Transcript [00:00] Watch what happens when Avi Mayer goes [00:02] to the Oxford Union to debate who is [00:05] really looking for peace, Israel or [00:07] Palestine. Take a look. [00:09] >> Madam President, members of the house, [00:11] ladies and gentlemen, [00:13] it falls to me to bring our case and [00:16] this debate to a close. [00:18] And unlike some on the other side, I [00:19] will actually speak to the proposition. [00:23] My colleagues have ably set out the long [00:25] history of Zionists and then Israeli [00:28] efforts to achieve peace with the [00:29] Palestinians. [00:31] The compromises proposed, the [00:33] territorial concessions offered, and the [00:35] repeated willingness of Israeli leaders [00:37] and the Israeli public [00:39] to take extraordinary risks in pursuit [00:41] of that goal. Risks all too often paid [00:44] for in Israeli blood. [00:47] Our opponents, for their part, have [00:49] offered a very different story. [00:51] We've heard painful accounts of [00:53] dispossession, and they are indeed [00:55] painful, Dr. Karmi. [00:57] We've heard selective readings of [00:59] history and arguments that deny any [01:01] genuine Jewish claim to the land that [01:03] both peoples call home. [01:05] We've heard contortions of logic and [01:07] inversions of truth that seek to explain [01:10] away every Israeli overture, every [01:13] negotiation, every concession as [01:15] something other than it appeared to be. [01:19] And that brings us to the real question [01:21] before this house tonight. [01:24] Because we're not being asked whether [01:25] Israeli governments have fallen short in [01:27] their efforts to bring about peace. [01:30] Some have. [01:31] While others, including those described [01:33] earlier, have offered dramatic and [01:35] far-reaching concessions to bring peace [01:38] about. [01:39] We're not being asked whether Israeli [01:41] and Palestinian leaders have at times [01:43] missed opportunities that might have [01:44] brought peace closer. [01:46] They have. [01:48] We're not even being asked whether [01:49] Palestinians and Israelis have suffered [01:53] due to the absence of peace. [01:55] They have. [01:57] No, the motion before this house tonight [01:59] is far more extreme. [02:02] It posits that Israel never wanted peace [02:06] with Palestine. [02:08] Never. [02:11] Never? [02:12] Not Rabin, not Peres, not Barak, not [02:16] Olmert, not the hundreds of thousands of [02:19] Israelis who filled public squares in [02:22] support of peace, [02:23] not the millions who voted for leaders [02:26] promising territorial concessions, [02:29] not the Israeli parents of every [02:31] generation who knowing all too well the [02:34] cost of war hoped and prayed and dreamed [02:37] that their children would be the first [02:39] to finally know peace? [02:42] Never? [02:44] Ladies and gentlemen, our opponents have [02:45] spent this evening asking you to believe [02:47] something striking. [02:49] That when Israelis spoke of and prayed [02:51] for peace, [02:52] they didn't mean it. [02:54] That when Zionist and Israeli leaders [02:56] offered concessions for peace, [02:59] they didn't mean it. [03:00] That when millions of Israelis voted for [03:03] peace, [03:04] they didn't mean it either. [03:07] This is not an argument [03:09] about Israeli policy. [03:11] This is an argument about Israeli [03:12] motives, about the Israeli soul. [03:16] And the difficulty for our opponents is [03:19] that they've chosen the wrong people. [03:22] Because there is no value more essential [03:24] to the Jewish national soul than peace. [03:28] The Jewish tradition is suffused with [03:30] the quest for peace. It courses through [03:32] our religious text, animates our [03:34] prayers, and inspires our vision of a [03:36] more perfect world. [03:39] It was the prophet Isaiah who envisioned [03:41] a future in which peace reigned among [03:43] nations, uttering those immortal words, [03:45] "And they shall beat their swords into [03:47] plowshares and their spears into pruning [03:49] hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword [03:51] against nation, neither shall they learn [03:54] war anymore. [03:56] Every single day for two millennia, Jews [03:58] have ended their daily prayers with [04:00] supplications for peace. The Talmud goes [04:02] so far as to say that shalom, peace, is [04:05] one of God's names, elevating it from an [04:07] earthly aspiration to the realm of the [04:09] divine. [04:11] It is no surprise then that when the [04:12] early Zionist thinkers contemplated the [04:14] Jewish state they sought to create, they [04:16] envisioned it at peace. [04:19] Socialists and liberals, revisionists [04:21] and traditionalists may differ [04:22] profoundly in their visions of the state [04:24] that was to be. [04:26] Yet across those divisions ran a [04:28] remarkably consistent belief [04:30] that the Jewish national home should one [04:33] day live at peace with its neighbors. [04:36] That aspiration found perhaps its [04:38] clearest expression in Israel's [04:40] Declaration of Independence, issued as [04:42] five Arab armies advanced upon the [04:44] nation-state. [04:46] Even in that moment of existential [04:48] peril, Israel's founders proclaimed, [04:51] "We extend our hand to all neighboring [04:53] states and their peoples in an offer of [04:56] peace and good neighborliness. An appeal [04:58] to them to establish bonds of [04:59] cooperation and mutual help with the [05:02] sovereign Jewish people settled in its [05:04] land." [05:06] And indeed for generations of Israelis, [05:08] that aspiration has been not merely a [05:10] line in a founding document. It has been [05:13] a sought-after reality, a national [05:15] ideal, and a deeply personal hope. [05:19] I'm a relic of the 1980s. [05:22] The first word I learned on my first day [05:24] of primary school in Jerusalem was [05:26] shalom, peace. An experience shared by [05:29] all Israelis, including those in this [05:31] room, on both sides of this debate. [05:34] I remember watching wide-eyed as Yitzhak [05:36] Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on [05:38] the White House lawn, certain that a new [05:40] era of peace was upon us. [05:44] I remember standing in a massive crowd [05:45] with my father and younger sister as we [05:47] were swept towards the gates of the [05:49] Knesset, Israel's parliament, to pay our [05:51] respects to Rabin, felled by an [05:53] assassin's bullets in his pursuit of [05:55] peace. [05:57] I remember the wave of Hamas terrorist [05:59] attacks that claimed the lives of [06:01] hundreds of Israelis, including two [06:03] young girls from my neighborhood, one [06:05] year my junior, killed in a Jerusalem [06:07] pizzeria. [06:10] And I remember how [06:11] even in the midst of that surge of [06:14] murderous terror, even in the wake of a [06:16] prime minister's assassination, [06:18] Israelis pivoted not to the right, but [06:21] to the left, electing a leader who had [06:24] explicitly campaigned on a platform of [06:26] territorial concessions for peace and [06:29] granting Ehud Barak one of the largest [06:31] margins of victory in Israeli history. [06:35] But Israel never wanted peace. [06:37] Never? [06:39] Really? [06:41] Ladies and gentlemen, that claim [06:42] crumbles under the weight of documented [06:44] history. [06:45] One can argue that peace has proven [06:47] elusive. One can argue that [06:48] opportunities have been missed. One can [06:51] argue that terrible mistakes have been [06:53] made. [06:54] One can even argue that today, after [06:56] October 7th, the appetite for [06:58] territorial concessions in the interest [07:00] of peace is vastly diminished. [07:03] But to argue that Israelis never wanted [07:06] peace is not a serious reading of [07:08] history. [07:10] It is a denial [07:11] of history. [07:13] Indeed, it requires us to believe that [07:14] millions of people across multiple [07:17] generations did not truly mean what they [07:18] said to one another, to their neighbors, [07:21] and even to God himself [07:23] about one of their most heartfelt [07:25] aspirations. [07:26] For if every expression of peace was [07:28] merely a ruse, every offer a deception, [07:30] every aspiration a lie, [07:33] then we are left with a familiar [07:35] accusation [07:36] that what Jews said [07:38] was never what Jews meant. [07:41] But beneath much of what we've heard [07:42] tonight [07:43] lies an even darker and deeper argument. [07:47] It is an argument that is animated not [07:49] only some of the views expressed in this [07:51] chamber, but too often the positions of [07:53] Palestinian leaders throughout the [07:55] conflict. [07:57] It is not really about peace [07:58] negotiations. [08:00] It's not about diplomatic proposals. [08:02] It's not really about Camp David or Oslo [08:04] or Annapolis. [08:06] It is about legitimacy. [08:09] Because if one denies that the Jewish [08:10] people have any genuine claim to the [08:12] land, if one believes that Israel should [08:15] never have come into being and should [08:17] cease to exist today, [08:19] then no Zionist or Israeli offer, no [08:21] matter how sincere or expensive, can [08:23] ever be enough. [08:26] Peace becomes impossible because one [08:29] side's very existence is regarded as an [08:30] affront, an injustice, a blight to be [08:33] erased. [08:35] But that is not the motion before this [08:37] house. [08:38] You're being asked whether Israel has [08:40] ever truly wanted peace with Palestine. [08:45] And if millions of Israelis marched for [08:47] peace, voted for peace, and were willing [08:50] to take far-reaching and deeply painful [08:52] risks for peace, [08:54] then the answer to that question is [08:56] self-evidently [08:57] yes. [08:59] Ladies and gentlemen, the tragedy of [09:01] this conflict is not that peace has [09:02] never been sought. [09:04] The tragedy is that peace has been [09:06] sought and yet proven so painfully [09:09] difficult to attain. [09:11] The tragedy is that two peoples with [09:13] deep and abiding ties to the same land [09:17] have so often found themselves unable to [09:19] reconcile their competing aspirations. [09:24] That is a tragedy. [09:25] And it is one that we should all hope [09:27] and pray come swiftly to an end for the [09:30] sake of all who live in that cherished [09:32] land. [09:34] But it is not evidence that peace was [09:37] never desired. [09:39] And it is certainly not evidence that an [09:41] entire people spent generations engaged [09:44] in an elaborate collective deception [09:46] about one of their most deeply held [09:48] hopes. [09:49] One that goes to the very depths of [09:51] their national soul. [09:54] For all its mistakes, for all its [09:56] failures, for all the opportunities lost [09:58] along the way, Israel has wanted peace. [10:03] Jewish tradition says so. [10:06] History says so. The lived experience of [10:08] generations of Israelis says so. And I [10:11] hope this host will say so as well. I [10:14] urge you to reject the motion. Thank you [10:16] very much. [10:17] >> [applause] [10:19] >> He absolutely nailed it. Avi Mayer did a [10:21] great job here explaining exactly why it [10:24] is not Israel looking for war with the [10:28] Palestinians. It has never been Israel [10:30] historically in a hostile environment. [10:33] The Oxford Union is filled with [10:35] Islamists and pro-Palestine students who [10:38] are not afraid to make their [10:40] you know, insane opinions made known. [10:43] Thank you for watching and I'll see you [10:45] in the next one.
