coming across Palestinian Christians and then being curious about you know, where do, where do Palestinians, Christians, fit in this sort of vision of Christian Zionism? And they don't. Really should have a short answer to that. And so that sort of led me to sort of think about why is it that the West, why is it that earlier, why is it that US, particularly with the sort of Christian veneer, have this sort of unquestioning support for Israel in many, many ways? So that's a little bit about why I particularly interested in this, and it'd be much more interesting to hear from Tamara, and and so perhaps to start with Tamara, if you don't mind- Well, I'm interested in picking up on one of your points, but maybe you want me to talk about why I'm interested in this topic first, and then I can pick up on yeah and maybe not interested more like where are you coming to this topic from?
Tamara:Yeah, I think I'm coming to this topic Probably primarily because I'm a Palestinian myself, palestinian in the diaspora in in Australia, so I guess I've got skin in the game, so to speak.
Tamara:Like it affects me in the sense that, like every Palestinian is is touched by by the state of Israel in some way or another me the least of all, because I'm in the most privileged situation that a Palestinian could be in. I'm in a relatively free country. So, yeah, it doesn't like touch me as directly as like someone in the West Bank or Gaza. So so I feel, for that very reason, that actually I there's more of an onus on me to speak out and do something about that, because I have that freedom and I think I need to use that privilege for good, as a bioethicist especially as well. So, yeah, so that's where I come at, but I'm but having said that, I still think it's like I don't think it should be seen as something that's only of the purview of Palestinians or Israelis or Jews. I think everyone has skin in the game by virtue of being a human. But we can talk about.
Chris:Thanks ,Tamara, Zohar?
Zohar:I agree, I agree with Tamara. So you know I mean in Israeli. So obviously have skin the game and asking the game for two reasons. One is because I interacted with Palestinians either in the West Bank is Jerusalem or within Israel for my entire life. I did my residency in Israel and I my colleagues well, israeli, arab, israelis and also some of the Palestinians from the West Bank.
Zohar:And second, because you know it's, it's, it's pretty shocking to realize that your own country is committing, or at least accused of committing, genocide. It's a, it's a real eye opener Right. And obviously you know, we knew everybody was serving the Israeli military and everybody who, anybody who speaks with Israelis, knows what we've been doing for years to Palestinians, mostly in the occupied territory. But to see the extent of what we are doing right now in the current wall is just, you know, blows your mind, and so that's. Those are the reasons why I particularly have a skin in the game.
Zohar:But what Tamara said, I fully agree. I think it's not only for Palestinians, I think it's not only for Israelis, it's a matter of humanity. You know, a potential genocide is happening in front of our eyes. Before, before the war, there was an apartheid, the only current ongoing apartheid happening in front of their eyes and there was very little that the international community did. And within that, you know, as a bi-racist, I have a skin in the game because you know again, the bi-racist community was not really doing anything.
Chris:And before we move on, Jane, like you are you're not a blank slate. I'm not a blank slate.
Jane:Yeah, and we'll be talking about this more later, but I was reflecting when I was reading Zohar's work and thinking about the questions we were going to be talking about today, how much exceptionalism there has been around the Middle East conflict and who gets to think about it and who doesn't, and who weighs in and who doesn't. So I guess you know I'm a bit older than than the rest of you. I was definitely brought up to be like this is really complicated. This is a thing that you shouldn't get involved in or you shouldn't have an opinion on, because it's too complex. This is not your. This is not your thing. Yet I was always allowed to have an opinion about any other kind of international relations thing. So I'm I'm.
Jane:I found myself in October talking to my kids who are older and saying you know what? I really don't understand this, so I can't really explain it to you. And they were like why don't you understand that you can read books? You know that's? That's a terrible excuse, and it really took until until then for me to think you know that is a really rubbish excuse, but I do think it's a. It's an excuse that is learned and used and perpetuated all the time and I'm really curious about why. Why this one's different? And I suspect it has something to do with accusations of anti-semitism, but I don't know and hopefully we can get to this later. I have been doing a lot more reading. You'll be pleased to hear, but I feel nervous.
Chris:Weighing in, I will say yeah, so hopefully we'll, yeah, we'll get to some of those sort of that sort of affective dimension of this debate and and and also, yeah, who's who's able to speak. But I mean, tamara and Zoha, you both touched on this and I guess the focus of this podcast as well, in that we look at, you know, the history of ethics, politics and what else. Anyway, we have a healthcare focus. So there seems to be something about this most recent iteration of the sort of Israeli I don't even yeah, I keep on stumbling over that because on the one hand and you know, conflict seems too small state, I mean sorry, a war seems that there's sort of these clear state actors. That doesn't seem to really cover it and seems to suggest some kind of equality, and then I guess genocidal conflict is quite a for some people would be accurate, for some people would be inflammatory.
Chris:But so this recent iteration of the conflict, to go to go with that, medicine and healthcare seem to have become more of a focal point than either previous wars or previous encounters. I could be wrong on that. So I'd be, I'd be interested to hear either of your perspectives on it, which then, because of this focus on medicine and healthcare, seems to, yeah, also lend itself to this bioethical analysis and this bioethical dimension to it. But I'd be yet to throw to you, tamara and Zoha, you know, how do you see bioethics playing out in this current context, or a bioethical perspective? What's bioethical about this, if anything?
Tamara:To me, maybe one of the ways that it's bioethical most obviously is the way that anything that is potentially a means for a sustaining life has become a target, whether that be healthcare, medical supplies, medical professionals, water, food, fuel, electricity and even oxygen. The other day, the BBC reported this small dot point at the bottom of one of their articles, saying that three patients have died as Israeli truth prevented oxygen from getting to Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Yunus, and that fact was provided by the Palestine Red Crescent Society. To me, it's in addition to all the facts that we know about all the pregnant women that are forced to birth in unsanitary conditions, having C-sections without anesthetic, and then how are they supposed to care for a baby when they themselves are starving, they can't use milk, and on and on and on. To me, those are the things that are most obviously bioethical in the subject matter, but in the framework of ethics, it's also got obvious things to it that we'll probably touch on later. What do you reckon, zohar?
Zohar:Zohar, yeah, no. So the way I think about it? Well, few ways. One is it's a bioethics topic because it creates a lot of patience. Apatite, genocide, wars, conflict, so a connection between the violation of human rights and public health have been made before. War creates patience. That is a bioethics, a bioethical topic already. In addition, this war, or Israel in general, or other wars, some of them engaged intentionally even in the destruction of the health care system. Again, this is not true only for the war. We know of other cases where Israel allegedly intentionally targeted healthcare personnel. This is relevant for bioethicists and this is relevant for those of us who are clinicians when I see that Palestinian healthcare workers so right now, only in Gaza, there were 360 attacks on healthcare institutions, more than 600 people and actually we don't know how many of them are personnel have died. We are talking about my colleagues, clinical colleagues, dying by the hands of my country. Just to digest that, to comprehend that I can't even describe it. Colleagues that I could have had and I don't because Israel killed them.
Zohar:We see that so Israel targeted hospitals, israel targeted clinics. So the entire destruction of a healthcare system in a city of two million people. In addition, what Tamer said is accurate, I think, in the age of social determinants, of health, everything is health and so everything is bioethics. Oxygen, clean water, electricity, sustained hospitals and, in general, safe housing everything is health and everything is bioethics. Right now, everything is being destroyed in Gaza because of Israel by.
Zohar:Israel. Lastly, all of those reasons account for why this is a bioethics topic. I want to say something more. I think maybe with age, the first article I wrote about the conflict was doing my PhD. At first I didn't want to because I was warned by my advisor then not to publish anything about the conflict because I wouldn't get a job. But the first article I published about it was in 2016,. I think we emphasize that this is not a political paper. We only care about the healthcare aspect. But that's bullshit. Everything is politics, and the fact that I'm doing so, the way I see myself, is first of all an academic, then a bioethics.
Zohar:I'm starting to forget about the idea that everything I write about and think about has to be bioethics. I think, like what was said before, we are privileged academics with a wonderful job, however you want to look at it, and all of us suffering, and we do have the time if we want it to make ourselves experts.
Zohar:Going back to what Jane said and choose to invest our time in what matters. I think there's nothing that matters more than again an ongoing potentially genocide or a apartheid happening in front of our eyes. So it's a matter of not bioethics per se, it's a matter of all academics.
Tamara:Yeah, especially philosophers, I think, as critical thinkers Like I think we're trained to think critically about every issue and it's something that we try and train our students to do. Like maybe going back to what you're saying before, jane, about being told that it's too complicated, best not to think about it, I think, goes against what it is that we try to say to students is try and switch your brain on about everything you encounter. Don't take anything at face value. Investigate, look for the evidence and think about it critically yourself.
Tamara:And if we don't do that, I think it's really, really dangerous, especially in the current war that we're seeing. We're seeing how the mainstream media are reporting it and how different the reports can be depending which channel you're watching and how different those media are. Again to social media and I think social media has played a huge role in exposing Western imperial powers and the power that they have over the media and how disparate those views can be to the mainstream public. It's dangerous, I think if we don't think critically and we just swallow what we're shown and told by people who say they're experts, it's not only trying to make us dumber but also potentially enslaving us, because if we don't stand up for human rights, regardless of the race or religion of people who are being oppressed, then, you never know, you might be next. As philosophers especially, I think we have to switch our brains on and look logically and reasonably what's going on.
Chris:So, just to jump in on that, something that and I think it's a facile comment, but it's made a lot and so I think it's worth us sort of maybe briefly addressing, which is let's take this podcast, neither of you are responsible for what we do on this, but they would say, someone might say well, you've never had anybody on here to talk about the Ukraine-Russia conflict, you've never had anybody on here to talk about Myanmar and or about China and the Uyghur conflict going on. Why this exceptionalism in regards to Israel? And there's usually a wink, wink, nudge, nudge. You're an anti-Semite.
Chris:But I mean, I have responses to that, if my quick ones would be that Australia is not actively supporting any of those and other conflicts and has severed ties with some of them. Maybe not China, continue to be big trade partners with China, but in no way does Australia refer to China as one of our greatest friends and allies and use a lot of that rhetoric, and so that would be where I would start in a response to that. But I'd be interested. Zohar and Tamara, you no doubt have seen or heard that kind of response.
Tamara:Yeah, I mean I agree with you. I feel like it's actually Israel that's made the exception to be allowed to do whatever it wants, with actual, the active backing of Western partners. I mean, if it weren't for the US backing it and to the Hilt, I don't think it would continue doing what it's doing, whereas the approach of a lot of Western powers when it comes to Russian, the Ukraine, was to do all the right things, sever ties and all the rest of it. So it is worthy of special debate as to why this is not being done, why Israel is not being held to the same standard as other countries, and yet why do we do the same to China as well? As a fair point, it's treatment of Uyghurs, and but it touches on like the accusation of well, why does everyone pick on Israel?
Tamara:Up until now, my usual retort to that, when I'd have minor debates on that point, I would say well, because in my mind, I think Israel should know better.
Tamara:It's made up of a lot of immigrants, essentially a lot of them from Western countries, from democratic countries, and people who have been oppressed before, as we know, the Jews who suffered tremendously in the Holocaust, and there are a lot of great Jews who stand up for Palestinians, like Norman Finkelstein, amish Lai, alon Patek and Zohar Ledermann, but at the same time, there are a lot of Jewish Israelis in Israel who are not doing that and we feel like, well, what happened, that was wrong in the Holocaust was racism. That the world should learn the lesson from that. That racism is what's inherently wrong here. Oppression done to any human being, regardless of the race or religion that they are, should be resisted. So why is Israel doing the very thing that a lot of the Holocaust survivors that might be there were done to? It is to me, yeah, another reason why we might want to be interested in talking about Israel, among other countries, of course, but sorry, zohar, go on.
Zohar:Yeah, no, no, it's a pleasure listening to you, so I agree with you. I agree with Tamar about everything she said. You know Elie Wiesel, a famous survivor of a Holocaust of Auschwitz. In one of his books he wrote that you meant so. Not only Jews died in Auschwitz, humanity died in Auschwitz and right now humanity dies in Gaza. Right. So again I mean to emphasize what I said there is no other place on earth right now that is where a potential genocide is ongoing. Before the war, there was no place on earth where an apartheid was ongoing. You know it's amazing that South Africa was basically telling Israel stop. You are crazy what you're doing, right? So you know anti-Semitism is an issue it's happening.
Zohar:It cannot be a defense for anything that Israel is doing, and it has to stop being a talking point by those who try to defend what is going on and what Israel is doing. You know, frankly, it's tiring to always hear the same response. People choose those who defend what they're doing. They are just evading the need to talk about substantive arguments here, whether or not Israel is justified in doing it. That is the extent to which Israel is entitled to react to the Hamas attack. Philosophically speaking. You cannot use this excuse of anti-semitism to close the argument. I think there are other armed conflicts happening worldwide and we need to talk about them.
Zohar:I do think that there is a problem in bioethics, where everything matters. I think we tend to focus on arguments and topics that are less important. We spend so much time and trees writing about these topics like, again, something philosophical, about very nuanced, about autonomy and how the West is all about autonomy and the East is not so much about autonomy and blah, blah, blah. We forget about what matters more and what is much more urgent, which is violation of human rights, genocide, apartheid, armed conflict, the fact that people are starving to death as we speak.
Zohar:Having said that, like Jay said, talking about the Israeli war comes more naturally to me. Just because I know the context, it is easier for me to understand what is going on. Also because of the language. I was afraid to touch it and talk about it until relatively recently. Just because it is so complex, I forced myself to read more about it and I still do not understand it. But I think we do have a responsibility to be aware of other conflicts. And whatever you think about Thomas Spoggi, one important thing he said is it is our obligation to make ourselves experts. I have not written only about Israel. I, together with colleagues, we wrote about Yemen, for instance. I think we do have, and some biologists wrote about Yemen as well. John Finns wrote about Ukraine. So we do have, I think, a responsibility to write about other, the violation of human rights in other contexts. Israel is one of them, but it may be it is the most urgent one right now.
Tamara:No one is probably the least supported by powerful countries.
Chris:You mean, has the most support by powerful countries?
Tamara:I mean sorry, palestine has the least support.
Chris:Well, I think as well and I think it would be good we will revisit some of these questions around becoming an expert and maybe some of the historical reasons why not? Why bioethicists or bioethics as a field, I think, has resisted engaging in this? I think partly because a lot of human rights and even bioethics own narrative comes out of the Holocaust and Nazi doctor trials and those sorts of things which sort of inbuilt sort of has framed the way some issues are talked about. But maybe before we get to that I want to go back to the sort of medical nature and particularly the attacks on hospitals that have been going on. And, zoho, you have written on Article 19 of the Geneva Convention.
Chris:Is this article under review, or is it out, or is it? How should we talk about this?
Zohar:Under review.
Chris:Under review, right? Well, hopefully, you know, hopefully something that I've been referring to as the undisciplinary bump happens, and because we've talked about under review papers before and then they've come out Just quickly accepted so if you're reviewing a paper that's looking at Article 19 of the Geneva Convention, be good so.
Chris:But in this article you're sort of taking head on these sort of Israeli claims around Hamas headquarters that are located in hospitals or beneath them and this other sort of notion that Hamas operatives are using healthcare infrastructure so not just hospitals but, you know, maybe even using ambulances and dressing up as doctors and all this sort of stuff. And this has been one of these sort of major contentions, I think, in both the mainstream media but also on social media. Lots of discussion around this and a lot of the debate seems to revolve around whether international human humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention justify the Israeli attacks. So you know various experts saying that, you know, if you interpret these different articles particularly article, I think, 18 and 19, that they can be interpreted to justify Israel attacking these hospitals if Hamas is using them for military strategy and advantage. And I was just wondering if you can provide a bit of an overview of this argument and particularly your response to that and suggestion that article 19 needs to be modified.
Zohar:Yeah, so, as I said, israel has been targeting hospitals. It bombed several hospitals in Gaza, some of them without pre-warning, which is against international law. They Israel raided Al-Shifa Hospital. When, was it? Just a few weeks ago, and the only reason why it didn't bomb it probably is because of the hostages there. You know not, because Israel really cares about international law, but in any case, the argument usually is that, yes, the international humanitarian law expressed by the Geneva Conventions protect hospitals, protect health institutions, except right, and Israel has been claiming that the.
Zohar:Geneva Convention does not protect hospitals in Gaza, and the reason is it corresponds to out-of-field exception criteria in the Geneva Convention, in the articles that you mentioned. And what Israel is claiming, and has been claiming for a long, long time, is that, without much proof, is that Hamas was using the hospitals in Gaza as a base, as a military base, basically, or as headquarters and as a base from which they shoot at Israel mostly at.
Zohar:IDF, the Israeli military, and again, until now there was not much proof. Israel has been working very hard in this ongoing war to provide such proof, and one thing that came that was shocking for a lot of people was when Eud Barak, who is the former prime minister of Israel, said on the international media that Israel built the tunnels under the Al-Shifa hospital, which are then being served by Hamas, and apparently nobody knew about it.
Tamara:But yeah, that's OK.
Zohar:Israel built the tunnels and then, even before Israel actually knew what was going on in Al-Shifa, israel was showing to the world or was telling to the world oh look, there are tunnels underneath Al-Shifa. Therefore, we know that Hamas is attacking from there. So it's going to a weird argument. But anyway, what we know now, right after the, after Israel actually went to these hospitals, went into Al-Shifa, is that these hospitals indeed have been used by Hamas. I think the evidence is pretty clear. We found some weapons, some evidence that there were hostages there. The director of the Al-Shifa hospital, even though under duress, admitted that he was a Hamas operative. I don't know how reliable that testimony is, but let's assume that it is. Also, I think it's reasonable to assume that these hospitals have been used by Hamas because, as a militant, as a combatant, you use what you have.
Zohar:Hamas has nothing against one of the most sophisticated, strongest militaries in the world. Of course they will use the hospital, why not? You cannot expect the military wing of Hamas to respect international law. With all the respect, you cannot expect an individual combatant in Hamas to think about international law. The guy wants to kill Israeli military. The guy wants to get his freedom. The guy wants to get to paradise.
Zohar:I think it's just like Tamara said. In a way, we cannot expect people of Hamas to behave like soldiers of an organized military, the one of Israel, claiming to be the most ethical military in the world. Hamas has never claimed that it is the most ethical terrorist organization in the world. There is no comparison. There should be, there should not be. Having said that, that's the problem. We know that hospitals are being used for war purposes. Then I ask myself again, as a clinician, as a bio-acist, as an academic, does this make sense? Is it possible? Or should it be the case that in these cases, international law says go for it, you are allowed to bomb this hospital? I think there are two kinds of cases to be made here. Rather, the case can include both negative and positive arguments. Right now, the article focuses on the negative aspects, but after talking with Owen Schaefer from Singapore, I started thinking about the positive argument to be made here.
Tamara:What do I mean by?
Zohar:this. There is a sense in which I think there is a sense in which hospitals. There is a reason why hospitals have to be sacred. There is something sacred about hospitals that is either exclusive or is different in kind from the sacredness of people's homes or schools. There might all be sacred in a way, but there is something about hospitals, the historical context, the way they are being used as havens. They go there to be safe and then they get bombed.
Zohar:Just recently, tamara shared with me the story of a child who just said I want to survive the war and she was killed in the hospital, in the hospital bed, and there is something just deeply wrong about it. Hospitals, from the very beginning, were supposed to be a place of haven, of trust, of safety, of healing, not of war, destruction and death. Or at least you know, there can be a place of death, but a good death, not a death by bombing, by unjust war. So there is a positive case to be made here and I'm thinking about it, working on it. But this article focuses on the negative argument to be made here, which is to say there is no way that international humanitarian law allows this to happen. And if it does, there is something wrong about international law and you know it's okay to say you know law is not ethics and, ideally speaking, law should be based on ethics. You know the law, the Geneva Convention was devised by humans, very smart, and you know, I think the Geneva Convention and the commentaries on them are actually pretty smart and sophisticated and very enlightening. But they may have been wrong and I think that in this case, referring to articles 18 and 19 that you mentioned, they are wrong and the reason is, or at least one of the reasons. I mean we can go more into just war theories, but I would say one thing.
Zohar:So the Geneva Convention, the third Geneva Convention, distinguishes between the hospitals being used or the kind of use that breaks the exception, the immunity of hospitals. You have two kinds One is if they are used at headquarters and another kind is if they are used as a post by a militant to fire from Right. So you have a militant, a Hamas operative, actively shooting at you, shooting at the idea, right, and again we have evidence of that and I think there is a, philosophically speaking, there is a difference between it Right, so having a headquarters underneath a hospital is not morally equivalent to a terrorist actively shooting at you and I think the justification and I will give it I will just say it as a title, but we can go more into it if we want the justification to attack and neutralize that operative who is actively shooting at you is much easier to make than to understand and to comprehend the justification allowing you to bomb the hospital because there is a headquarters there. The fact that there is a headquarters doesn't mean that there are people sitting there right now and planning an attack, right. And it also doesn't mean that if you attack it, the attack, the specific attack you want to prevent, the keening of Israeli citizens and militaries, will be prevented Right.
Zohar:And in that context we need to remember that Kiryat, one of the most the major basis military headquarters in Israel, is found in the heart of Tel Aviv. I was living walking distance from the Kiryat. So if international law allows Israel permits Israel to bomb Al-Shifa hospital or other hospital, then it also should allow other governments, other countries, other parties like Hamas to attack the Kiryat, to attack the heart of Tel Aviv and to attack where I used to live Right, and I just think that sounds wrong, that's intuitively wrong and no Israeli would agree.
Tamara:Yeah, that's an excellent point, because it's only really if you devalue Palestinian lives that you might think, oh well, it's okay, like that, even if Israel manages to prove that there were headquarters or active militants in every single one of the hospitals that it's bombed, it would, like you say, it would only seem okay if you were like well, palestinian lives are expendable. Because we wouldn't think that it would be okay to do that on Israel or America or Australia, so then why do that to Palestinians? I mean, while you were talking, I was looking up some stats and according to the CNN and I'm not even a great fan of CNN well, they're reporting on this, but even according to the CNN, it says at least 20 out of 22 hospitals identified by CNN in northern Gaza were damaged or destroyed in the first two months, only the first two months of Israel's war. And I don't know what the stats are on the southern Gaza. Of course we know the situation is pretty abysmal there as well, but it would have to prove that there were either Hamas fighters actively fighting there and or that there were headquarters in those hospitals in order to get out of it, and by that we mean more than just like a tunnel that turns out to be just a well which was found recently, or like a few Kalashnikovs behind an MRI machine, because that would be the most logical place to store a metal object. Yeah, but even like, even if they did, let's say, let's say even if that were the case and there was some like reason for Israel to target every single one of those hospitals, israel actually has the capacity to take out militants without bombing an entire hospital, like.
Tamara:It is one of the most sophisticated armies in the world and it's shown that it is capable of doing that if it wants to. I recently read an article by John Lyons from the ABC and he said, and I quote Israel showed in 2010 in Dubai how good it is at targeted operations. A team from Mossad famously filmed on CCTV walking through a hotel carrying tennis rackets, smothered to death Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhuh in his room, and in January, israel flew a drone over Beirut and assassinated Deputy Hamas Chief Salah al-Arouri. So it is capable of doing that if it wants. It could do even better and just arrest those militants and bring them to justice. In Israel, it can neutralize, so to speak, militants that it seizes threats without attacking places that are sacred or that will likely kill a lot of civilians. It is capable of doing it, so it could and it should.
Chris:Just on the sort of some of the justifications and the rules. One of them that has been talked about a lot is this idea that Israel calls the hospitals and tells them to evacuate the hospital, and that's part of the sort of one of the conditions, I think, of Article 19, that if one of these facilities is found to have military, then but to your point and you make this in the article, but also you were referring already about the sort of disorganization of Hamas and these sorts of organizations this idea that there is a clear chain of command as well in terms of calling up a hospital, telling them they've got to evacuate and alone even a place to evacuate. So I thought that was sort of another perhaps outdated provision, this sense that both, I guess the dual aspect of firstly, that there is somebody who can evacuate and organize that, and then also that in many of these contexts it seems that there is nowhere to evacuate that is safe anyway.
Jane:And I think that just really underscores the bizarreness of it all. Right, and it almost feels like really sort of old school, kind of gentlemen's rules. When people talk about the rules of war it always seems like such a bizarre thing anyway, because it's like, well, maybe we could just not do it, which I know is really, really unrealistic but the idea that you can be like, hmm, I think it's a good idea to bomb a hospital, but we'll just call them and let them know, and if we do that then we're doing the right thing, or it's a completely bizarre idea.
Tamara:It is. There's a Washington Post story about it that basically said they had been given warnings to evacuate the hospital and Israeli tanks had surrounded it and urged them to leave. But the ambulances couldn't safely reach the hospital so they couldn't evacuate it and the premature babies were vulnerable because they needed oxygen and there weren't any portable respirators. So basically, what this Washington Post article is saying is that the doctors without borders saw no choice and had to leave them and were trying to coordinate, it seems, to get them rescued, but they couldn't be rescued. So when the doctors returned, they were. The bodies were decomposed. Yeah, it's not something that you know. Yeah, it's a good idea.
Zohar:Let's just evacuate and trust us, leave the patients to us when we can't, yeah, so I think one of the reasons why I focus on international law, you know, and again, I knew nothing about international law. Right, I'm actively trying to make myself an expert, because one thing that is shocked, another thing that is shocking about the ongoing war is that Israelis don't kill. Right, and I can you know this is my own family and friends If you tell them what you just said, tamara and Jane, about you know the suffering and how we should be compassionate towards Palestinians who are suffering, mothers who are losing their children, children who are losing their parents. Right, you know, right now, when you have parents tattooing their children, so people know their identities once they are killed.
Zohar:Yeah, if you tell that to Israelis, they won't care. Right now, Most Israelis won't care. They care about their sons coming back home from the military. Their house is not being bombed by Hezbollah and Hamas, right? Which is, you know, understandable, maybe justifiable, no, right? So once I realized and I'm talking about bioethicists in Israel, not only the public, philosophers, ethylists in Israel, who you would expect to particularly care about this they don't. So I found that, you know, I'm still trying to write in the context of compassion and solidarity, et cetera, et cetera, but sometimes it's even more effective to talk about international law and to use that as your base. That is one reason for this article, or this focus in general. And again, going to what?
Tamara:Chris said yeah.
Zohar:So one argument is that we need to revise the international Geneva Convention. Another argument is to say, even if we don't revise it, it's still in the point context. It does not allow Israel to attack hospitals, and the reason is exactly what you said. So what's interesting and this is also a reason to revise the Geneva Convention but just not the content, just the writing. So a lot of people know the Geneva Convention but they don't know the commentaries attached to them. And again, the commentaries are very sophisticated, very somewhat deep, and you can see that people who wrote them were really knowledgeable and they had a lot of experience with that, right. And so if you look at the commentary and not the convention, it's at the text of the convention itself. The commentary talks about a safe place to go, right.
Zohar:So one of the conditions, like you said and this is in the both convention and commentary that you need to give a pre-warning Israel. Indeed, some of it already didn't, some of it already did Right. And then you ask OK, so is that justified? And no, exactly because of what you said, right now, in the current context, in Gaza, people have nowhere to go, no safe place to go. Right now, people in Rafa are being asked to go north after Israel destroyed the entire north of Gaza, which is just insane.
Zohar:So, and again, this is only in the commentary, it's not really in the convention itself. If you don't fulfill this criterion of giving them a safe place to go to, you are not allowed under international law to bomb hospitals, and Israel did not provide them with a safe place. Because there is no safe place in Gaza, the only way to justify it or you know, if Israel really wanted to use international law to justify the bombing of hospitals is to actually invite them into Israel, give them a safe place in Israel, then you can bomb the hospitals Again, like you said, the assumption of there is one body that can just, you know, get all the Palestinians in the hospital in general together and tell them OK, you go that way. It's just a part.
Chris:Just one more thing on the hospitals before, before moving on to a related topic.
Chris:But I think, and maybe this would fit within your sort of more positive argument, zohar, but and maybe it wouldn't either.
Chris:So, if you feel free to disregard it, but in reading the article I was struck by there's not just the harm of bombing a hospital and the present, what happens to those present patients or the people in the hospital, or those sorts of things. But in this destruction of the infrastructure, that sort of, you know, we talk about continuity of care for individuals, but for a community, they seem to, and ongoing, it's not just a OK, we hospital got bombed today. Tomorrow there won't be bombed. Well, tomorrow there's no hospital, tomorrow there is no place, for, you know, in three weeks time someone needs medical care. That that, you know, might seem obvious, I guess this point, but it just seems that taking on I mean, I don't like the language of harm so much, but the future harms or the future consequences really of destroying all of this healthcare infrastructure, you know, has long term effects. Even if there were, you know, if everything were to magically be a ceasefire tomorrow, there is this, the whole infrastructure is gone, yeah, yeah absolutely so this is.
Zohar:This is something I've been talking with Tamara. I think what we see in Gaza is, or maybe captured by the idea of hygienic side Right, so which is a new term that I think I coined but it's a destruction of health right and destruction of healthcare system. And why is that so significant? Because health matters for people.
Zohar:You know health well, at least some folks treat health as a necessary condition or a metacapacity that allows you to have other opportunities in life. Right, Without her, there's nothing. You know, all the money you have, you cannot do anything with it. Without her, Right, you know, we can talk more about a specific kind of health or health. But you know, I think there is something to the notion the argument that health is a metacapacity allowing you to achieve or to exercise other capacities to achieve function, the full range of function.
Zohar:And if you destroy it and again this goes back to what I said about social determinants of health, right, we know that it's all connected, it's unrelated. We know this empirically and philosophically If you destroy a healthcare system, a healthcare infrastructure, there can be no human rights, there can be no human flourishing and there can be no exercise of, you know, freedom of opportunity, exercise of capabilities, achievement of functionings, there's nothing to talk about. There is something specific, something special about having a functioning, robust healthcare system. Again, I'm not saying it's exceptional, you know, education is also might be important and everything again allows you to achieve other functioning. But there is something about healthcare system that without it there is no point of talking about human flourishing.
Chris:Yeah well, I mean, there is, yeah, with the education. There's also, yeah, accounts of universities and university professors being killed and bombed. Okay, so let's return to, I guess, this question of the role of ethics and ethicists, because I think we've all touched on that in different ways at the start, but also it has there has been some discussion sort of in the media from various experts or philosophers about the role that ethics should or shouldn't have. So I'll just sort of put these sort of two positions out there one from Ezekiel Emmanuel, who wrote a article in the New York Times in October 2023 after the October 7 attacks. The article, the book, called Efficiencies of a Liberal Education and in the article he was responding to the way Harvard students had, shortly after October 7 and the Israeli retaliations, the Harvard students had, I think, put forward a protest as well as petition, sort of accusing them of saying that the violence that has followed Israel is accountable for that. And Ezekiel Emmanuel wrote that this sort of reveals a moral vacuum on US campuses and suggests that to sort of fill that vacuum there needs to be compulsory ethics and policies that are taught. So you know, he, I guess, is having a high view of the role of ethics here to sort of shape the mind of young people. And then another interesting, I guess I would say a different approach, and so how you brought this to my attention.
Chris:David Enoch, a philosopher who's based at Oxford, argued, you know, saying that he's not and has written for the economist, as I think he also has a piece in the Daily Now, but sort of basically arguing that he's not an expert on these matters.
Chris:That it's, you know, very difficult to know what's going on in the war.
Chris:It's very complicated and while people may know, while we may be able to hold to the truths, that innocent people shouldn't be betting, killed, whether that's in October 7 attacks, or Palestinians following Israeli attacks, apart from that it's sort of too complicated and we, a lot of ethicists and philosophers, would probably do best to just remain silent on these matters. Correct me if you feel that's not a correct characterization. I do think it's interesting as well that Enoch has previously written on this idea of moral deferrence and suggesting that deferring to others authority rather than taking up moral expertise or authority of oneself is a valuable strategy. But so there's sort of these two positions and that would be good to put to you guys. Do ethics or ethicists have a particular role to play here. So Emmanuel seems to think yes, in terms of this sort of content of ethics has an important place, but Enoch seems to suggest that war and terrorism, it's extremely complicated, such that ethicists or public ideals are more than likely to get things wrong and should consider just being silent.
Chris:So to return to, I guess, this earlier question what do you think the role of the bioethicists or the public intellectual is?
Jane:Can I, even though I'm not on the panel, as it were jump in with a couple of things.
Jane:One is that the idea of people getting it wrong means you know, implies that there's a right, you know, there's a response here that's correct and appropriate and acceptable and that's the only response, which just seems like you know. I think the timing of both of these pieces that you've pointed to, chris, is sort of interesting, because while initially it could have been like you know, this thing is terrible and the other thing is terrible. I mean, as Zoha said, we're watching a genocide. Now you know that the idea of not of being silent because you don't know enough in that situation just speaks to complicity, unfortunately, I think you know, like it. Yeah, my other comment would be that I think that Zeke manual possibly puts a little bit too much. It has a little bit too much faith in the value of an ethics education. I say that as a person who's taught, but I'd love to think I could change the world.
Tamara:Nonsense, Nonsense.
Jane:Every single student we educate in ethics comes out of better person and changes the world.
Tamara:Yeah, I mean, my initial reaction to that is, I think, is well, I'm a bit biased as an ethicist myself, but I actually think ethics courses should be compulsory for everyone anyway. I mean that would be great, but they may end up with a very different conclusion than he's imagining that they'll conclude. So, yeah, be prepared that they may think for themselves and come up with something you don't like. And the second point to be made about what he said is that it's not just Harvard students but students from so many universities around the world have been protesting, so he would need to suggest that they all are somehow lacking in ethics and need ethics courses. But saying it, the more broad point about oh, it's complicated, it's complicated. That phrase is used a lot by Zionists to silence people essentially, but the truth is that it's actually very simple and I think everyone should do their bit to call out injustice when they see it, especially those in privileged positions like public figures and bioethicists, for whom thinking about what is right or wrong is our bread and butter. As bioethicists and philosophers, I think the onus is on us to do our utmost to properly investigate and apply evidence, logic and reasoned arguments to all the issues that we come across and all the parties, not selectively, and to treat all human life as equally valuable. And when we do that, I think it would be hard to conclude that this war and the last 75 years of oppression of Palestinians is a good idea for anyone, not even Israel, let alone Palestinians or the rest of the world.
Tamara:And I think that sort of touches on something you said at the very start, chris, about like Israel flourishing, like I've talked with Zohar about this, and I don't think it's possible for a community or a country to flourish properly if it's oppressing another group of people, and I think Australia is discovering this in that we can't continue oppressing its indigenous people. We have to do better in order for all of us to flourish, in order for a society to flourish, we have to look at how we treat those most vulnerable and see are we living up to standards, of humane standards? I think that's what, to me, what it means to really flourish is to be an ethical society, to give everyone, especially the indigenous people of a country, equal rights, and I don't see that that is antithetical to flourishing. In fact, I think it's integral to flourishing. It just means that Israel would have to let go of this idea that it has to be a homogenous, religiously Jewish society. For some reason, like it, thought that this is what it needs in order to be safe. But actually the irony is that in trying to establish and maintain that, it's the very thing that makes it unsafe, because that entails oppressing indigenous people.
Tamara:Anyway, I've said a little bit. Sorry about that. Zohar, you have a question?
Zohar:I'm sorry, I'm biased. Of course everybody should have ethics education. I think more than that everybody should have philosophy education.
Zohar:I just had, which is probably even more important than I think. I just had two medical students the smallest people in Hong Kong, telling me that they cannot write an academic essay. They never learn how to write an academic essay. They don't have the tools to write an academic essay. I say, please, math, if you can write an academic essay of 500 words? That's ridiculous, I think.
Zohar:As someone who teaches medical ethics in a store, medical ethics in various universities in the world and students from all around the world, yeah, I don't think we are doing a good job in teaching ethics in general or medical ethics period. I agree with Jane that ethics education is not a panacea. Some students get it, most don't. And, frankly, israeli supporters have made a big deal out of students protesting against Israel and taking the stance of Palestinians without criticism. Since when do we care about what students think? Students have been no.
Zohar:Students have been socially active for years. Students were demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. In the US, students were college students. They were demonstrating in Israel on various occasions against the legal revolutions or the judicial revolutions a while back and other protest, major, huge protest. Nobody cared and nobody did anything about it other than repress them. So all of a sudden, we care about what college students think and say I mean, that's one Second doing something. This is what I learned from or this is what I teach my residents. Doing means that you make a mistake. In medicine you treat patients. You will make a mistake In emergency medicine. We make mistakes all the time.
Zohar:The same applies to academic writing and academic engagement. The fact that I'm talking about the conflict, the fact that I'm writing about it, does not mean I got it right. I may be wrong about everything I say, but I think it's like Tamara said it's important to talk about it, everything else that I write about. I might be wrong, but doubt is never a good thing if it engenders inactivity. So I think we have an obligation to write about it, think about it, talk about it with the acknowledgements and while being open to discussion and debate.
Chris:It seems to me that we talk about this in a whole range of areas that we've covered in this podcast, but having that sort of epistemic humility with a willingness to have these conversations then allows for even if there are errors or mistakes, it allows for a sort of yeah, the old sort of dialogical approach. In dialogue they can be corrected and discussed and work through, whereas when there is this sort of overarching silence and just sort of corridor hushed conversations, then there is no opportunity to either make a mistake or reveal a truth or reveal a problem or injustice. That's going on, yeah.
Tamara:Because it's through debate and dialogue that we learn from each other, and it's especially necessary when lives are literally.
Chris:There's also been this in our conversation here, but also around this idea of expertise that has been and the sort of lacking of expertise. Now, I'm personally uncomfortable with the idea of ethical expertise, but anyway, that's a conversation for another time. But it seems that this idea of I'm not an expert is used to, in tandem with the idea that it's so complicated, to then lead people just to sort of be silent. But I've been thinking about the, you know, often the Russia-Ukraine conflict is used as a parallel with this current context, with this current conflict in Israel, gaza. But something else that struck me is the way that's and, jane, you may, I know you have lots of thoughts about this, but another thing in recent history COVID and the way that people were more than willing to write opinion pieces on things that they had, you know, very little expertise or background.
Jane:Oh, you're a non-cologist. Why don't you write about a respiratory virus?
Chris:And so that's an interesting thing, where people feel more than willing to go into the public defray over something and obviously different states. I'm not suggesting you know, there's obviously differences between the COVID pandemic and the Israel-Gaza conflict, but that was an area where people either as you mentioned Zohar became expert quickly and put the work in to try to work out things, or were also just willing to write out some thought bubbles on Twitter or elsewhere about what they thought.
Chris:So yeah, I just had a conversation with and within bioethics I should say Like the yeah, so people obviously are on social media saying all sorts of things about Israel-Gaza, but that is from my reading and I'd be interested in if anyone's got a counter to this. But there does seem to be this overwhelming silence within bioethics and bioethicists who usually comment on lots of other things. You know, when I look through, you know what has X, y or Z said about this? When they've said things about lots of other stuff? There's a silence, it seems to me.
Jane:Do you recall, Chris, when we were going to write a response to something? Was I God I have completely? Was it a job? I don't even remember, I've completely forgotten what it was. But we started working on something and then pulled out because we realised that the kind of overwhelming message in the target piece that we were responding to is if you don't agree with us, then you're anti-Semitic, and we were like can't be dealing with that, and so we pulled it. So there's our silence. Is that what you?
Chris:No, that was with me. That was not if you disagree, that was if you disagree, you're Islamophobia.
Jane:I'm sorry, you're right, it was the Islamophobia. I'm sorry, but it's when there are these things that are in the first, the white front.
Zohar:That they're in the opening paragraph.
Jane:Basically it's like yeah, it's like now. Anyway, Th-then shapes Well, without derailing the whole conversation, what it's about is the World Congress of Bioethics being held in Qatar.
Chris:Oh God, that's right, so I don't know if you that's right, that's right. Who's got a hot take on that? Let's yeah, soha. I'd be interested in your perspective particularly as well, because you were writing about the idea of this as a neglected area and then you were using this idea of loneliness to, which I thought was interesting. Did you have any reflections on bioethics?
Zohar:Yeah, so I've been silenced, slash cancelled among my peers in Israel. So there was an article issued in Jama by a famous biologist and the article is just rubbish and it's clear to everybody who reads it, everybody who knows anything about the conflict, and obviously the author doesn't know anything about the conflict or he chose just to show ignorance. You're clearly biased, right Depicting Hamas as an evil organization whereas Israel is all good.
Zohar:So I wrote a response letter to it and all the response letters are pretty much the same thing because it was so clear Really not what you would expect from a famous biologist or with a really nice guy, but still. And you know when I sent it to, we have a WhatsApp group in bioethics in Israel and I sent it in the group, my response letter.
Tamara:And you know this is a 400-word response letter.
Zohar:Right, there's not much you can say about it. Actually, I submitted something longer, but it was rejected and I was asked to write this and the response. I got no substantive counterpoint. So in the letter I wrote that my country had been engaged in apartheid for some time. And so someone wrote oh, I understand that your country of Hong Kong was engaged in apartheid for a long, long time. And maybe it was kidding, I don't even care, but I mean, come on Right. And so when I sent it I got no response other than this is you know, jama is an anti-Semitic journal.
Tamara:It's a pseudo-scientific journal.
Zohar:Your letter is simplistic. You don't provide evidence to support what you are saying, even though I have plenty of articles about the conflict. You can just, if you were not ignorant of the literature or if you actually wanted to learn or if you really wanted to engage in my argument, just go ahead and read them. You would be the only one you could do it. But instead people just chose to caricature my letter and my album. And I think the idea of loneliness comes into here, you know, and so I started working on loneliness separately from the conflict, very particular kind of loneliness, and I think my research brought me to talk about loneliness in this context. Why is that? Because I think what we are missing, the literature on loneliness. What it has been missing is that there is a nuanced approach to understanding of loneliness. There are different kinds of loneliness.
Zohar:Loneliness is not only about losing your intimate partner, not having friends. You know asylum seekers coming to Australia trying to find a safe haven and being put in prisons in two islands. They feel lonely, they feel like they have no friends. But the mountains right. Palestinians who have to go through an apartheid, potential genocide. You know Palestinians in the diaspora longing to return to their land. They feel lonely and that's a legitimate experience of loneliness.
Zohar:And people writing about academics you know this is not the greatest form of loneliness but an ethicist writing about the conflict and getting this really well, getting cancelled in a way by his peers, by his countrymen, also getting gender loneliness In this case, you know, I don't really mind that. I don't perceive them as you know a lot of them. I don't perceive them as serious academics or biologists or mainstream biologists, but still, you know, I've been writing about this conflict with my brother and you know, for the first time in my life and he never used the term loneliness before, but for the first time in my life he used the term loneliness to describe himself, basically that he cannot communicate with his peers, his colleagues in Israel or friends right, because it's like me, it's very left wing.
Tamara:Well, it's not really left wing, it's just you know reasonable, but in Israel it's extreme left wing.
Zohar:On the other hand, yeah, you have social outlets that are, in you know, biased towards the other end, Right. I don't want to get into that, but so there is a sense of there's no real discussion anymore and in this sense, what Palestinians are going through, I think, is loneliness that can one person describe as the loneliness of hell, which is a loneliness due to or that is caused by the lack of empathy. And right now, in many ways, Palestinians in Gaza are undergoing or experiencing this kind of loneliness, where they have nobody to really do anything. Take them right to prevent the massacre and instead of actually talking about it substantively, people use cat phrases like anti-Semitism, et cetera, et cetera, and you know they criticize students in colleges for their lacking of ethics education, but we're not really talking about Palestinians.
Chris:I guess you know there are so many more things we could talk about, but we are running out of time for the moment, unfortunately. But tomorrow, I guess you know to give you the last word, perhaps as a Palestinian, I'd be interested to hear your you know, whether some of that resonates with you, the way Zohar was talking about sort of that loneliness, and for me you're also thinking about Jill Staffer's work, talked about ethical loneliness and the loneliness of not being heard and perhaps not being seen as well, I think is part of she's talking about prisons in different contexts, but I know that with Megan Davis and the sort of indigenous movement towards the voice in parliament, you know she drew a lot on Jill Staffer's work about ethical loneliness. But yeah, tamara, your perspectives on this.
Tamara:Yeah, well, I have a lot of empathy for Zohar and Israelis like him who are standing up for Palestinian rights, because, like, as a Palestinian I mean I have to preface this with I can't speak for all Palestinians but I've been feeling a lot of solidarity within the Palestinian community. I mean, we're all feeling it and so we all kind of feel like we're in this together and we're there for each other as some kind of consolation for what's going on, like within us. We're feeling it physically as well as emotionally, but at least we feel that sense of solidarity. But I feel like people like Zohar, who are sadly among the minority of Israelis, must be more lonely because at least within the Palestinian community we have, we're united, more or less. I mean, I mean the majority of us don't support Hamas, so we might be divided in that sense, but, but more or less we all for the same cause.
Tamara:But there's bigger divisions, it seems, within the Israeli community and within the Jewish community more largely. So I feel like Zohar is probably I don't know maybe you're more likely to feel this ethical sense of loneliness, but I hope you feel like you're still part of the pro-Palestinian I like to call it pro-humanity community. So, yeah, but in a more political sense it feels. It feels a bit like the feminist cause, in that there might be a lot of people, like hundreds of thousands, even perhaps millions of people around the world have come out in protest for, against what Israel is currently doing, but politically we're very lonely Like, yeah, the politicians, whether in the UK, us, australia, largely have not come out against what Israel is doing. So in a political sense it feels kind of like we don't have much solidarity among those in power.
Chris:But anyway, well, thank you both very much and solidarity to both your causes and your work that you're doing, I mean your causes in the sense that your individual solidarity with yeah, and I think the pro-humanity dimension is important and that's where it would be great to, zohar, talk about your paper and a rent and common world as a bit of a teaser for a future discussion. But if you would like to send us an email I get a sense that maybe we'll get more emails after this episode to undisciplinarypod at gmailcom if you've made it this fast and it's an email, and otherwise you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram. Find us there, but thanks both to Zohar and Tamara.
Jane:Yeah, thank you.
Tamara:Thanks, very much. Thanks for hosting.
Jane:The only way that I can do this podcast is if I pretend it doesn't exist. Wait, yes, tell me.