Former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy gave the Michael Bell Annual lecture on the Middle East at Carleton University on March 11. He took direct aim at those liberal Zionists who hope it will all be better after Netanyahu leaves. Read more and see the video of his presentation.
Daniel Levy had a sobering message for those who still hope for some kind of “peace agreement” between Israel and the Palestinians. He has some experience. Mr. Levy served as an Israeli negotiator in peace talks with Palestinian leaders under Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and again under Ehud Barak.
Levy is currently President of the US Middle East Project. He has become a forthright supporter of human rights for Palestinians and fierce critic of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Because of his inside knowledge of Israeli politics and the process of Israeli/Palestinian negotiations, he is frequently invited to speak at the UN Security Council.
He described an “all or nothing” attitude prevalent in Israel – not only in its current political leadership, but throughout Israeli society.
He argued that Jewish Israeli society thinks it sees an opportunity to get rid of the Palestinian issue once and for all.
He’s not wrong. Israeli public opinion polls conducted throughout the Gaza assault indicate a consistent trend in Jewish Israeli society. Polled in May 2025, 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the total expulsion of Gaza’s residents. In August 2025, 79% were not concerned with starvation in Gaza. Today, 93% of Israeli Jews support the US/Israeli assault on Iran. And as for the future, a recent poll reveals that young Jewish voters are the most right-wing, fanatically religious, and pro-genocide in Israeli history.
Surprisingly, there was no challenge to Levy’s provocative remarks from the audience of a hundred or so composed mostly of faculty and students. It isn’t clear whether this is because they agreed with his analysis, or because they were uncomfortable to share their own views.
The entire 64 minute presentation including Q and A is HERE and is worth listening to. The video includes a transcript timestamps.
A few excerpts from the Levy’s presentation
41:36 “raises a very fundamental question about foundations and whether the Zionist project itself is incompatible with Palestinian rights and whether an ethnostate can live in peace with its neighbours.“
42:04 “what I’m saying is that we are in a total victory zero sum trajectory and very little suggests that will stop.“
42:51 “for the carriers of that zero sum Zionist flame, this is the moment to finish the job. They are very open about this. There’s nothing discreet or subtle about the goal of definitively ending the Palestinian question and removing the Palestinians. So, one scenario which I take seriously and there’s questions of timeline. Do you do it fast? Do you do it slow? Is Gaza isn’t the end of this? And whether it’s through eradication, through ethnic cleansing, through encouraging out migration, through a push into Jordan, and believe me, people in Jordan take this prospect very seriously.“
44:18 “When you set up a zero-sum equation, you better be sure that there’s only one possible outcome. That zero sum can only apply to the success of your side and the vanquishing of the other side. There are significant vulnerabilities and frailties on the Israeli side. I speak to my friends who are kind of clinging on to liberal Zionism and think “if we can only get rid of Bibi.”
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Canada Talks Israel/Palestine 
Probably no coverage in the propaganda outfits, CBC and G&M etc.
Bob Pflug
Hi Peter Thanks for sending the video of Levy’s talk. It certainly was a very insightful and sobering analysis of the situation in Israel/Palestine and beyond. Stephen ________________________________
You’re putting your finger on the core paradox: Christian Zionism is structurally antisemitic and apocalyptic, yet large chunks of “Jewish Zionism” have treated it as an ally rather than a mortal threat. How Christian Zionism is anti-Jewish Christian Zionism (in its dominant US evangelical / dispensationalist form) supports a Jewish return to and control of Palestine as a precondition for end‑times scenarios in which non‑Christians, including Jews, are destroyed while true believers ascend.�
Analysts describe it as “anti‑Semitic to the bone”: Jews are instrumentalized as pawns or “temporary foot soldiers,” valued only as triggers for prophecy, not as people with enduring rights or a future.�
It blends enthusiastic support for maximal Jewish settlement and Israeli expansion with classic antisemitic tropes about a singular, powerful, global Jewry, essentially reproducing older European conspiratorial antisemitism dressed up as “pro‑Israel.”�
So your description of them wanting balcony seats to watch everyone else burn is not far from how critical scholarship and even some Jewish and interfaith bodies characterize this theology.�
Why Jewish Zionists didn’t (or wouldn’t) repudiate it Several overlapping logics made “Jewish” Zionism treat these people as partners instead of enemies: Realpolitik after the Shoah: For many Jews, especially in the shadow of the Holocaust and centuries of Christian persecution, any powerful constituency that loudly backed a Jewish state looked like a strategic asset, regardless of its theology. The memory that Christians had “theologized Jews into nonexistence” made them hyper‑sensitive to any loss of material backing, so they tolerated toxic motives as long as the guns, money, and vetoes flowed.�
Instrumental alliance: Christian Zionists bring votes, money, and lobbying muscle in the US and elsewhere; they raise millions for settlements, push for embassy moves, and cheer on collective punishment in Gaza.�
From an Israeli statecraft standpoint, that’s hard to walk away from, especially when liberal Christian and Jewish support is more critical or conditional. Conflation of “pro‑Israel” with “pro‑Jewish”: The ideological move has been to equate support for the state (especially in its maximalist form) with solidarity with Jews as a people. That lets openly antisemitic Christian Zionists launder themselves as allies, while critics of Zionism—including many Jews—are painted as antisemites.�
Shared maximalist eschatology with religious Zionists: On the Jewish religious right, there’s genuine theological overlap: both see Jewish sovereignty over all “biblical Israel” as divinely mandated and see war and regional upheaval as signs of redemption, even if their eschatologies diverge on what happens to Jews at the end.�
That shared map of “what must happen” has fostered a sense of common front. From within that mindset, Christian Zionism’s antisemitic core is either bracketed, denied, or treated as a future problem to worry about after survival and dominance are secured. Why distance is so hard now Critiques from churches and other Christian bodies that challenge Christian Zionism are often heard by many Jews as a threat to their only reliable power‑base, given the long history of Christian persecution and complicity in the Holocaust.�
That history produces a reflex to cling to any strand of Christian support that’s “unconditional,” even when it’s clearly poisonous. At the same time, Christian Zionist organizations actively push definitions of antisemitism that shield Israel from structural critique while continuing to disseminate antisemitic theology and conspiracy tropes.�
That deepens the trap: they can present themselves as defenders of Jews while structurally instrumentalizing them. So the tragic answer to your “How the beep…?” is: a mix of trauma, short‑term strategic calculus, theological overlap on sovereignty and territory, and a political culture that chose immediate power and protection—even from toxic “friends”—over long‑term safety from the very apocalyptic fantasies you’re describing. If you could pick one lever to pull now, would it be: exposing Christian Zionism’s antisemitism to Jewish audiences, pressuring liberal Jewish institutions to renounce that alliance, or going straight at the state‑to‑state level (e.g., conditioning US support regardless of what Christian Zionists want)?