Gadi Taub

Taub's maternal grandparents were Polish Zionist pioneers who immigrated to British Mandatory Palestine in the 1920s.

His father, Yitzhak Taub, fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 after the Nazi invasion.

When he arrived in Palestine, he and his father were interned by the British.

He later fought in the 1948 War of Independence.

After the war, he studied economics and law, became a senior economist and journalist, and then chair of the Israel Securities Authority.

Gadi Taub did his 3 years' compulsory military service in the Israeli Air Force.

Gadi Taub (גדי טאוב; born April 19, 1965, in Jerusalem) is an Israeli historian, author, screenwriter and political commentator.

He is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Policy and the Department of Communications at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Taub is also an internationally recognized voice in the discourse on Zionism and illiberalism.

Gadi Taub grew up in Jerusalem.

Taub distinguishes between the original Zionism, which he calls Zionism of Liberty (or Zionism of State) on the one hand, and a new messianic kind of Zionism which emerged among a minority of Israelis after the 1967 war, which he calls a Zionism of Land.

Zionism of Liberty of the kind professed by Theodor Herzl and David Ben Gurion, sees Israel as an embodiment of the right of Jews to democratic self-determination, and is deeply democratic, while Zionism of Land is a "blood and soil" type of nationalism, for which the state of Israel is a means in fulfilling a mystical connection between the Jewish People and the Land of Israel.

In Taub's view, Zionism of Land is not just an ideological negation of the original Zionism of Liberty, it is also the road to Israel's demise.

The occupation of the West Bank not only violates the very right on which Zionism morally stands – the right of all peoples to self-determination as Israeli Declaration of Independence declares – it will also eventually lead to a bi-national state in which neither the Jews nor the Palestinians will be able to exercise self-determination.

Therefore, Taub has been a vocal critic of the settlement movement and originally supported an immediate unilateral withdrawal from all occupied territories, with or without a peace agreement.

However, he abandoned his support for unilateralism in the wake of the Second Lebanon War, which he felt "taught Israelis the harsh lesson...that unilateral withdrawal does not ensure peace unless there is some stable sovereign power to which authority can be transferred."

Taub is also a vocal critic of the post-Zionist left, which advocates a one-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

From 1986 to 1998 Taub worked as a writer and presenter of children's programs on Israeli radio and television.

Meanwhile, he completed his bachelor's degree in History and General Humanities at Tel Aviv University, wrote a book of short stories, and published a book of essays, "The Dispirited Rebellion: Essays on Contemporary Israeli Culture" [in Hebrew].

Since 1996 Taub has been a columnist for Maariv, Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz.

He has written political and cultural commentaries for the American and European press, including The New York Times, The New Republic, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Corriere della Sera.

He was a panelist on Channel 10's political show "Council of the Wise".

He is a member of the academic council of the Metzila Center for Zionist, Jewish, Liberal and Humanist Thought.

Gadi Taub sees himself as a Zionist in what he calls the original meaning of the term, that is, a believer in the right of all peoples, including the Jews, for self-determination in their own nation state.

He has expressed support, in principle, in the creation of a Palestinian state beside Israel in the future, although he has also clarified that Israel should not allow a Palestinian state at the moment.

From 1998 to 2003 Taub studied at Rutgers University, New Jersey, where he received his PhD in American History.

His thesis was on American liberalism and philosophical pragmatism.

Meanwhile, he wrote a novel for young adults, The Witch from Melchet Street.

Since 2003 he has taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In 2007 he published a book about religious settlers that was translated into English by Yale University Press.

Taub argued that the settlement movement is not a continuation of Zionism but its negation.

In 2009 he published a novel named "Allenby Street" about late-night bars and strip clubs in Tel Aviv.

Taub was both creator and co-screenwriter (along with Erez Kavel) of a TV series based on his novel.

He became a senior lecturer in 2010.

The series was broadcast on Israel's Channel 10 in 2012.

He was also the head screenwriter and co-director of a forthcoming prime time series for Channel 2, entitled The Harem, about a polygamous cult.

Since 2016, Taub has expressed, in articles and public statements, consistent support of deporting unauthorized migrant workers from Israel, unless they are proven to be in real need of asylum.

He has repeatedly argued that portraying populism as necessarily xenophobic was at its root a way to deny that much of its force is derived from democratic impulses that arise to resist the attempt to deprive citizens of a nation-state of the means to participate in shaping their own collective destiny.

Like Douglas Murray, Taub believes that it is one of the most important tasks of our time to distinguish the moderate populist right from the racists at the margins of those movements.

Taub hosted Murray at an event at Tel Aviv University addressing the subject.