A 'start-up country', the world's first 'AI superpower', an 'innovation nation', those are some of the breathless descriptions used by Israeli politicians, security officials, journalists and business leaders to hail Israel's high-tech industry and its synergy with the Israeli military. But on October 7th, Israel's obsession with what Sophia Goodfriend describes as 'techno-solutionism' came back to haunt the country as Hamas succeeded in breaching the Gaza barrier at eighty different points and disabling many of Israel's automated weapons and surveillance systems. In today's episode of PTO Extra! I spoke with Sophia about her recent articles in The Baffler and Foreign Policy regarding Israel's high-tech methods of waging war and how it conducts its illegal and brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Excerpt - Israel's technosolutionism w/ Sophia Goodfriend

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Israeli universities have long enjoyed a reputation as liberal bastions of freedom and democracy and they enjoy warm relationships with their counterparts in north America and Europe - including the University of Columbia. However, as Maya Wind explains in today's episode, contrary to the depiction of Israeli universities as centres of pluralism and free inquiry these institutions are directly complicit in the project to dispossess Palestinians of their land and rights.

In her new book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom. Maya reveals how academic disciplines, degree programs, campus infrastructure, and research laboratories all service Israeli occupation and apartheid, while universities violate the rights of Palestinians to education, stifle critical scholarship, and violently repress student dissent.

How Israeli universities deny Palestinian freedom w/ Maya Wind

In today's PTO Extra! Richard Seymour responds to some more excellent listener's questions. We talked about the protests against Israel's genocidal war on Gaza taking place at American universities and the extremely repressive response from university authorities. We went on to discuss the situation regarding Iran and Israel, and Richard responded to questions on the disgracing of Sam Bankman-Fried and the effective altruism movement, the Weather Underground and the relevance of armed militant groups of the 1970s to left strategy today. Finally, we talked about what can be expected from a Labour government in the UK and the prospects for a new left party.

Excerpt - Richard Seymour responds to listener's questions (part two)

Paul Rogers returns to PTO to talk about Iran's attack on Israel on the 13th of April - the first such direct operation carried out by Iran. We discussed whether the operation was a failure or a qualified success, and the role of the United States, Britain, France, and Jordan in the downing of Iranian missiles and drones. We also talked about the progress of Iran's programme and how the attacks on the 13th may have distracted attention from the IDF's failure to defeat Hamas in Gaza.

Book your spot at the first PTO Live! event on May 16th in London here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/disaster-nationalism-politics-theory-other-podcast-live-tickets-883198700087

Iran and Israel - stepping back from the brink? w/ Paul Rogers

Since October 7th Israeli politicians, spokespeople, and Israel's supporters have mobilised feminist narratives in defence of the state's genocidal actions in Gaza and sought to portray Palestinian resistance to Israel as suffused with religiously inspired misogyny. In a recent article in Salvage, Sophie Lewis wrote about the way in which Zionist feminists have worked to defend the settler colonial project and how it places them in a long lineage of self-described feminists who have been enthusiastic supporters and participants in imperial conquest. In our conversation we talked about that history, and whether we're seeing a decline in Zionist feminism that parallels the broader crisis of liberal Zionism. 

Book your spot at the first PTO Live! event on May 16th in London here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/disaster-nationalism-politics-theory-other-podcast-live-tickets-883198700087

Israel and the history of imperial feminism w/ Sophie Lewis

In part one of a two-part episode Richard returns to give his thoughts on an apparent turn against Israel on parts of the American right, the significance of the protests against Netanyahu within Israel, the role of students in the Palestine solidarity movement, and his view of post-Marxist thought.

To get access to the full episode become a £5 PTO supporter on patreon.com/poltheoryother

Excerpt - Israel's technosolutionism w/ Sophia Goodfriend

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