Dilemma Podcast

Daniel Klein was born and raised in Efrat, one of the largest religious Zionist settlements in the occupied West Bank. His family helped build the settlement movement, and he grew up immersed in its schools, institutions, theology, politics, and culture before serving as an IDF tank commander. In this conversation, Daniel shares an insider's account of life inside the religious Zionist world, the psychology of belief, the realities of the settlement project, and how Zionism can present a different face to different people while maintaining a powerful hold over identity and belonging.We discuss Efrat, the West Bank, violent settlers, the relationship between Judaism and Zionism, the dehumanization of Palestinians, military service, nationalism, religious identity, cognitive dissonance, moral injury, and the personal costs of dissent. Daniel explains why leaving Zionism can mean losing family, friends, community, status, and purpose. He describes the process by which ideological systems reproduce themselves, how Israelis are taught to understand Palestinians, and why so many people remain trapped inside narratives.We also explore Daniel's awakening during COVID, what caused his worldview to unravel, why he believes Israeli society is entering a period of profound crisis, and what lessons his journey offers for all of us.00:00:00 Coming Up...00:01:44 Three Big Announcements00:04:44 Introducing Daniel & Centering Jewish Trauma00:09:26 Growing Up in Efrat00:12:07 Who Are Settlers?00:15:02 Zionist Schools Are Crazy00:20:53 Zionism Meets You Where You're At00:23:34 When Daniel Visited Auschwitz00:26:57 Israelis Were Celebrities To Me00:35:22 Supporting Israel Except The Settlers00:42:12 The Intellectual And Emotional Crack00:50:23 It Happens Quickly, During COVID01:02:30 Free Fall Collapse Of Israel01:09:47 A Smiling Grandmother With a Sweater01:19:44 The Violent Supernova At The EndBECOME A MEMBER - MONTHLY MEMBERS ONLY LIVESTREAM https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5NIku35U9thGG9WBJjE0sw/joinFor more from Jay visit whatjaythinks.com

In this conversation, Joseph Margulies and I explore the difficult moral territory at the heart of his new book Cast Out: A Call for a Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration. What does a society gain—or lose—when it decides that certain people are beyond redemption? We talk about the stories of people Margulies encountered through his work, including Lisa Montgomery, David Medina, Klete Keller, Lucas Whaley, and Eric Matthews, and the disturbing realities of the American prison system. We also confront a fundamental question about who gets to tell the stories of people who have committed horrific crimes, and whether understanding those stories can coexist with genuine accountability.Margulies brings decades of experience as a criminal defense attorney to this question, including his defense of Palestinian Abu Zubaydah, who remains imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay without ever having been charged and who was subjected to brutal torture by the United States. We discuss what American prisons reveal about our attitudes toward human beings who have done terrible things, and how these questions extend beyond the prison system into Israel-Palestine and the broader politics of punishment, victimhood, and moral judgment.At the center of the conversation is a distinction that may be essential to any meaningful idea of forgiveness: an explanation is not an excuse. To understand why someone committed a terrible act does not mean absolving them of responsibility. But if accountability is part of forgiveness rather than its opposite, what should accountability actually look like? And can we build a society capable of condemning terrible acts without deciding that the people who commit them are themselves irredeemable? This conversation is an exploration of punishment, responsibility, storytelling, torture, forgiveness, and what it means to remain human in the face of the worst things human beings do.00:00:00 Coming Up...00:01:39 Introduction to Cast Out00:06:29 Joseph Margulies Story And Work00:08:08 A Book Not About Prison But About Us00:09:50 The Problem is Not Drug Offenders, Let's Be Honest00:13:09 Klete Keller Gets His Story Told00:17:03 Accountability Matters And Lisa Montgomery00:20:21 What Happened? With Lisa Montgomery00:32:05 Lucas Whaley And The Addiction to Rage00:45:18 The Belief Of Just One Person and Eric Matthews00:54:31 What Should Prison Look Like In a Forgiving Society?01:02:02 "Abu Zubaydah Is My Client" & The Palestine Narrative01:09:10 But What About REALLY Bad People? & Abu Zubaydah's Story01:20:27 The Desperate Need For Radical Extension of Compassion01:25:21 My Own Frustrations And Failure To Tell A Story01:28:23 Go Watch "Alabama Solution" and "The Work"BECOME A MEMBER - MONTHLY MEMBERS ONLY LIVESTREAM https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5NIku35U9thGG9WBJjE0sw/joinFor more from Jay visit whatjaythinks.com

Michael Sawyer is the author of The Door of No Return, a sweeping work that challenges conventional ideas about race, history, memory, and modernity. In this conversation, we explore his concept of anti-Blackness as something deeper than prejudice or discrimination—an organizing logic embedded within the modern world itself. Sawyer explains why the Middle Passage remains central to understanding contemporary society, dismantles Hegel's philosophy of history, critiques the limitations of Négritude and Afro-pessimism, and introduces the idea of "rememory" as a radically different way of relating to the past.We also discuss the killing of Elijah McClain, the evolution of Ta-Nehisi Coates' writing after Palestine, and Sawyer's deeply personal reflections on racism, including experiences growing up and playing basketball. Along the way, we examine how Shakespeare's Macbeth, the music of Bob Marley, and the lyrics of The Notorious B.I.G. illuminate questions of violence, identity, power, and survival in ways that philosophy often cannot.This is an expansive conversation connecting literature, history, music, politics, and lived experience. Whether unpacking the legacy of slavery, questioning the assumptions of Western philosophy, or imagining what might exist beyond the structures of anti-Blackness, Michael Sawyer offers a powerful framework for thinking about the past—and what a genuinely different future could look like.00:00 Coming Up...01:27 Intro to Sawyer & Why Bob Marley Is Doing Philosophy08:41 Paralysis & The Anti-Black World After the Middle Passage14:14 The Diagram That Explains the Entire Book21:55 W.E.B Du Bois & What Hegel Got Wrong About History27:17 The Free Throw Line as The Racial Bursting Apart36:44 What Is The Title of This Book... Actually?39:19 Tackling Hegel's Philosophy & Where it Fails To Be About Blackness51:25 The Murder of Elijah McClain1:02:50 Sawyer Illuminates The Words of McClain In The Anti-Black World1:09:10 Slavery's Afterlife and Anti-Blackness as Gravity1:14:00 Whitey On The Moon and Who Gets To Participate in Language Architecture1:23:25 Mick Jagger Couldn't Clap Along to Aretha1:30:38 Your Oppression Will Not Save You and Why Ta-Nehisi Coates Changed1:37:55 Final Thoughts and Upcoming GuestsBECOME A MEMBER - MONTHLY MEMBERS ONLY LIVESTREAM https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5NIku35U9thGG9WBJjE0sw/joinFor more from Jay visit whatjaythinks.com

After watching The Voice of Hind Rajab, I started thinking about doctrine — not religious doctrine, but cinematic doctrine. For decades, Hollywood films like True Lies and Rules of Engagement helped script a moral universe where Arab violence was irrational, Western violence was justified, and Israel existed inside an unquestioned frame of necessity. Drawing on Jack Shaheen’s work in Reel Bad Arabs, this essay argues that blockbuster filmmaking became a kind of modern scripture — more powerful than any ancient text in shaping how we see good and evil. But that narrative monopoly is breaking. And when the story collapses, power gets nervous.00:00 Intro00:28 Part 1: Holy Doctrines04:55 Part 2: The New Mythmakers13:38 Part 3: Preimagined Terror22:20 Part 4 The Turning Tide31:34 Part 5 The Desperate StrategyBECOME A MEMBER - MONTHLY MEMBERS ONLY LIVESTREAM https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5NIku35U9thGG9WBJjE0sw/joinFor more from Jay visit whatjaythinks.com