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Ed Kessler

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2024-04-07
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2024-04-07
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  1. “Whether it's a 20% number, a percentage within the faith school, or something like that. At that time, the Cardinal of Westminster and the chief rabbi sent me separate letters, but have obviously got together condemning that recommendation. And it was a wonderful example of Jewish Christian relations in action, but not quite the type I had hoped for. Personally, as long as faith schools ensure their children don't just learn about another faith, but their children engage with children of other faiths ideally in the same school, then I'm absolutely for them. I'm not in favor of 100% based faith schools whose graduates do not engage with and do not understand and do not encounter children of other faiths.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “A few years ago, I was vice chair, thankfully, not chair of a commission on religion and belief. There are some excellent faith schools, right? In fact, the majority of faith schools are probably excellent, right? But we made a statement that the children coming out of faith schools should have some encounter with an understanding of others.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “First of all, the Rwanda debate is ongoing, and even when it becomes law or has become law, it's going to go through a various courts of appeal. Whatever happens, there will be refugees. We can't stop refugees, whether it's a Ukraine scheme or Hong Kong's or others. We need better ways to integrate them into our society. At the moment, the average excluding the special cases of the 20,000 Afghans and so on is about 50,000 a year. Now, let's be honest, we're not going to stop the boats. What we've got to do is have proper, safe and legal passage. That's a different subject outside the Commission, but we have to integrate it better. And these recommendations, as I say, are cross-party. You know, it's a real example of what can be achieved.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “That people should be able to access work from six months. At the moment, you can't work at least until 12 months, and then only on the job shortage occupation list is bringing people together across these boundaries, having a serious, and forgive me, adult conversation with people who disagree with each other but want that the asylum system to work and doing it with people who spend time with refugees around the country. It's remarkable what consensus has been achieved on a very difficult topic.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “So the Commission on the Integration of Refugees recently issued its report with 16 recommendations, 14 of which were unanimous. Now this Commission is 22 people both left wing and right-wing. We have Tory, we have Labour, we have policy exchange, we have refugees, we have faith leaders, we have people who do not agree with each other like Brenda Hale, Lady Hale and David Goodhart. They sit on the same commission, they agree the system is broken and they say what can we do to fix it. We've published a series of recommendations that have been costed, our evidence-based with hearings all around the country. And actually, there's such good practice that's going on. Again, it's actually acknowledging what is working well. For example, homes for Ukraine. There are 150,000 or so Ukrainians here, 73,000 are in people's homes. That's remarkable. It's not about taking somebody's home away from somebody else. And of course, living in somebody's home means that you're going to integrate more quickly. One of our recommendations was”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I'd like to see the same, but I'd also like to say on the ground there are some really good things happening. There are synagogues. Research of the Wolf Institute has shown very recently that the effect of dialogue starts from the bottom up. It may be that you meet the Pope or the Ran Mufti or the chief rabbi, that's nice photo opportunity moment, but actually the change comes from the ground, from street relations. And there are a lot of problematic things happening, but there are some good things happening. So again, I hang on to a sense of optimism about what might be. I would love our political leaders to say, you know, let's bring our communities together and mean it. I'd like them to invest in that. There are many, many good politicians who are going out there within our communities, who understand the local community. The constituencies help that. It fosters that. We don't have a constituency system, for example, in Israel. It's just national or in the States. It's so big. But yeah, there are some good things happening here.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Driven from India. The war in Gaza has driven the anti Semitist and Islamophobia we see today. Back when there was the Rushti affair in 1992 or the destruction of the mosque in Ioda in India the same year, there weren't riots here. There were riots about anger of the Muslim community about the satanic verses, don't get me wrong, but in terms of interfaith pressures there weren't, that's happening now. things transfer so quickly from one place to the other it could be Gaza it could be Karachi it could be anywhere it could be Washington and it's a real challenge for us in the political sphere but also in the religious sphere because suddenly you're under pressure because of what somebody said”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Trying to get at the fact that now that we are such a multicultural society, when something happens in India, there could be riots in Leicester, as there were in 2022 between Hindus and Muslims.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “It's not easy, right? It's not an easy neighborhood. I think it's Harry Ahmed and the House of Lords gets, right? Because he has got special responsibility for the sacred sites in Jerusalem. He gets the complexity of it. And that's really important.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Know nothing other than Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and Israel still, in many ways, the government of Israel and the people of Israel still see themselves as a minority. I get that because they're surrounded by a majority. Remember Prince Hassan of Jordan saying to me when he met Shimon Perez, Mr. Perez said, Your Royal Highness, you don't know how difficult it is for us Israelis. We're surrounded by enemies who want to throw us into the sea. And Sidi Hassan said, I understand, Mr. Perez, but you don't know how lucky you are. You are surrounded by enemies, but I'm surrounded by friends.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “One of the things that you do notice in the States is the generational split. Far as Israel is concerned. So the Biden generation is much more aware of that history of Israel, the vulnerability of Israel in its early years, supporting Israel, it being bipartisan. And then the next generation, perhaps our generation, sort of much more aware of the complexity Israel as a power, less vulnerable than it was and the difficulty of the relationship with Palestinians. And then you have our kids generation.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Sense of the complexity of it, and you do that with a little bit of having a relationship, right? Having built up a little bit of trust. If I go into a room with a group of Muslims, the first thing I do is not talk about Israel-Palestine. I talk about what do we have in common and then talk about difficult things, maybe going to theology of land. Why is Mecca Medina holy? What's special about Jerusalem? Begin to get there. You don't go there straight away. And unfortunately in politics, I don't know, I can ask you this question. Everything seems to be transactional. You know, I give you this, you give me that. But in religion, in dialogue, that's not the case. It's not transaction. It's relationship based and it's different, isn't it?”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I can't do it in a soundbite, and it is all the ands that you put together And the problem is not just the however many digits there are for a tweet nowadays, but people want things done very, very quickly and they want things summarized very, very easily and it ain't possible. So when I'm pushed something like that, can you explain it simply? I'm sorry to say the answer is no, I can't. Give me a bit of your time and I'll explain it. And I'll go through it with you. And I think to have the courage to say that rather than simply come up with something that is platitude or something that is so short that, of course, it leaves something out. So the bottom line is it's incredibly complicated and that doesn't mean that you ignore the terrible suffering of Palestinians and you ignore the dehumanizing language that politicians, particularly in that part of the world, seem to adopt so easily. The calamitous regime and the government of Netanyahu's calamitous, it seems, not just for me, my view, not just for Palestinians and particularly in Gaza right now, but for the state of Israel. That's my personal view. But you have to get...”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “It is, it is. So it won't be any one state, it will be a combination of states. But I do worry if there's one thing I worry about is with the possible election of Donald Trump for a second term in terms of what the impact will be in that part of the world, because it could well lead to the end of one or two countries.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “The US has always been criticized for not being a balanced player, but particularly under Trump, but not only, has been seen more and more as simply a supporter of Israel and a defender of Israel. Of course, Qatar is probably more aligned for Palestinian cause. It certainly funds Hamas in the strip and Gaza Strip. It's very good at looking two ways at the same time.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Whether the government sit down officially publicly and talk to them is one thing, but they should certainly be understanding where they're coming from and have people who are talking to them, right? The foolishness is pretend that you can't talk to anybody.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I've met lots of problematic people in Doha. I've met people who I fundamentally disagree with whose views may be, I don't know, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, whatever. I will meet anybody as long as I don't feel threatened. But I have that wiggle room that perhaps politicians don't have so much. They have to use conduits. But yes, everyone has to make out their own mind who they can and can't meet.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “You need wiggle room. I personally have wiggle room. I'm just an academic. I'm a teacher. I'm a leader in interfaith. I can meet pretty much anybody”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “I think the weaponized in Christianity, less of a minority religion, but being persecuted. So it's when Christians have been persecuted in Pakistan, or you bring in other parts of the world where”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “But there's always been criticism. Maggie Thatcher criticized the Archbishop of Canterbury after the Falklanders War, right? So that's not a new phenomenon.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Well, when is the Archbishop of Canterbury not criticizing the government? There is something about the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury to hold.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Very different from what I was brought up with when I went to the Arsenal, right? There are so many things. I mentioned about Rishi being Prime Minister. You look at the different celebrities or different faiths, different cultures. We are now a multicultural society. Back in 1960, one in 150 people were not Christian. They were basically a Jew. Now it's one in 10, British. One in 10. We are all minorities. I think that's incredibly liberating that we're all minorities. Because you don't have a majority culture that can tell the minority culture from a faith perspective, this is how to do it.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “As far as I'm concerned, I say absolutely loudly and proudly multiculturalism is a success. I am an Arsenal supporter, as we said before the show. My son supports Liverpool. So when Mo Sallah scores and prostrates on the ground as a Muslim, what do Liverpool supporters chant if he scores a few, I'll become a Muslim too? It's great.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “I want to pick up your point about demonizing Muslims because I think there are some encouraging signs. We're having this conversation during Ramadan, about two weeks in, a bit less. And what I've noticed is although the number of iftars that are being hosted by churches and synagogues have declined, they're still happening. That's really encouraging because that's the kind of solidarity. It's about crossing a threshold. It's why I take my students into a mosque, cross that threshold. It's not as you might think it is and the synagogue. So there are these little positive signs that I think sometimes we underestimate how well we do multiculturalism and multi-faith. You know, we're very good at criticizing ourselves rightly and there's a lot to criticize.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “It might give cover to it, but thankfully, the Anderson left the party, right? How much worse it would have been if somebody like that stayed within the mainstream politics. So it's a really tricky one because, for example, the government's decision to take funding away from the interfaith network. 1987 it was founded this body on the ground trying to bring little communities together it's not it's national but it's like little communities in Bristol in the north in Bradford wherever around the whole of the UK the government promised I don't have 150 grand not like pocket money and they've withdrawn it and it's about to close i mean this is the sort of thing we should be investing in not just financially but supporting”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “One of my fears is they are weaponizing Islamophobia and anti Semitism for their own political ends and that it is going to become a wedge issue and that in particular Muslims and Jews have to stop that. Mustn't allow that to happen. And I do feel that with the election coming up. In some ways, having a Hindu prime minister is wonderful and a person of color because I hope that lightens it a bit, if you like.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “It's unbelievably divisive. It just shows how difficult it is, what may be extremist to you, is not to me, how difficult it is to do that.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “I am not as alarmed at what's going on here as I am at what's going on the States. And obviously I'm quite close to things in terms of Jews, Christians and Muslims in the States. And so no. Yes, there are challenges here. There certainly are. And it's more difficult engaging in classroom dialogue today than 25 years ago when I set up the institute.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “I want to engage, and it kind of worries me when I make a joke. Is it appropriate? One of the courses we taught was for Metropolitan Police Officers, and I started off with a really tricky joke. And they didn't know whether to laugh. So we're at that point where everything is so sensitive.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “So, America's in a really tricky situation, not just in its universities, but in its social strata, its social economic background, in its political machinations in the universities. And you saw that with the resignation just recently of gay, right, the head of Harvard, and not just the other universities, the heads also left, that the woke culture, the worries about freedom of speech, the incredible sensitivity to anything is deeply, deeply worrying. My worry is to what extent it's being transferred over here. I in my classes want my students to say inane, difficult, problematic, possibly racist things. So I can say, let's just stop, let's unpack what you had to say. Because if they can't say it with me, I worry where they are going to say it, right? And honestly, it's that openness to be able to do that, which we seem to have lost in the United States. Even I find it tricky if I'm giving a class, somebody puts a phone and starts recording me because I don't know.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Yes, in a way, I'm glad I'm not going to university now, you know, where anything I might have done appears in the social media, never to be rescinded, the sort of things I did as a kid, and you probably did, you know. him.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Absolutely, and it happened at the same time. Process the Oslo process was going on at the same time. What happened in Northern Ireland was there's a fragile, but this piece, maybe a cold piece, but this peace. What's happening in Israel-Palestine? It's a calamity.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “You're looking for process. I'm looking for relations. Looking for where those relations that people are going to get along that are going to begin to build bridges between community.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “A person of faith, I have no choice but to be optimistic. It's a story about three people who meet in Jerusalem every day and they look around and they see that the world's chaos, there's fighting and they decide they're three pessimists. And one day one of them turns around the other two and says, you know what, I've converted. He said, I've become an optimist. So how can you be an optimist? There's so many terrible things going on. I said, no, no, that's who I am now. So they accept him because they're old friends. And then a few minutes later, they look at this newly converted optimist. He looks a bit like me, he wrinkles and frowns and bit of grey hair. They say, why are you looking so worried if you're an optimist? He said, do you think it's easy to be an optimist? No other way to go for me personally. So”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “First, were to say, tell me your story. How are you feeling right now? Let everybody expel that. And then to say, where do we go? And the thing is, Rory, they say the same thing. I'm scared of going on the tube in my hijab. I've taken down my muzza from the door. I'm worried about my kids. I'm worried about my personal security. I'm worried about social media. If you didn't know what hijab and muzza was, you wouldn't know whether it was a Muslim or Jews saying it. They say the same thing, and then they hear themselves say it, and it's the beginning of moving forward.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Were there a few placards that were anti Semitic or the few chance anti Semitic? It's what you select to see now on the Muslim side, and we're making generalizations here, at least I am, of which I'll be criticized when I go back to Cambridge, but nevertheless, on the Muslim side, generally speaking, there is incredible frustration at the Palestinian voice not having been heard, at the suffering of Palestinians, the lack of progress, in fact even worse, the decline of any possibilities, and the frustration and anger with that. Now, the irony is, is what I've managed to do in the institute the Wolf Institute has managed to do over the last few months is bring together small numbers of Jews and Muslims quietly here in London, in Oxford, in Birmingham, in other places Cambridge.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “This is very odd collection of bed fellows, whether it's left wing, anti-colonial rhetoric that sees Israel as the sort of representative, this archetype of colonialism. There is a sense of sadness at the suffering of Palestinians and how terrible it is. There is such heightened sensitivities that what is taken as criticism now becomes anti-Semitism. You know, you have something like something as simple as from the river to the sea, let Palestine be free. That in itself isn't anti-Semitic, in my view. Waving Palestinian flags aren't anti-Semitic. But if I drive through the streets of a Jewish area, honking my horn, waving Palestinian flags and shouting, that might be anti-Semitic. It gets so complicated. Number two have been on the marches, the big pro-Palestine marches. And a friend of mine stood outside watching the march and said, it was amazing. Hundreds of thousands of people, I didn't see any anti-Semitist Jewish, any anti-Semitism. Another friend all they saw.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “The impact of the attack has been quite traumatic on Jews around the world, not just in the UK, but here in the sense that nobody expected it. It was a slaughter. It wasn't just an attack. It was a slaughter. Some of the things that happened were truly, truly awful. And the reaction to that was a rise in anti-Semitism. And it's like, how have we got here? And then a retreat within and then it kind of feeds one off and the other.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “And it kind of set the context a little bit gladiator, a little bit adversarial, but then the next day, literally they sat down together at breakfast. In the end, about relationships, can I trust you or not trust you? It's not theology. It's not ideology. It's not politics. It's simply look in your eye. It's dialogue, understanding that person as the other person wishes to be understood. And it's trusting. Can I trust you? And at the moment, there is almost no trust between the groups on the ground.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “A good story is around the table when people introduce themselves. Most people knew most people, not everybody. One Israeli Jew said, quite aggressively, I want you to know I am the eighth generation Jerusalemite. And everyone goes, goes around about three further on. And there's Palestinian Catholic, not Muslim, Palestinian Catholic says, thank you, I give his name. Thank you for sharing that. I want you to know I'm 13th generation.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Three groups. Those three groups sitting around the table who do not get along, how can we get along? How can we help you get along? It was a wonderful conversation because they were out of the spotlight. They weren't in their homeland. There was no coverage and we were beginning to get somewhere.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Means the furthest place, right? So it's the third holiest place in Islam, it's also where the temple, the biblical temple, stood, it's 500 yards, if that from the Church Holy Sepulchre. And what we did, in fact, one of my proudest moments was bringing together to Cambridge with Prince Hassan's support just before COVID, 21 Israelis Palestinians Jordanians who work on the ground. How can we, or we, I mean, I don't mean in a sense, I can do it, but no, how can they?”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “And how we can get to a level where we can actually get on a little bit better, whether that's in Israel or Palestine or whether that's here in the UK.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Oh, it certainly is a loose fitting garment. It might be so loose that it's fallen off. It's not clear to me, Rory, that there is. Two state solutions such as the complexity and the division and the building blocks in certain places, it may be that we end up with one state that's a kind of federal state or some kind or other. Princess Anna Jordan, our mutual friend, talks about a confederation of Israel, Palestine and Jordan. The answer is I don't know. My work, although I've done some work in Israel, in Jerusalem, bringing together Israelis and Palestinians and Israeli Palestinians and Jordanians about Jerusalem itself, and particularly about Alexa. But my work really is about the relations between people.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “In other words, you take a term and you kind of make it fit to whatever you want. A term like Zionism. Zionism can mean a whole array of different things, whether I'm a West Bank's nationalist religious settler on the West Bank, whether I'm a secular Jew in Tel Aviv, or whether I'm sitting in London or in Cambridge or wherever I'm sitting. So there's almost Zionism, which essentially means a homeland for the Jewish people in the land of Israel. Makes no points and definitions about the size of that land, the extent of that land, the relationship with others. It's just saying there should be a home lender. That's all it is. And I relate to that.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Personally, I think as a Jew, I relate to three aspects. I relate to the religion and the way that I practice. I relate to the culture, Jewish culture and literature and so on, and I relate to land, the land being specifically the land of Israel. My aspiration, my hope is that there is a land of Palestine and a land of Israel. How we get there is beyond my pay grade. But you have to build the relationships up from the ground. So in a way, I suppose I would define myself, and we've got to be very careful. My wife read a book recently called Untied Kingdom. I don't know if you've come across it, it's Stewart Ward. It looks at the development of the UK since the colonies and since the subcontinent 1947 Palestine, Ireland, 1920s and so on. And he came up with this term loose fitting clothes.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “They retreat within. That's what we've got at the moment. I don't have a lot of optimism, but no, to say there's nothing happening is not right. There are things happening. There are things, but not many.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “Not speaking to the people who are trying to do that, you're speaking to the leaders, the representatives, quite rightly. But if you go on the ground, there are some little pockets of excellence, whether it's Jewish and Arab groups in Palestinian groups, in Israel trying to protect certain places. Rory will know in certain parts of the West Bank, where there's rabbis for human rights working with Muslim leaders. These are little pockets. They are under incredible pressure because what's happened since October 7th is that for those of us who are trying to do it, we're being squeezed. And when the majority feel under attack, what do they do? They retreat.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “There was a wonderful bishop called Christa Stendell. He had three principles of dialogue, and I had a fourth to his three. And the first thing he said is when you want to understand something, go to that person's religion. You want to understand Judaism or Christianity, Islam, whatever, Hinduism, go to, first we'll go to the person. The second thing is compare best with best or worst with worst. I mean, we're very good at comparing my best with your worst. The third in the interfaith world is to have something called holy envy. Admire something about somebody else. And what I would add to it all is have a sense of humor because it's a tricky world out there. And sometimes you can absolutely prick the tension with a joke or something self-deprecated.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Essentially dialogue is really difficult. Dialogue is about understanding the other person as that person wishes to be understood. If we just unpack that, it's not simply you messaging me or me answering a question about fact. It's you trying to get into my shoes and vice versa. It is really, really difficult. That is genuine dialogue. That's what Martin Buber talked about.”

    2024-04-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 68. Israel-Gaza: How the conflict divided Britain and the US, with Ed Kessler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source