Three Israelis, Two Russians & A Porn Star Walk Into A Bar...

Well, not really. But I did interview them.

Natan Sharansky ©Pamela Paresky 2024

While I’m in Israel, I’m conducting interviews for the Quillette Cetera video podcast (hosted by Zoë Booth) with some of Israel’s most fascinating people.

A few days after the news of the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, I sat down with former Soviet dissident and refusenik, Natan Sharansky, to talk about Navalny, the psychology of freedom, antisemitism on campus, and more.

Below is a brief preview of our conversation in which he speaks about what he calls the “punishing cell.” Underneath that video are links to the podcast episodes in which I interviewed the people who inspired this missive’s title: Israeli academic and political advisor Dan Schueftan; Scholar of Soviet propaganda, Izabella Tabarovsky; and gay-porn producer, Michael Lucas. (Between the three of them are 3 Israelis, 2 Russians, and a porn star.)

Quillette, by the way, has been doing exceptional work covering Israel and antisemitism. You can find it at this link.

(If you happen to know any fascinating people in Israel I should interview, let me know.)

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The Israeli

Dan Schueftan, an Israeli academic, is Chairman of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa and was one of the leading proponents of the unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005. In our interview, he talked about American politicians’ misconceptions about the Middle East, and that Israel (unlike the U.S.) is seen as trustworthy to the other countries in the region.

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The Russian Israeli

Izabella Tabarovsky is a Russian-born American-Israeli scholar of Soviet anti-Zionism and contemporary antisemitism. She is a Senior Advisor at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute and a contributing writer at Tablet. We talked about her must-read Quillette essay, The Language of Soviet Propaganda, and the overlap between left-wing antisemitism and Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda.

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The Russian Israeli Porn Star

Michael Lucas is a Russian-born American-Israeli gay porn star and owns one of the most successful adult entertainment companies in the world. He’s also a Zionist who made a documentary about gay men in Israel. Although he lives in the U.S., he makes a point of coming to Israel whenever there’s a conflict. He knows that Israel will be there when Jews need it. He wants to be there for Israel.

Now he’s the target of a cancelation campaign by gay porn actors who are siding with a violently anti-gay terrorist organization against the only country in the region in which being an openly gay man is accepted. For that story, read my article in Quillette here and watch the video below.

More to come…