Zionism Today is the Real Enemy of the Jews: An Intelligence Squared Debate

Zionism Today is the Real Enemy of the Jews
Professor Jacqueline Rose, author of The Question of Zion; Professor Avi Shlaim, author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World; and Amira Hass, author of Reporting from Ramallah, spoke for the motion.

Melanie Phillips, a Daily Mail columnist; Shlomo Ben-Ami, Former Israel Foreign Minister; and Raphael Israeli, Professor of Islamic, Middle Eastern, and Chinese history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem spoke against the motion.

Intelligence Squared is London's leading forum for live debate, holding regular debates on the crucial issues of the day and inviting the leading intellectual and political lights on the given subject to participate in them. The format of the debates is modelled on the one employed at the Oxford and Cambridge university Unions: a challenging, sharply defined motion; a team of speakers to propose the motion and a like number to oppose it; and a moderator to keep the speakers and the audience in order and force everyone to stick to the issues. After the main speeches and before summation, contributions are asked from the floor: audience participation is a key feature of the occasion, providing a rare opportunity for the public to voice their opinions and to challenge those of the speakers. A vote is taken before the debate begins and then again at the end so as to give a measure, often a very dramatic one, of the extent to which the audience has been swayed by the oratory and arguments of the speakers in the course of the evening.