Last month I met author Jonathan Cook in Nazareth and pushed my latest theory: that when forced to choose, many liberal Zionists will choose liberalism over the ideology of religious nationalism.

Cook is not so optimistic. Labor Zionism has always struggled to maintain the “illusion of a Jewish and a democratic state,” he says, lately by adopting security rhetoric to rationalize second-class citizenship for Palestinians inside Israel. Labor Zionists favored expulsion of Palestinians historically, and today the policy of Judaization of the territory that is being effected inside Area C of the occupied territories is going on in Israel too.

At 11:40 I push my point that human beings are remediable, and that liberal Zionists in the U.S. won’t support racist policies if the choice is made stark to them. Cook demurs. Based on Israeli political history, he says liberal Zionists will move rightward. “They side with the Jewish elements… the nationalistic element is likely to predominate.”