Downstream: What the US-Iran Peace Negotiations are Really About w/ Daniel Levy

**Ash Sarkar** (0:08)
The last time I interviewed Daniel Levy, former Israeli peace negotiator and expert commentator on the Middle East, I've got to confess, I had certain expectations. I'd thought that I would encounter someone who still was an ardent two-state believer. Instead, I found someone who not only was speaking in terms that were a complete challenge to the framework of the Oslo Accords, was talking scathingly about Oslo as a vehicle designed to frustrate the ambitions of Palestinian statehood. I thought, there's a story here. How does a man go from being one of Israel's foremost negotiators to becoming one of its foremost critics? We met on Wednesday, which is two days before the agreement was supposed to be signed between Iran and the United States. We talk about how the joint Israeli-American war on Iran has impacted the Middle East more widely. We discuss whether Israel will ever fess up to having nuclear weapons. We talk about the future of forging a Jewish identity outside of the parameters of Zionism.
I have to apologize for the football haters out there. We do discuss the beautiful game just a little bit, but I promise it's political. I hope you enjoy the interview.
Daniel Levy, I was very reluctant to invite you back, and you know why.

**Daniel Levy** (1:32)
I do know why, but I'm not allowed to mention it apparently, because it will be lost in the edit.

**Ash Sarkar** (1:35)
It will be lost in the edit. It's nothing political, just to reassure our viewers, it's everything to do with football.

**Daniel Levy** (1:41)
And North London.

**Ash Sarkar** (1:42)
And North London. That's the real peace process that needs to happen.

**Daniel Levy** (1:46)
Well, okay. So actually, that for me is where I want to live out my tribalism.
For 90 minutes on the weekend, and then with some banter between games. But that's where we should live out our tribalism, as far as I'm concerned.

**Ash Sarkar** (2:01)
All right. Before we get into it, I wonder what you make of this. It's one of the things I've been thinking about football and football culture, is that in many ways, the UK has been a success story of taking on hooliganism, et cetera, et cetera. But we've ended up with a more commercialized product. Is there a bit of a trade-off here, which is a little bit of violence on the away days, and you get an exciting, authentic grassroots football culture, but you can't have sort of safety and authenticity at the same time?

**Daniel Levy** (2:32)
Okay.
I'm not at all sure that that's the case. I think you could have, well, maybe here I am in somewhere growing enough of the safety element without that. So, I mean, being honest, yeah, my moments of, oh, this is all too commercial. I'm going to stop supporting this team, especially when they get a dodgy shirt sponsorship as if my team have just done, do coincide with the moments where we're playing really badly.
I mean, it's harder to sustain that. Which is also, by the way, we'll get onto matters Middle East and Israel related. But it's also why I think some campaigns which say, oh boycott your team is not going to work. You need to meet the football audience where they are and say, now thinking about Ireland's upcoming match with Israel, Ireland should never have been put in that position. Israel should not be playing in international football at the moment in UA for et cetera. But that's where you have to, so I think sometimes the strategy of what you try and sanction, what you try and boycott has to take that into account. I've kind of gone beyond authenticity.

**Ash Sarkar** (3:45)
I mean, I suppose, this is our transition from football into politics is that during the anti-apartheid movement, sporting and cultural boycotts were really powerful.
And I suppose just from a tactical perspective, when do you judge that you can ask people to turn away from something that they really, really love, be it football, rugby, cricket, music, performing arts of any kind? Because I think with football, I judge that as a really hard ask, but maybe that's just because that's the thing that I love. You go back and you look at movements of the past and you go, well, this is quite a meaningful way of applying pressure.

**Daniel Levy** (4:23)
Yeah, and I just want to express respect for how deep that love must go after a season like this for you to still love it.

**Ash Sarkar** (4:30)
It's called masochism. It's a great English tradition.

**Daniel Levy** (4:32)
Yes, we've all been there.
So I don't think that is the ask, and it wasn't the ask in the anti-apartheid movement. And that's what I think people have to go back, look at what happened and wrap their heads around. Because what this was about was sending a signal to... It was meeting the kind of africana-apartheid world, where it was, and sending the signal that, no, it's not normal. And so you can't go on normal rugby tours and play in that international sport in the way you do. Because if you did, your assumption would be the rest of the world treats this as normal, and you meet that in a place that matters to them, in a place which is part of the national pride. So, and this is what I'm saying. So no one should be saying stop supporting Liverpool because Standard Chartered is invested in this, stop supporting Arsenal because they've got deal on their shirts, stop buying the shirts, whatever.