This is Democracy – Episode 296: Israel-Palestine

2025-04-23_This-Is_Democracy_Ep-296
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[00:00:00] Intro: This is Democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast about citizenship, about engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues and how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:21] Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy.

[00:00:25] Jeremi Suri: This week we are going to talk about the Middle East, but we are not going to talk about, uh, one set of politics or another. This week we’re gonna delve deeper. We’re going to try to understand what are some of the deeper motivations in this region and how the history of conflict memory. Trauma and grief between, uh, Israelis and Palestinians, how that shapes the current violence and the current suffering in this, uh, important but very, very difficult region to understand and live in.

[00:00:59] Jeremi Suri: We are joined by the person who I think has done the most in the last few decades to elucidate this region, elucidate the violence, the trauma. The suffering in this region. One of my favorite authors on this region who happens also to be a friend and neighbor here in Austin. Uh, this is Lawrence Wright.

[00:01:17] Jeremi Suri: Uh, he’s a staff writer for the New Yorker. A playwright, a screenwriter, and an author of 10 books of nonfiction, including I think the best book still on September 11th and Terrorism in that period, the Looming Tower. He’s also written Going Clear, which is a study of Scientology. I. God safe, Texas, uh, which tells you what it’s all about just in the title, uh, and many other nonfiction works.

[00:01:42] Jeremi Suri: He is, in addition to that, an accomplished novelist. Uh, he wrote, I think, a very important novel that anticipated the Covid crisis and, uh, a novel that we discussed on this podcast with Larry the end of October. Um, and most recently, he has just published a fantastic novel that I encourage everyone to read.

[00:02:00] Jeremi Suri: Uh, it is called The Human Scale. And it is on the months and years, uh, leading up to October 7th, 2023, and the horrible, uh, Hamas attack on Israel that occurred then and really explores the region and the relationship between settlers in the West Bank and Palestinians, uh, in the West Bank, uh, and Gaza.

[00:02:21] Jeremi Suri: Larry, thank you so much for joining us today.

[00:02:24] Lawrence Wright: My pleasure, Jeremy.

[00:02:25] Jeremi Suri: Uh, before we get into our discussion, uh, with Larry Wright, uh, of his novel and the region, uh, we have of course our scene setting poem from Mr. Zachary Siri. Zachary, can you, uh, give us the title of your poem? It’s called In Jerusalem. In Jerusalem.

[00:02:40] Jeremi Suri: Let’s hear it.

[00:02:42] Zachary Suri: I was in Jerusalem once they tell me and walked in the footsteps of my father’s and in the footsteps of the city that throws up apples and olives and oranges. Like one branch with the graftings of every fruit. I was in Jerusalem once, I don’t remember, but I crawled on the old cobble stones and whimpered under the rafters of the churches, catching the scent of centuries like dust.

[00:03:06] Zachary Suri: Somewhere in my ancient nose, I was in Jerusalem. Once they all say, and all of us have touched that ground as infants. Even if at one years old I was actually in a cradle in Madison, Wisconsin. Counting the minutes and counting the stars and in the haze of bullets when it comes, I think they too must also think behind the fence or in the shelters.

[00:03:32] Zachary Suri: I was in Jerusalem once, I had a home, a heart back then, and next year, may we be there again. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:03:43] Jeremi Suri: It, it sort of ends, Zachary, your poem with a, an invocation from Passover, doesn’t it?

[00:03:48] Zachary Suri: Yes. Uh, it’s a poem about. Um, the connection to the sort of small piece of land that so many people feel, even if it’s not a place that they’ve ever been.

[00:04:00] Zachary Suri: Um, but it’s also about how for people who live in the region, that question is so much more real. It’s a question of home of heart. Um, and next year in Jerusalem means not just, uh, a sort of religious hope, but quite literally hope to be back. Or they hope to build the kind of society that their forefather stood out to.

[00:04:25] Zachary Suri: Um, that’s sort of what the poem’s about.

[00:04:28] Lawrence Wright: Sure. Zachary, if I can interrupt, I, I thought it was a great poem. I, I thought it was really very evocative. And also the touch of the, uh, warning of violence that’s in the air, that, that also accompanies all those images of fruitfulness. Thank.

[00:04:46] Jeremi Suri: I agree. Zachary, uh, uh, uh, Larry, I think the poem also sets the scene for your novel in a, in a, yeah.

[00:04:51] Jeremi Suri: In a really powerful way. Why did you, after spending so many years studying and writing about this region, uh, why did you decide to write this novel,

[00:05:01] Lawrence Wright: I guess frustration, basically. I mean, I’ve been interviewing people face to face for decades, and yet I still couldn’t understand what makes this conflict so durable.

[00:05:14] Lawrence Wright: I mean. I’m the same age as Israel, actually a few months older. Yes. A young country wilmore who we can say anyway, but this has been a part of my life my entire life. And this is, you know, other things have changed. I mean, we apartheid in South Africa ended, uh, we elected a black man, president, the Soviet Union dissolved.

[00:05:35] Lawrence Wright: We got through Vietnam, we got through Iraq. One, we got through Iraq, two Afghanistan. That’s all a part of history. But this conflict goes on and on. And after all my study about it, I still felt that I hadn’t completely understood what, what’s the motor behind this? And you know, with nonfiction there are limitations.

[00:06:01] Lawrence Wright: But the interesting thing about dealing with it as a novel. Is that I could get inside the minds and the imagination of my characters, which I’m not allowed to do as a non-fiction writer. But I wanted to see the conflict through the eyes of interesting, appealing, intelligent participants who differ with each other profoundly and who are in the conflict themselves.

[00:06:27] Lawrence Wright: I feel like if you could see the world through the eyes of your. Antagonist, you might be able to stumble somewhere along the way to peace. And unfortunately that hasn’t happened yet. You,

[00:06:40] Jeremi Suri: you capture this so well. And, uh, your, your novel is set, um, in the West Bank, uh, in cur, kyat, aba, uh, which is a, a Jewish settlement.

[00:06:51] Jeremi Suri: And you have the settlers, you have the Palestinians in the region, uh, and elsewhere. Um, and. Throughout the novel, there’s a, there’s a constant clash between these worlds. And on page three 30, I want to quote you, you have one of your characters, Malik, who’s an American FBI agent, who’s now in, in the region.

[00:07:13] Jeremi Suri: He’s also of, uh, Palestinian background himself, though he hadn’t been to the region before. According to your, your plot, and you have him sort of reflecting on this, I wanted to read the paragraph and then get you to react. To it. If, if this is one of the central sort of nubs of your novel, you, you write, and this is molik thinking things through.

[00:07:31] Jeremi Suri: He molik didn’t know what to think about the feud between Israel and Palestine from afar. As an Arab, it was easy to make the judgment that it was a simple case of colonialism, but on the ground it didn’t seem so simple. Jews had been there for centuries. They had a legitimate claim on the land. So did the Palestinians.

[00:07:49] Jeremi Suri: What did it matter who was here first? He Malik despised the violent aggression of the settlers, especially the Ca Kahanas, who were important actors in your novel. But he also recognized the threat posed by jihadist groups. He didn’t see a moral difference between them, only a power imbalance. The settlers didn’t represent all Israelis, nor did Hamas represent all Palestinians, but neither side worked to eliminate the violent actors inside their communities.

[00:08:16] Jeremi Suri: Instead, the extremists were tolerated, even elected to high office. They served a purpose, and the purpose was to prolong the conflict, justify the hatred, and rid the land of the other. Is that, is that your central, is that, is that a, a sort of the central narrative plot in a sense?

[00:08:33] Lawrence Wright: Yeah. I mean, uh, and, and, and the reality that we face.

[00:08:37] Lawrence Wright: Uh, it’s, it’s frustrating to think that. There’s only one solution to this conflict, and that is diplomatic, uh, efforts to peace and everybody knows this, uh, and yet this fantasy on both sides that they can eliminate the other, that they can, uh, push the Jews into the sea or send all the Arabs into Jordan and Lebanon and clear off the West Bank and Gaza.

[00:09:03] Lawrence Wright: Those are fantasies. And yet the, there will never be a, a Middle East with only Jews and only Arabs. It will always be a mixture. And it’s, you know, part of the puzzle is why can they live together in peace in Brooklyn? Yes. And they can’t in their own neighborhood.

[00:09:24] Jeremi Suri: Zachary,

[00:09:26] Zachary Suri: why do you think that is? What, what is, what is the, the sort of, what are the like broader historical forces that you see?

[00:09:33] Zachary Suri: At work that your characters have to wrestle with?

[00:09:36] Lawrence Wright: Well start with history. Uh, you know, there’s, there’s a history on both sides that comes into play and will never, is. It has them by the throat in a way it won’t let them go for, for the early immigrants into Israel, it was a holocaust, you know, that was, uh, so shattering and so definitive of what was to come.

[00:09:59] Lawrence Wright: Uh. Then of course there was 1948 and 1967 where, uh, so many Palestinians were, uh, either left and not allowed to come back or forcefully evacuated. 700,000 in 1948. It was, if we could go back in history there, if we could go back in history, there are two things I would change. One, I’d let more Jews come to America.

[00:10:28] Lawrence Wright: Uh, you know, there was a decision in part on part of the Zionist that they were afraid of losing the goodwill of, you know, of Americans. ’cause so many were moving to New York and so on. The other thing I would, I would change is I’d let the Palestinians come home after 1948 and then, you know, there might have been a way to work out, um, a mutual way of living together, but.

[00:10:57] Lawrence Wright: Because that never happened. You know, there’s this possession of the land by the Jews and dispersal of the Arabs, and one of my characters, uh, Sarah, uh, Yoshi’s daughter, talks about how we are giving the, the, the Palestinians, uh, Jewish history. And you know, that’s the profound irony that is so tragic in this story.

[00:11:20] Lawrence Wright: I,

[00:11:21] Jeremi Suri: I, I was gonna refer to that exact passage. Uh, Sarah is one of your characters who, who come, comes on stage late in the novel, and it seems to me she’s the cur, the, the closest to a pure character. Is that, is that fair?

[00:11:34] Lawrence Wright: Yeah. I, I suppose it is. I mean, I, my depiction of all of these characters is informed by people that I knew, but they’re, you know, mixtures, uh, for the most part.

[00:11:46] Lawrence Wright: And some are more directly drawn from life than others. But. I wanted someone who could, who, who ha, who exemplified the ambivalence that so

[00:11:57] Jeremi Suri: many Israelis feel. You, you have her saying, uh, I hate the hatred, honestly, I can’t stand it. Uh, and, and then she says, uh, grief. Israel was created by a grieving people.

[00:12:12] Jeremi Suri: If we had dealt with that, if we had accepted our suffering, we might have found happiness. As such a thing exists for a nation, but we let our grief define us. All this rage, this depression shame, this insistence on revenge, their expressions of a grief that is too big for us. Too big for any people. And then she says, as you just referred to, we’re, we’re making the Palestinians in our, in our image.

[00:12:35] Jeremi Suri: Yeah. Um, it, it, it’s almost Larry, like you’re describing in very evocative terms, a cycle of, of grief, beginning more grief.

[00:12:43] Lawrence Wright: Well, and this, you know, this current wave of trauma that we’re experiencing now, you know, if you are going to look at a lesson from Middle East, things can always get worse. The more trauma there is, the more trauma will be created.

[00:13:00] Lawrence Wright: And you know, some is stopping that cycle that is so hard. It’s not as if it’s impossible. It’s just hard. And you know, unfortunately that region is lacking leaders with any kind of political courage.

[00:13:15] Jeremi Suri: Do you see your characters, particularly Yossi and Malik, who are both in different ways in law enforcement, do you see them trying to stop this cycle?

[00:13:25] Lawrence Wright: I think they, I think their goal is to understand the cycle. Uh, Yossi has just lived in it and, you know, his, he was, uh, in the kind of mowing the lawn school of, of, uh, control of Palestine. But he’s beginning to see that things are getting outta hand and all of his efforts to control the violence in the region are failing.

[00:13:51] Lawrence Wright: So I think. Malik presents a real challenge for him because he, he understands his intelligence. He knows that Malik is a far better cop or, you know, intelligence agent, uh, than he will ever be, and he needs him, and it, it’s the first time he has a relationship with somebody, a Palestinian like that, that he truly admires.

[00:14:15] Lawrence Wright: And it also upsets them, you

[00:14:17] Jeremi Suri: know,

[00:14:17] Lawrence Wright: sure. That he’s conflicted because, uh, it’s, once you recognize the humanity of a, of your supposed enemy, it complicates your life. And that’s why it’s so hard to do.

[00:14:29] Jeremi Suri: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think you, you, you carry that out very well. I guess it’s an, it’s an old trope in literature that you really bring to life, Larry, of the, you know, the, the two partners who really don’t like each other, but come to gain a, a deep friendship out of their difference initially, but their common effort to solve a crime in one way or another.

[00:14:50] Jeremi Suri: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:51] Zachary Suri: Zachary. Yeah. I wanted to ask, you said that a lot of these characters that you write are based on. Real life or people that you let, have you found people in the region who have sort of confronted the ghosts, if you will, in this way? And, and how do they think about moving forward?

[00:15:09] Lawrence Wright: Well, there’s one character that I would point to Zachary and, and that is Jamal, who is based on, uh, the, in large part on Issa Amro, who is, um, a peace activist in Hebron.

[00:15:24] Lawrence Wright: When I say peace activist in Hevron, you have to understand that Hebron is one of the most hateful environments I have ever been in. And I started my career at the Race Relations reporter in Nashville covering the Civil Rights Movement. So conflict, I, you know, I, I understand about conflict, but I had never saw it at, at the level that I saw it in Hebron.

[00:15:47] Lawrence Wright: And the amount of courage that it took for this really very solitary figure. There’s not like a peace movement in He Brown. There is, there is Issa Amro and he reminds me of a lot of the, you know, the freedom writers, people like that, who knew they were going to be beaten, maybe killed in the pursuit of, you know, some kind of accommodation.

[00:16:11] Lawrence Wright: But he, he couldn’t be who he is if he didn’t think there was hope. That peace could be achieved by reaching through the, the, an antagonism that separates these two people.

[00:16:24] Jeremi Suri: It, it’s interesting because your figure Jalal, I don’t want to give, um, too much away from the plot. I want people to read the novel.

[00:16:31] Jeremi Suri: They really should. But, um, he, he’s not a, he, he’s a, he’s a figure with some problems. Right. Well, you

[00:16:37] Lawrence Wright: know, one of the things that complicates. Everybody in, in this story and largely in the region, is the dense network of relationships. And you know, the fact is that, you know, the, the Jamal has a cousin who’s in Hamas.

[00:16:54] Lawrence Wright: Well, that’s totally true of, of so many people in, in Palestine. Uh, you know, the, to know people in, uh, who are. You know, warriors for Hamas is pretty common, and it’s not hard to find Hamas people. I, I, I didn’t have much trouble when I was there. Um, so you can have people that are advocates for peace, but also know, uh, the people that are complicating that pursuit.

[00:17:29] Jeremi Suri: A and was it hard, Larry, for you, in doing this research to, to really get a feel for, for both sides? I mean, often the criticism of many scholars is that we, we tend to know one side better than the other, and it’s hard to penetrate the side that we don’t have a connection to.

[00:17:48] Lawrence Wright: I think it’s easier as a, as a journalist, uh, who’s not trying to specialize, but trying to, you know.

[00:17:55] Lawrence Wright: Our, you know, our, our general rule, uh, in journalism is you talk to everybody and you know as much as, as much as possible as that could be. You know, you try to deal with all sides of an issue, and that’s the journalistic model. And I think it’s helped me in my career, uh, to understand other perspectives and to weigh the perspectives of one group of people versus another.

[00:18:21] Lawrence Wright: Uh, if you’re too invested in one perspective. Then it is gonna be hard for you to reach across the room and and embrace the

[00:18:30] Jeremi Suri: other. And, and so how do you do that though, as a journalist? How do you get people to open up to you, Larry? You just be there.

[00:18:37] Lawrence Wright: Uh, I mean, to start with, you know, you, I always begin with, you know, talking to people that I know, I have entered the news or something.

[00:18:46] Lawrence Wright: People who have dealt with the, the subject and then. I, I, I ask them, who else should I talk to? And they’ll give me a list of names that, of people that I haven’t heard of, and I go talk to them and, and continue the cycle until eventually I don’t get any new names. And that’s the way you populate the universe of the story that, uh, you’re writing.

[00:19:08] Lawrence Wright: And I call that the horizontal, uh, axis of reporting. But there’s another axis, which is that. Some of those people are just more interesting, more candid, more available, you know, they, and you go to them again and again. Uh, so it’s more about the depth of understanding rather than the overall consensus.

[00:19:29] Jeremi Suri: That makes sense. Um, and, and. As you were writing this and, and, and, and bringing yourself repeatedly into, you know, the different parts of the, of, of the, the war zone in a sense. Um, how, how do you maintain your own safety? ’cause one of the points that comes through in the novel is how unsafe these areas are.

[00:19:50] Jeremi Suri: How much is, uh, not just controlled by police forces, but often by paramilitary groups. Um, and how dangerous it’s.

[00:19:59] Lawrence Wright: Oh, Jeremy, I, you know, when I’m in those situations, I try not to dwell on it. Uh, I know it’s a kind of naive, uh, way of looking at things, but you can get paralyzed by the anxiety that you might face violence, or you might be in a, a difficult situation.

[00:20:16] Lawrence Wright: I’m, I’m cautious. Uh, after nine 11, I spent five years roaming around mostly the Arab world and South Asia, and it was a very, you know, lonely experience. There weren’t many westerners in the region at all, and, uh, I felt conspicuous, but you know, I, I, I try to maintain a kind of friendly, you know, posture and unthreatening and, but basically I found that I.

[00:20:47] Lawrence Wright: Most people want to have their story told. Mm-hmm. Most people think they’re doing the right thing. Most people feel that if, if I could just find a sympathetic ear, uh, you know, I, I could get my story out and I try to be that sympathetic ear without actually posing as a partisan.

[00:21:08] Jeremi Suri: That makes sense.

[00:21:09] Zachary Suri: Zachary, then what do you see the role of your fiction and your journalism in bringing those voices to light?

[00:21:16] Zachary Suri: What role do you play as a journalist in that mix?

[00:21:19] Lawrence Wright: Well, I try to do the same kind of research for fiction as I do for nonfiction because I think the reader wants the story to be plausible. And the kind of fiction I do is, is set in, uh, the context of real life and oftentimes in current time. So the reader is gonna recognize if you happen to go off track somehow, and it will undermine.

[00:21:46] Lawrence Wright: Uh, their trust in your presentation. So I try to, you know, I take notes, I interview people. I, I try to get as much in, in terms of language. I wanna know what people actually said. Uh, that’s, I always feel much more confident if I can find the dialogue that I’m working with, the, the narration and, uh, take it out of the reality that I’ve found it in and incorporate in my fiction.

[00:22:15] Jeremi Suri: Do you think, Larry, that your, uh, background as, as an American, as, as someone who now lives in Austin, Texas, that this has affected the way you view the region? Oh, no doubt. But

[00:22:27] Lawrence Wright: you know, I think, uh, I had a, you know, as a young man, I, I taught English in Cairo, uh, and. It was, I was a conscientious objector, and this was my alternate service.

[00:22:40] Lawrence Wright: I had two years teaching in Egypt, and yeah, I studied Arabic. I was never fluent, but, um, but it, I was a very parochial young man, you know, and, uh, I mm-hmm thrown into a world that I didn’t know, but I was very fond of my students and it introduced me to the region. And, uh, after that, I. Uh, went back a lot as a reporter.

[00:23:07] Lawrence Wright: I, I wrote a movie, uh, called Be Siege, um, and about what would happen if terrorism came to America. Um, and, you know, it was, it was Islamic terrorism I was writing about, and this was in 1998. Uh, it came out three years before nine 11. Hmm. Um, and all of that influenced. Who I, not just what I wrote about, but who I am.

[00:23:36] Lawrence Wright: Uh, you know, I, I became a person that is interested in the Middle East and in the tragedy and, and full of a sense of loss for the, I I mean, I best way to explain it is every time I would get on an airplane and leave where I was, had been, uh, reporting, I was so grateful. That I could lead and I could go to, uh, you know, this other reality, my home, and I would be free and I would have friends and I wouldn’t be persecuted and I could trust the justice system, you know, all those things, you know, so it’s so rare to find in the Middle East anyone who feels that sense of freedom.

[00:24:21] Jeremi Suri: Yes. I mean, it’s, it is interesting how you can see the region in a different way than those who, who are in it. Of course. Uh, especially those who obviously have a very strong religious attachment to one point of view or another. I think you capture their world well, but of course, that’s that. That’s not where you’re coming from.

[00:24:40] Jeremi Suri: How, how do you react to that? To those who would say, well, your depiction of the settlers who you depict, uh, at least the ones in your novel, you would depict them as pretty extreme and brutal and even corrupt. And then, um, the brutality of Hamas, uh, what would you say to someone who, from one side or the other would say, well, we really believe that there is a.

[00:25:01] Jeremi Suri: Religious, uh, right. We have to this region and we have the right to take this from the other side. I mean, there are, there are people who seriously believe that. Of course. What would you, what would your response be?

[00:25:11] Lawrence Wright: Well, you know, if you were talking about, uh, the Jewish approach, you know, you look at the Old Testament or the Torah and, you know, the, the entry of Moses into the Holy Land, uh, you know, God gave.

[00:25:26] Lawrence Wright: God gave the promised land to Moses on two occasion, although there were different sized gifts, you know, changed his mind somewhere along the line. And, um, and so that precedent, uh, really echoes. And then of course there’s Joshua who, you know, when was directed by God to, to enter the holy land and, and kill every living thing.

[00:25:50] Lawrence Wright: Well, if that is your commandment that you’re living with, it’s, it’s pretty. It terrifying. And then, you know, the Koran agrees that, uh, God gave, uh, the holy land to the Jews, but then they, the, this, what happened is that God took that promise back because the Jews did not behave. So, you know, there’s, there’s that religion factor that I think is inseparable.

[00:26:17] Lawrence Wright: But you know, the truth is religion can be an ally. In trying to make peace and, uh, camp David Agreement is a, I know you came to see my play in Houston Sure. But making a peace between Israel and Egypt, uh, that, you know, Jimmy Carter brought Manum be and Anmar Sadat to Camp David for 13 days and they made peace.

[00:26:40] Lawrence Wright: And this was, uh, one term governor of Georgia, uh, Sadat an assassin and manum be a terrorist. Those three men made peace and it hasn’t been tampered with. A bit in the, since they signed those papers in 1979. So, you know, I’m always thinking about the fact that those men made peace. It must be possible for others to do so as well.

[00:27:05] Jeremi Suri: But, but I think as your novel brings out Larry and, and, and your work on Camp David is wonderful. I I’ve read many histories of the, the camp David discussions, many of the original documents, but your, your, your play really brought out the characters as I think we’ve talked about, so, so well, um. But of course the Palestinians were not part of those organizations.

[00:27:24] Jeremi Suri: Not represented, no.

[00:27:25] Lawrence Wright: Yeah.

[00:27:25] Jeremi Suri: And, and so the, I think the Palestinian argument would be that, that even in those cases there’s been peace among states, but not, not peace for them.

[00:27:35] Lawrence Wright: One of the things that I’ve wondered about Jeremy, I’ve, you know, ’cause I’m often asked, well, what do you think we should do? You know, and like, okay, it’s up to me to find peace.

[00:27:47] Lawrence Wright: Um, I. One thing that is, you know, was a, a movement that seems to have died out, but, uh, you know, other nations declaring Palestine as a state, uh, much of the world has done that. Uh, you know, Asia, Africa, Latin America, you know, US and Europe, uh, stand apart from that. But I think I’ve kind of come to the conclusion that.

[00:28:13] Lawrence Wright: They, the Palestinians and the Israelis aren’t capable of making peace themselves. They, they’ve had 77 years to, to do it and they haven’t been able to achieve it. So I think the world through forceful diplomacy and maybe some wonderful, uh, carrots, uh, rewards for making peace. Some, some other initiative has to take place to, to spur the movement and peace on both sides.

[00:28:44] Jeremi Suri: Hmm. I I think that’s dangerous though, right? Because who defines what peace is then? Right?

[00:28:50] Lawrence Wright: Well, yes, there, and I will stipulate anyone who comes up with a pine to make peace in the Middle East is a ni is naive. And so I count myself in that. But if we continue down that road. We’ll never have peace. Right.

[00:29:07] Lawrence Wright: And I, I think. Whether one state or two or a confederation, anything is better than the continued occupation, which is so degrading to both cultures.

[00:29:17] Jeremi Suri: Yeah. Yeah. I want to close with one more question, Larry, and I’m gonna ask this question too, and then I’m gonna ask it to Zachary because I know it’s something he’s thought about it.

[00:29:24] Jeremi Suri: I think it’s very relevant for, for young people, and we always like to close, as you know, uh, our podcast with something that that really connects to not just contemporary policy, which this obviously connects to, but. But to the concerns and interests and hopefully the, the ways in which young people can help revitalize our, our democratic dialogue in the United States and elsewhere.

[00:29:44] Jeremi Suri: You have, again, my favorite character, Sarah, in your novel earlier on, uh, talking about what we might say is the, is the pathology of suffering. How those who have suffered often inflict suffering on others, uh, after their own suffering. And you have her saying, um. So much of Israel is a contradiction. Yes, it was a miracle, the salvation of the Jewish people.

[00:30:07] Jeremi Suri: But in the process, we have imposed our history on another people with the ghettos, the diaspora, the pogroms. One victimized people, subjugating another helplessly, unable to stop ourselves. There’s, there’s a way in the novel in which you kind of, you have the two sides, the, uh, settlers and the, uh.

[00:30:25] Jeremi Suri: Palestinian, uh, Hamas supporters and, and Confederates, you have them sort of mirroring one another. Uh, my colleague, yo Depo has written about this too, in the conflict. The two sides start to start to mirror each other. Do, do you, do you stand by that? Do you, do you really think that’s what’s happened on the ground?

[00:30:42] Jeremi Suri: The mirroring? Yes.

[00:30:44] Lawrence Wright: Yeah. You know, I, I was very influenced by, uh, a couple of thoughts. I, I. You know, David Urian and, and Yak Benzi, the first prime minister and the second president of Israel. They were living in Manhattan in turn of the 20th century and they, they wrote a book about Israel and Benzi was really kind of more the instigator, but he talked about how he would wander in Arab villages and he would see candles in the window on Friday night.

[00:31:19] Lawrence Wright: He would see Hebrew in the cemeteries. And he came to the conclusion that the Palestinians were really the remnant of the original Jewish settlers in the, in that region who had not been a part of the diaspora. And this, I thought that was a fascinating observation. And then DNA testing has pretty much confirmed that, you know, both of these are very closely related peoples, and both descended from the Canaanites, so.

[00:31:52] Lawrence Wright: When I went to Israel, I was doing a one man show, and I thought, well, I’ll tell them this and this will solve the problem. And, and, uh, some people didn’t believe it and then others said, oh, yeah, we knew that. And that really stopped me. Uh, and I, I ran into this book that’s been very influential in my thinking called The Need to Have Enemies and Allies by CA separated American psychiatrist named Vick Vulcan.

[00:32:21] Lawrence Wright: Who grew up in Cyprus, where, uh, Greeks and Turks, you know, historical antagonists lived, and they were very, very similar people and they dressed the same with the same white tunic. Uh, although the, the Greeks would have the blue sash and the Turks would have the green one, and they each sp smoke different cigarettes.

[00:32:43] Lawrence Wright: And these were the little tells. That showed you, this is my enemy. Hmm. And in Northern Ireland, you know, the Protestants and the Catholics would paint their doors a different color. Right. And the Hutus and the Tootsies were so similar. They had to ask what tribe they were in before they killed each other.

[00:33:00] Jeremi Suri: Right.

[00:33:00] Lawrence Wright: And he remarked on Freud’s observation about the narcissism of minor differences that people who like civil wars are oftentimes much bloodier than other conflicts. And why is this, uh, in Freud’s ideas is some sort of projection of your own, uh, despised qualities that you’re fighting against. And I don’t know whether that’s an accurate theory to work with, but it helps me understand that people that are who one would think should be friends as they are in Brooklyn mm-hmm.

[00:33:38] Lawrence Wright: Sometimes fix on the smallest things. Uh, that drive them separately and, and it can lead to the worst traumas. And I think that’s one of the factors we have in Israel and Palestine.

[00:33:53] Jeremi Suri: Zachary, does that resonate with you? I know you’ve thought about this a lot, particularly with, with your involvement with, with the Jewish community.

[00:33:59] Jeremi Suri: Do you, does that resonate with you?

[00:34:01] Zachary Suri: Yes, I think so. Um, I think. One of the important points that we’ve keep returning to on our podcast about the subject is yes, this sort of similarity in the experiences. Um, I think in some ways though, that’s what makes it so politically challenging to solve, um, is that the reality is that these two people want to live in similar ways, on the same land, and, uh, political solutions are yet to be invented that can allow everyone to get what they want.

[00:34:34] Zachary Suri: Um, and the challenge is that for so many, the stakes are personal, they’re religious, they’re political, um, and they seem often existential. I think it’s important to remember that they’re also human. And I, I think that’s the power of fiction and, and of a novel like this. I.

[00:34:49] Jeremi Suri: Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, I, I thought Larry and I, I’m, I I’m gonna sneak in one final question here.

[00:34:55] Jeremi Suri: I thought, um, the relationship that you have in the novel, uh, between Sarah and Malik, um, one Jewish, one, um, Muslim, uh, it, it’s, I I think it captures some of that, doesn’t it?

[00:35:10] Lawrence Wright: Yeah. I mean, of course, you know, things don’t turn out that well, uh, but. You, you hope that one, that people can find the humanity of each other, and if they can, then they can struggle to peace.

[00:35:27] Lawrence Wright: And that’s what happens with, with Sarah and Malik, is they find each other in this turbulent bloody trauma that everybody’s going through. Uh, they finally spot the other that they’ve been longing for. Yes. Yes.

[00:35:43] Jeremi Suri: Well, Larry, uh, uh, congratulations on your novel. I think it has done just what we were talking about.

[00:35:49] Jeremi Suri: It, it, it humanizes this story. It takes these very difficult, quite frankly, depressing historical dynamics. And it, it really, it, it helps us, it certainly helps me as a reader to identify and I think one of the key elements of. Democracy and democratic thinking is learning to humanize people who are different from, from all of us, right?

[00:36:10] Jeremi Suri: And I think your novel does that as only a great novel can. So congratulations,

[00:36:14] Lawrence Wright: Larry. Well, thank you Jeremy. And thanks Zachary.

[00:36:16] Jeremi Suri: I enjoyed chatting with you guys. Thank you. And I want to encourage all of our listeners to pick up a copy of, uh, the Human Scale. It’s available at all. Uh. Bookstores and it is really a story, story worth reading.

[00:36:29] Jeremi Suri: It, it is not, uh, the most uplifting story, but it is a compelling story and I think it has something for everyone, even if you’re not a Middle East specialist. Uh, again, thank you Larry. Zachary, thank you for your, your beautiful poem as always, and for your questions. Uh, and. Thank you most of all, to our loyal listeners and loyal subscribers to our substack for joining us, uh, for this episode of This Is Democracy.

[00:36:55] Intro: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio

[00:36:59] Intro: and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:37:03] Intro: The music in this episode was written and recorded by Scott Holmes. Stay tuned for a new episode every week You can find This is Democracy on Apple Podcast, Spotify and YouTube.

[00:37:16] Intro: See you next time.