Fareed Zakaria. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Fareed Zakaria and media mogul Haim Saban butted heads over Israel at an event on Monday night, after Saban said Zakaria has an anti-Israel point of view.

“Your point of view is so anti-Israel, I’m banging my head against the wall every time I watch you,” said Saban, who is Jewish and grew up in Israel.

“Your program is very, very unbalanced,” he said according to comments published in The Hollywood Reporter.

Saban offered to personally educate Zakaria on what he said was the truth regarding Israel: “I think you need to go through some change — I need to convert you.”

Responding to Saban’s accusation, Zakaria described the current political situation in Israel as a “creeping cancer that has grown larger and larger and larger.”

“Frankly, Haim, I don’t give a damn if you think taking that position is anti-Israeli. I think it is more pro-Israeli than you because I think you are selling the country down the river by continuing to say that whatever the Likudniks want is the right answer — no matter what — and kick the problem down the road hoping one day we’ll sort it out. One day, you will have 10 million people who are living without a vote,” he said.

Zakaria refused to give the microphone back to Saban for a response:  “The beauty of this, Haim, is that I have the mic, and as Ronald Reagan once said, ‘I paid for this microphone.’ Actually, Nicolas paid for it.”

The influential journalist and host of CNN’s GPS program was launching his new book In Defense of a Liberal Education at the Peninsula Beverly Hills.