In Episode 41 I talk with Ayelet Ben-Yishai, a non-Zionist activist and professor of English literature at the University of Haifa and an old friend of mine. Born in Jerusalem in 1968, Ayelet spent her childhood between Israel, Germany, and the U.S., eventually finding her way to the University of California, Berkeley for a PhD in Comparative Literature where we met. We discuss the results of the Israeli elections, especially the unprecedented turnout of Palestinian and Arab voters and what this could mean for the future politics of Israel-Palestine. We then turn to Ayelet’s writing and activism, asking what does it mean to be “born on the wrong side of history”? What happens when we recognize our collective complicity and act from there? A long-time activist for Palestinian freedom and justice, Ayelet describes campus and street protests and the ongoing and complicated work of “protective presence.” We discuss at length Eyes on Gaza, an incredibly and bracingly informative twice-weekly on-line lecture series Ayelet co-founded with colleagues Lior Levy and Ido Shahar in 2025, featuring scholars, activists, and people on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank. “We insisted on keeping our eyes on Gaza…on the destruction, devastation, starvation, displacement, and expulsion that Israel is wreaking at this very moment…to find ways to think and resist, and to refuse to accept in silence the crimes being committed in our name,” write Ayelet and Lior.
We dig into two episodes in particular, one with Palestinian philosopher Professor Raif Zraik on “The Discourse of Intentions: The Psychomoral Iron Dome,” and another with Woroud Amir, a mother in Gaza who speaks about her struggles to protect her children and her persistent work supporting other women. We end by discussing why Ayelet chooses to stay in Israel and the abiding question of how best to be of service to liberty and justice.
Note: The title of this episode, and Ayelet’s work on the subject, owes a debt to Fiona Wright’s 2018 book, The Israeli Radical Left: An Ethics of Complicity.
Lectures and websites mentioned or discussed:
Woroud Amir, “Life and Survival in Gaza Today” Eyes on Gaza, April 23, 2026.
Dr. Hasan Jabareen, “A Common Future: After the Genocide in Gaza?” Eyes on Gaza, August 6, 2025.
Raif Zraik, “The Discourse of Intentions: Psychomoral Iron Dome” Eyes on Gaza, July 6, 2026
New Israel Fund exit-poll showing 59% of opposition bloc voters prefer a government formed with the support of Israel’s Arab parties over any other option. See also this post from Ron Gerlitz, CEO of the aChord Center.
On Genasys Inc. formerly the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) Corporation, from the Investigate website.
“US Universities Rake in Millions Doing Israeli Military Research” on Inkstick Media website.
Music by Ben Roberts : Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com
Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com
Ayelet Ben-Yishai
Ayelet Ben-Yishai teaches postcolonial and Victorian literature at the English Department at the University of Haifa, where she specializes in the history and theory of the novel, with particular focus on questions of realism, genre, and literary epistemology. A comparatist by training, she has written extensively on the intersection of law and literature in Victorian culture, especially in Common Precedents (Oxford, 2013). Her second book, Genres of Emergency (Oxford 2023), focuses on Indian writing in English and conceptualizes new ways of imagining the relationship between politics, history, and genre.
Alongside her academic work, she has also long been active on the radical left in Israel, most recently co-founding and running a bi-weekly mini-lecture series, Eyes on Gaza. Indeed, her teaching, research, and way of being in the world often overlap, allowing her to think and write about the political and discursive problems of complicity, the subject of her current book-in-progress.
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