@conflict.echoes: “When we talk about does Israel have a right to exist, we're talking about a regime.” Benjamin Moser is an American writer and biographer whose book Sontag: Her Life and Work, a biography of Susan Sontag, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020. His latest book, Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History (2026), explores the long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism, examining figures including Hannah Arendt who challenged the idea that Zionism was inseparable from Jewish identity. Speaking with Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi at the New York Public Library, Moser draws on Hannah Arendt’s concept of “speech rules.” In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt described the Nazi practice of using euphemisms to conceal the reality of deportations and mass murder. Moser argues that Zionist language similarly sets limits on what can be questioned, particularly through the framing of “Does Israel have a right to exist?” Comparing this with apartheid South Africa, he argues that questioning a state’s political system is not the same as questioning the rights of its inhabitants. He also examines how these restrictions are used to censor and discredit Palestinian voices.

Conflict Echoes

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Thursday 05 November 2026 23:36:34 GMT