Episodes
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I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next couple of months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.
I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestine Lives and Culture, edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller with Juliette Touma and Jayyab Abusafia.
I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.
Friday Zoom Call
This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern, our regular time. Our guest will be Joy Reid, former MSNBC host and author of the Joy’s House Substack. We’ll talk about how the mainstream media covers Israel-Palestine, and how it covers America.
Book Tour
(We’ll update this every week.)
On Monday, April 28, I’ll be speaking at Princeton University.
On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: with Khaled Abu El Fadl at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.
On Wednesday, April 30, I’ll be speaking with Barnett Rubin via Zoom to the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library.
On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, California.
On Monday, May 6, I’ll be speaking at Stanford University.
On Monday, May 12, I’ll be speaking at Parkdale Hall in Toronto.
On Tuesday, May 13, I’ll be speaking at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation.
On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.
On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.
Book Reviews
I discussed Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza on Public Research with Daniel Schwartz. The book was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement and Moment Magazine.
Sources Cited in this Week’s Video
India’s denial of water to Pakistan.
Things to Read
(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)
In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Alex Kane reports that the New York Police categorized keffiyehs as symbols of antisemitism.
Karen Attiah on why Columbia cancelled her class.
Jacobin interviews Omer Bartov about Gaza.
A conversation between the director of The Encampments and a pro-Israel influencer.
See you on Friday,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So, last week there was an armed attack by militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir. And India is accusing neighboring Pakistan of having a role in it. And in retaliation, it has now suspended a water treaty from 1960, in which rivers that pass through India provide Pakistan a very large percentage of its water. And for the first time since 1960 India is now saying it’s suspending this water treaty in retaliation, which really could devastate the Pakistani agriculture and the Pakistani population more generally. So, this would be an act of very, very serious collective punishment against the people of Pakistan. And this is really the kind of thing that I think people have been warning about since Israel’s assault on Gaza. Which was that the things that Israel was doing in Gaza would become templates for countries around the world.
And so, one of the things Israel has done in Gaza—starting before October 7th, but more dramatically since October 7th—is a policy of collective punishment of the entire population, right? So, Israel has now been denying all humanitarian into Gaza since the collapse of the last ceasefire agreement. And from the very beginning, Israel said very clearly that it would deny significant amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. And indeed, it did, which is one of the reasons that there’s been many, many reports of starvation in Gaza, of lack of medical care. One of the reasons that so many children have had their limbs amputated, according to my friend Ahmed Moore who wrote a long piece about this in The Guardian, is that Israel has denied the ability of people to Gaza to bring in the medical supplies and medicines that might have allowed doctors to be able to be able to save those limbs.
So, this policy of collective punishment that Israel has been pursuing in Gaza now is echoing in the policies that India is pursuing in Pakistan. I can’t prove that India is doing this because of what Israel is doing in Gaza. But I think if we look at the tire of the last 20-25 years of world history, you can see the way in which when a norm is eroded by one government, it becomes easier for other governments to also erode these norms. So, for instance, we know that Vladimir Putin in justifying his invasion of Ukraine, and his invasions of Georgia also has kind of cited America’s behaviors in Iraq, for instance, or in Libya, right? The idea is, well, if the United States doesn’t need United Nations approval to go and attack other countries, then why should I?
This is one of the reasons I think that the impunity that America has given Israel over the last year and a half is so disastrous, not only for Palestinians and for Palestinians in Gaza, but indeed for the whole world. People in Washington now like to say that it’s no longer a unipolar world, that America’s margin of power over other countries has diminished. One of the things that that means is that it is going to be more likely that other countries will be able to start to do the things that Israel and the United States have done because they will have more power to do so. And because the institutions and norms that might prevent them from doing so have been substantially weakened. Right after the United States, after all, in order to defend Israel has repeatedly now attacked the International Criminal Court. So, you’re going to think that the International Criminal Court is now going to turn to focusing on India, right? It’s been weakened by the way in which it’s been hamstrung by the United States in its response to Gaza.
So, I did a conversation with Jonathan Freeland of The Guardian last week for paid subscribers. And Jonathan and I—I have a lot of respect for him and we agree on a lot—but one thing we disagree with is that he basically believes in the idea of a state that gives legal privilege to Jews over Palestinians, even though he would want to minimize that privilege and he would want Israel to give back the West Bank and Gaza. I don’t believe in states that give legal privilege to people of one ethnic, religious, or racial group. I believe in the idea of states based on equality under the law. And one of the reasons that I believe that I have to apply that principle to Israel and Palestine is not only because Palestinians deserve to be treated equally wherever they live between the river and the sea, but because it’s just become clearer and clearer to me that when one makes exceptions to basic principles about human equality and international law in one context, you are contributing to opening the door to those exceptions being acted on in many other contexts. And that’s why Israel is part of a global rising network of ethno-nationalist regimes and movements across the world. That the exception for this in Israel doesn’t stay in Israel. And it’s also why we now see that Israel’s behavior in Gaza seems to be providing a very, very frightening template for what India is doing in Pakistan.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com
Our guest is Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland. I’ve known and liked Jonathan for years, and we agree on many things. But he also has criticisms of my book. He thinks that in my rejection of the very idea of a Jewish state, I’ve gone too far. We talk about that, and about the way being a British—as opposed to an American—Jew shapes his perspective. I’m grateful to him for joining us.
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Missing episodes?
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The Anti-Defamation League Now Opposes Trump’s Abductions. But It Helped Enable Them.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com
Our guest is NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, whose campaign to make the city more affordable for the working class is currently polling in second place. I ask Zohran about his vision for New York City during the second Trump presidency, and the challenges he anticipates, his perspectives on Israel/Palestine, and how they shape his work. This talk is co-sponsored by Jewish Currents.
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The Inane Justification For Destroying America’s Universities
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Munther Isaac is a renowned Palestinian minister from Bethlehem. We discuss his new book, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible and the Genocide in Gaza. We also dig into why so many American evangelicals unconditionally support Israel, and what Christians should do to honor the dignity of everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
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I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next couple of months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.
I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, the latest work by the brilliant essayist, Raja Shehada, What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?
I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.
Friday Zoom Call
This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. Our guest will be Munther Isaac, the renowned Palestinian minister from Bethlehem. We’ll discuss his new book, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible and the Genocide in Gaza. We’ll also discuss why so many American evangelicals unconditionally support Israel, and what Christians should do to honor the dignity of everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Friday’s zoom call is for paid subscribers.
Book Tour
(We’ll update this every week.)
On Monday, April 7, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School.
On Tuesday, April 8, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, and then later that night, at First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the Palestinian human rights activist, Issa Amro.
On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.
On Wednesday, April 16, I’ll be speaking via Zoom to Scientists for Palestine.
On Monday, April 21, I’ll be speaking with Sahar Aziz at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
On Tuesday, April 22, I’ll be speaking with Pankaj Mishra at New York University.
On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: with Khaled Abu El Fadl at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.
On Wednesday, April 30, I’ll be speaking with Barnett Rubin via Zoom to the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library.
On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, California.
On Monday, May 12, I’ll be speaking at Parkdale Hall in Toronto.
On Tuesday, May 13, I’ll be speaking at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation.
On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.
On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.
Book Reviews
Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza was reviewed (along with ten other books!) by Omer Bartov in The New York Review of Books.
Things to Read
(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)
In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), I wrote about Chuck Schumer’s new book about antisemitism.
For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts Podcast, I interviewed Ahmed Moor about his Guardian article about child amputees in Gaza.
A video of last week’s Smol Emuni (Religious Left) Conference in New York.
The children of Columbia’s first Jewish president denounce its capitulation.
See you on Friday,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So, there’s been a lot of attention in the press to these protests against Hamas. I’d encourage people who are interested in the conversation to listen to the video I did on Friday, the interview I did with Mohamed Shahada, who I thought had really, really interesting insights into that whole dynamic. But, you know, it will reinforce the tendency of some supporters of Israel to say, this is a war of Israel against Hamas, not against the Palestinian people. After all, look, these Palestinians in Gaza are protesting against Hamas. They don’t like Hamas. And, as Mohammed pointed out to me when we talked, it’s certainly true. There have been protests that many Palestinians don’t like Hamas. There have been protests against Hamas for a bunch of years now. Hamas is authoritarian, you know, incompetent in various ways. Many people rightly don’t like their Islamist ideology, which they feel as considered to be illiberal and oppressive.
But I still think it’s just fundamentally wrong to say that the war that Israel is waging is against Hamas for a number of reasons. First of all, if you just look at the military tactics that Israel is using, they’re clearly—some of them—not only directed at Hamas. So, Israel has been for the last month now denying humanitarian aid into Gaza—to everyone in Gaza, not just to the Hamas people, to everyone in Gaza. Israel is always also actively advocating the idea of mass migration, mass expulsion out of Gaza for everybody, not just for members of Hamas. And Israel is also repressing pretty brutally the West Bank, where Hamas is not in charge. There have been tens of thousands, according to reports, of people expelled from their homes in the West Bank, where Hamas is not in charge, right.
So, all of that alone, I think, makes it pretty difficult to suggest that this is a war only against Hamas. In addition to that, if Israel really were interested in opposing merely Hamas, and let’s say even just getting rid of Hamas—if that was Israel’s primary objective—then one might think that Israel would support these protests against Hamas by telling Palestinians in Gaza that if they got rid of Hamas, then actually their lives could be better. Imagine if Israel said, well, if you get rid of Hamas, we will support a mass reconstruction for Gaza. We will not support expulsion. We will not maintain these buffer zones and blockade that make it impossible for Gaza to have any economic future, maybe we would even begin negotiations based on the idea of giving Palestinians eventually their state, or something like this, right.
You can imagine a whole series of things that Israel could do to basically say to Palestinians, Gaza, listen, we’re being really tough on you because of Hamas. But listen, if you manage to get rid of Hamas, then we’re going to have a completely different kind of future for you, right. Which would presumably strengthen the protest movement against Hamas. Israel said none of that, right. Israel still is openly advocating still mass expulsion of everybody from Gaza. Beyond that, if Israel really, really wanted to weaken Hamas in general, there are many things that Israel could have done over many years, right.
So, Israel for years has had the opportunity to release Marwan Barghouti from jail. I interviewed Arab Barghouti, his youngest son, a couple of weeks ago, right. We know from polling that Marwan Barghouti, who was not an Islamist, is more popular than Hamas. So, if you really wanted to weaken Hamas politically, you could let their most formidable rival out of jail. Israel also, for many, many years, could have supported the Palestinian Authority, which was pursuing a different strategy than Hamas. The Palestinian Authority had leaders—Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad—who had recognized Israel. They were working with Israel to prevent armed resistance from the West Bank. And yet, Fayyad in particular, who was prime minister from 2007 to 2013, who was really quite popular in Israel and American Jewish circles because he was so moderate. If you look at the interview he did with Roger Cohen of the New York Times, when he left Palestinian politics, he basically said, I was defeated by Israel. Even though I did everything they wanted, I couldn’t get them to stop settlement growth for a single day. And he literally says in that interview that Hamas will be strengthened.
So, you notice sometimes in the press, sometimes people call this war Israel vs. Hamas. And sometimes, they say it’s a war of Israel vs. Gaza. I really think it’s much more accurate to say it actually is a war of Israel vs. Gaza. It’s not to say that Israelis and Israeli leaders don’t have a special hostility to Hamas, given the horrors of what Hamas did on October 7th. Of course they do. If you look both militarily and politically at the way Israel is behaving, I just don’t see how one can come to the conclusion that this is a war that is directed only at the defeat of Hamas and not at, in some ways, the defeat, even the degradation, even the destruction, of Palestinians in Gaza and even beyond.
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Our guest is the Gaza-born political analyst Muhammad Shehada, who I’ve long admired for his ability to criticize Israel without exonerating Hamas and to criticize Hamas without exonerating Israel. We talk about the recent protests in Gaza against Hamas, and for an end to Israel’s slaughter.
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I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next few months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.
I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, the latest work by the brilliant essayist, Raja Shehada, What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?
I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.
Here’s an update from Hossam’s sister, Abir:
I check on them at least six times a day. Every time they don’t answer, my heart drops, fearing the worst. Their hearts are heavy with grief, mourning the loss of loved ones and friends. My brother Hossam prays constantly—for an end to the war, for his family’s safety, and for all the innocent people suffering in Gaza. He told me they wake up and fall asleep to the sounds of bombs, ambulances, and the cries of women and children begging God for mercy. They are fasting for Ramadan, praying, and waiting—either for the war to end or for their lives to. It is heartbreaking to realize that this is their reality. That their lives feel as if they hold no value. That no one is standing up for them in the face of such injustice. Because of your generosity, Hossam was able to rent a small two-bedroom apartment, buy new clothing, mattresses, and some canned food—for his family and anyone in need after they leave. He had also begun the process of gathering the necessary medical and personal documents to leave. But now, everything is on hold. Please continue to support his campaign so that we can get them to safety as soon as the war ends. They need us now more than ever. Please keep them in your prayers.
Friday Zoom Call
This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. Our guest will be the Gaza-born political analyst Muhammad Shehada, who I’ve long admired for his ability to criticize Israel without exonerating Hamas and to criticize Hamas without exonerating Israel. We’ll talk about the recent protests in Gaza against Hamas, and for an end to Israel’s slaughter.
Friday’s zoom call is for paid subscribers.
Book Tour
(We’ll update this every week.)
On Tuesday, April 1, I’ll be speaking at Penn State.
On Monday, April 7, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School.
On Tuesday, April 8, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, and then later that night, at First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the Palestinian human rights activist, Issa Amro.
On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.
On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.
On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, California
On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.
On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.
Book Reviews and interviews
Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza was reviewed (negatively) in Britain’s Fathom Journal. I also discussed it on Budd Mishkin’s podcast.
Sources Cited in this Week’s Video
Jenner Stands Firm.
Things to Read
(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)
In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Alex Kane details the shifting focus of the Anti-Defamation League.
Rashid Khalidi and Adam Shatz on Columbia University’s surrender.
Etan Nechin on how the right took over Israeli media.
Hossam Shabat’s last article.
See you on Friday,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So, I’ve spent the last couple of months since Trump returned to power, I guess you know, in a state of some shock and some despair, and also perhaps some shame, if I’m honest about it, because I don’t really feel like I have done enough in my own really small way to respond to with this really naked effort at establishing an authoritarian regime in the United States. I mean, I did speak at one protest. But I really haven’t been out kind of out in the streets and, you know, and again I can make excuses like everybody else about other things that I’m doing. But I really just have felt like I haven’t really in my own way, kind of risen to the occasion. And so, I feel a little bit like I’m throwing stones from a glass house when I condemn others.
But I do think that, you know, one of the excuses I might make or one of the reasons I think in general we haven’t seen the kind of mass movement against Trump that we need is that I think a lot of people have been demoralized by seeing how many people in positions of power, people of institutions—and institutions that are far more powerful than us—have capitulated when they’re actually in a much stronger and less vulnerable position, whether it’s Jeff Bezos of the Washington Post, or these other tech moguls, or the president of Columbia University, or some of these big law firms.
And so, I think I was surprised by how emotionally I reacted when I read in the New York Times on Saturday that there were that there were a couple of law firms that actually were not capitulating. I got the hardcover of the newspaper on Saturday of the New York Times because I don’t have my phone on Shabbat. So, I was reading this story, and I had this very strong emotional reaction when I read about this firm Jenner and Block, this law firm that unlike some of the other big firms is not capitulating to Trump, not making a deal behind closed doors, but basically fighting him in court. And not just doing that, but they’ve created this website called Jenner stands firm to basically publicize their fight and to ask for support.
And, you know, again, I don’t know much about Jenner and Block. They could be doing all kinds of bad things and have bad clients. I don’t know. But it just made me realize how hungry I was to see some significant institution actually not knuckle under, you know. And I began to think, you know, imagine if this weren’t just this law firm, but it wasn’t just Jenner stands firm, but it was like, you know, the University of Michigan stands firm, Harvard stands firm, you know, the University of Texas stands firm, that CNN and MSNBC stand firm, the Washington Post stands firm. And you just had this cascading of different institutions just saying no, you know, we’re not going to. We’re going to fight you with everything we have in the name of the survival of American liberal democracy, and the principles of whatever work we claim to do, whether it’s academic freedom, or independence of the press, or the right to provide counsel to your clients or all of these building blocks of old democracy that these different institutions claim to be to be serving, you know.
And, you know, I understand that inside these institutions, people will say, well, we’re going to lose because Trump is, you know, he runs the federal government and they’re much more than us. They may well lose. I mean, standing on your principles, you could very well lose. But, you know, it’s not as if appeasement works well with Trump, right. I mean, he’s a classic bully, so appeasement doesn’t work. And so, it just seems to me If you may lose either way, why not at least go down with your head held high while retaining your dignity, while acting in a way that you can speak with pride about to your grandchildren one day, you know, when people look back at this moment of unique national peril.
I mean, isn’t that better than debasing yourself, like disgracing yourself, abandoning the principles you claim and believe in, and then losing anyway, like Minouche Shafik, the former president of Columbia, who went in front of Elise Stefanik and those Congressional Republicans, you know, and through her own faculty members under the bus, and yet, basically was forced to resign anyway. And now, they’re coming after Columbia and they’re arresting Columbia students and they’re taking away Columbia’s federal financing. I mean, did that work out well for her, right? She lost everything. She lost not only her job and not only the institution is crumbling, but she lost her self-respect.
And so, just watching some institution—whether they win or lose—just maintain their self-respect in the face of this monstrous attack on American freedom was for me something that was just really powerful to see. And I would love to see it become a trend. I mean, I don’t romanticize America. I know about America’s deep history of authoritarianism and white supremacy that goes deep in our history. But it’s also a proud country. This is a country of a lot of really good, proud people who, for all of the country’s flaws, like really believe in the idea that America can be a country that moves in the direction of equality under the law and of basic decency. And I just think we’re a bigger and better country than so many of these people are behaving. We’re just too big and good a to knuckle under to someone like Donald Trump without a fight. And so, I’m just grateful to these folks, whoever the heck they are, Jenner and Block, for putting up a fight. And I would just love to see other institutions doing that so that it can inspire more of the rest of us.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com
Our guest is Arab Barghouti, the youngest son of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian political leader who has been in prison in Israel for the last 23 years. Arab is the head of international relations for the international campaign to release his father and all Palestinian political prisoners.
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I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next few months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.
I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, Fida Jiryis’ beautiful memoir, Stranger in My Own Land.
I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.
Friday Zoom Call
This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. Our guest will be Arab Barghouti, the youngest son of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian political leader who has been in prison in Israel for the last 23 years. Arab is the head of international relations for the international campaign to release his father and all Palestinian political prisoners.
Friday’s zoom call is for all paid subscribers.
Book Tour
(We’ll update this every week.)
On Monday, March 24, I’ll be speaking at the University of Vermont.
On Tuesday, March 25, I’ll be speaking at Middlebury College.
On Monday, April 7, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School.
On Tuesday, April 8, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, and then later that night, at First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the Palestinian human rights activist, Issa Amro.
On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.
On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.
On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, California.
On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.
On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.
Book Reviews and interviews
Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza was reviewed (positively) in South Africa’s Daily Maverick and (negatively) in Britain’s Jewish Chronicle. I also discussed the book with Nathan Robinson of Currents Affairs and with Brown University’s Glenn Loury.
Sources Cited in this Week’s Video
A few years ago, I wrote about the absence in mainstream US discourse of the concept of “anti-Palestinianism.”
Response
In response to my video last week suggesting that Trump and establishment Jewish organizations are redefining what it means to be a Jew, Barnett Rubin suggests that this constitutes a Jewish version of the Islamic notion of “takfir.”
Things to Read
(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)
Jewish Currents (subscribe!) translates and republishes Tawfiq Da’adli’s story “On the Squeezing.”
For the Foundation for Middle East Peace, I talked to Naji Abbas, Director of the Prisoners and Detainees Department for Physicians for Human Rights Israel, about Israel’s detention and torture of health care workers in Gaza.
In The Atlantic, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber details the dangers of the Trump administration’s attack on Columbia.
A Jewish student at Columbia writes about his friend, Mahmoud Khalil.
Daniel Levy’s comments on Gaza at the United Nations.
Muhammad Shehada on what would happen if Hamas left Gaza.
See you Friday,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So, Columbia University has essentially capitulated to the Trump administration’s demands, and with implications for the future of Colombia and other American universities that would be very far reaching. We don’t know the full repercussions yet. But I think it’s just important to understand that—although Donald Trump is doing this because he wants to domesticate and cripple universities just because they could be centers of resistance and critical thought against his authoritarian rule in the same way that he wants to cripple and domesticate independent media, or law firms that might sue him, or the Justice Department that might be independent of his control, all these things, even though that’s clearly Trump’s motivation—his ability to use antisemitism effectively rests on the fact that there is a discourse about antisemitism that has existed long before October 7th, but then intensified since the October 7th massacre, that has been endorsed by many, many Democrats and therefore makes them kind of complicit in this.
And I think the critical thing we have to understand about what’s wrong with this discourse of antisemitism, which has helped lead us to this place, is not that it’s wrong to be very concerned about antisemitism. Of course, we should be very concerned about antisemitism. The problem is that when you discuss antisemitism in the context of the Israel and Palestine conflict, where there are two national groups there, one has to pair it with a conversation about anti-Palestinian bigotry, right. Talking about antisemitism in the context of Israel-Palestine is fundamentally different in that way than talking about it in the context of white nationalism or some other historical episode.
In this case, the question is how are people are being treated fairly and equally? Are they being discriminated against because of their position to this relationship between Israeli Jews and Palestinians? But one naturally has to ask the question about the other group as well, about Palestinians—if you think that Palestinians are people who deserve the same treatment as Jews, right. And so, if one imagined that the conversation about antisemitism was paired with a conversation about anti-Palestinian bigotry, I think the conversation about antisemitism would have to be radically different, right. Because when one asked the question do Jewish students feel uncomfortable or even unsafe when they hear slogans like ‘Palestine will be free from the river to the sea’ or ‘globalize the intifada,’ one would also have to ask the question how does it make Palestinian students feel when they hear the slogan, you know, ‘I stand with the IDF’ or ‘Israel has the right to defend itself,’ right?
And when we ask the question about harassment, are there Jewish students who are literally being targeted for wearing kippot, or other things, right. We would also ask the question, are there Palestinian students who are being targeted for wearing keffiyehs? Because I suspect that if there are Jewish students, tragically, you know, walking around Columbia’s campus or other campuses, who get yelled at because they’re wearing kippot, or they’re wearing a Star of David or whatever, I think it’s a pretty good guess that there are also Palestinian students who are getting called ‘terrorist’ or all kinds of nasty things, right, if they’re wearing a keffiyeh.
If we thought about the rules about protest, right, one of the things that Trump wants to do—but these universities have been doing ever since October 7th—is really clamp down on the rules around protest, we would have to ask the question, not just are Students for Justice in Palestine violating these new, very onerous rules about protest, but is the pro-Israel group violating those rules of protest? If we had task forces, right, to look at antisemitism, then we would also have task forces, not just on Islamophobia, but task forces on anti-Palestinian bigotry, right. It’s a different thing than Islamophobia. Most Muslims are not Palestinian, and not all Palestinians are Muslims. And if we imagine a world where we did all of those things, where we asked, ‘is there bigotry towards Palestinians?’ at the same time that we asked the question, ‘do we have bigotry towards Jews?’, then, in fact, the entire antisemitism conversation would be completely different, right.
Because if one had to concede that starting to censor a phrase like ‘globalize the intifada’ might also mean you had to censor the phrase, you know, ‘I stand with the IDF,’ and if you had to take the risk of an anti-Palestine task force staffed by a lot of Palestinian professors and think about what they might recommend in terms of changes to the university, right. Or if you had to apply these rules around protests equally and you began to think about the way that would impinge on the rights to protest of pro-Israel students, in fact, then all of a sudden, a lot of the push that’s being made for what universities should do would disappear, right? Because people would realize almost immediately that if it was applied equally to Palestinians, it would start to infringe upon them in ways that would be really problematic. It would force people to actually start to think about the importance of free speech, including free speech that makes people uncomfortable, right.
The only reason that people that you have this push to be so draconian in terms of academic freedom, in terms of rights to protest, is precisely because no one ever imagines that these principles might be applied to students who are accused of anti-Palestinian bigotry. And, of course, that’s because we have no language of anti-Palestinian bigotry in mainstream American political conversation because it’s simply assumed that Palestinians should be treated as inferiors. There’s no expectation that they would be treated equally in Israel and Palestine, where the vast majority of members of Congress are very supportive of the idea of a state based on Jewish legal supremacy. And similarly, there’s no expectation of that in the United States, right. But if there were that expectation, then everything that has happened with the debate about antisemitism and the way it’s now being used to really crush academic freedom and independence of universities just simply could not play out the way it is, right. It’s only because of the way in which Palestinians simply don’t count in this conversation, that we can have the kind of conversation about antisemitism that has led us into such a disastrous place.
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We continue our discussion of the assault on academic freedom, especially for pro-Palestinian activists, with Columbia University’s Nadia Abu El-Haj. She is a Professor at Barnard College and Columbia University and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies. She just published an essay in The New York Review of Books entitled, “Mahmoud is Not Safe,” about the detention of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil.
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In Their Attack on US Universities, Trump and the ADL are Trying to Redefine Jewishness Itself
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Because of the free speech crisis engulfing Columbia University, we changed the topic of today’s Zoom call.
Our new guest is Columbia Professor James Schamus, award-winning screenwriter, producer, and author of this public letter to fellow Jewish faculty at the university.
We discuss the Trump administration’s assault on pro-Palestinian protest and on Ame…
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I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next few months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.
I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, Fida Jiryis’ beautiful memoir, Stranger in My Own Land.
I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.
Even Palestinians from Gaza who have made it to the United States can use assistance. For instance, Salah El Sadi, who is looking for help finding work in his field. He writes:
“I am originally from Gaza, Palestine. I arrived in the United States as a Fulbright Scholar in mid-September 2023 to participate in a professional training program. However, due to the outbreak of war in Gaza, I have been unable to return home and currently find myself in a challenging situation. My wife and two children were evacuated to Oman, while many of my relatives remain in Gaza under extremely difficult conditions. Despite these challenges, I remain committed to my professional journey and contributing my expertise in meaningful ways. I have a strong background in environmental sustainability, water purification, chemistry, laboratory management, and climate resilience. I am currently seeking job opportunities, research collaborations, or consulting roles where I can contribute my expertise in environmental sustainability, chemistry, laboratory science, or climate innovation.”
If you can help Salah, his resume and contact information are here.
Friday Zoom Call
This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. This Friday is the holiday of Purim, in which Jews read the Book of Esther, a fascinating and troubling text whose themes of political intrigue, imperial power and catastrophic violence are deeply relevant to contemporary Jewish discourse about the destruction of Gaza. Our guest will be Rabbi Lexie Botzum, a faculty member at Yashrut, who last year authored this provocative essay about Purim, “Discarding Haman’s Garb: Refusing the Roles of Empire.”
Friday’s zoom call is for paid subscribers.
Book Tour
(We’ll update this every week.)
On Monday, March 10 and Tuesday, March 11, I’ll be giving four talks in Michigan. On March 10 at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and at St David’s Episcopal Church, and on March 11 at St. Matthew’s & St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church and at T’chiyah synagogue.
On Monday, March 17, I’ll be speaking at Mishkan Shalom synagogue in Philadelphia.
On Tuesday, March 18, I’ll be debating an old classmate, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, on the proposition “The oppression of Palestinians in non-democratic Israel has been systematic and profound” at the Soho Forum in New York.
On Tuesday, March 25, I’ll be speaking at Middlebury College.
On Monday, April 7, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School.
On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.
On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.
Book Interviews
I talked with the Haaretz and Wisdom of Crowds podcasts about Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.
Sources Cited in this Week’s Video
The Trump administration’s attack on Columbia University.
The University of Chicago’s 2024 study on campus antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Professor Eitan Hersh and Laura Royden’s 2021 study of antisemitism and political ideology in the US.
Things to Read
(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)
On the Jewish Currents (subscribe!) podcast, Alex Kane talks to Tariq Kenney-Shawa and Mouin Rabbani about Trump’s fantasy of expelling Palestinians from Gaza.
Raef Zreik, Monica Marks and 972Mag on the Palestinian Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott (PACBI)’s claim that the Oscar-winning film, No Other Land, violates the BDS movement’s guidelines on “normalization.”
For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s “Occupied Thoughts” podcast, I talked with Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani about Israel’s plans for Gaza and Syria, and the film No Other Land.
Cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco on Gaza.
Fewer than half as many Democrats hold a favorable opinion of Israel as did four years ago.
See you on Friday, March 14,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So, the Trump administration is making an example of Columbia University. They’re saying they’re going to cut $400 million in federal aid to Columbia University, thus throwing the university into financial turmoil because of the claim that Columbia University has permitted a culture of antisemitism. And this is part of a broader assault on American universities, throwing many of them into financial turmoil, based on this claim that these universities have become hotbeds of antisemitism.
Now, there is antisemitism on college campuses. Of course, there’s other forms of bigotry that exist on college campuses, of course. But to understand how Orwellian the Trump administration’s move is, you have to understand that the best data we have about antisemitism, first of all, shows that college students are less antisemitic than Americans as a whole. And secondly, that the Americans who tend to have the highest and the most antisemitic attitudes tend to be exactly the kinds of Americans who are part of Trump’s political coalition. So, the Trump administration, which is claiming that it’s acting to protect Jewish students against antisemitism, the best evidence we have suggests that the Trump coalition is much, much more antisemitic itself than are the college students that they are claiming are these hotbeds of antisemitism.
I want to look at a couple of data points that I think illustrate this. The first is a University of Chicago study from last March. And the University of Chicago study did something important. It asked college students, and Americans as a whole, about their attitudes towards Zionism and also their attitudes towards Jews. It asks them these questions separately. Now, groups like the Anti-Defamation League don’t ask these questions separately because they’re deeply invested in suggesting that the two are one and the same, right. Again, they again and again say that essentially to be Jewish is to be Zionist, and therefore, that anti-Zionist attitudes for them are inherently antisemitic.
But, in fact, it’s simply not true empirically, because when you ask people about their attitudes towards Israel or Zionism on the one hand, and their attitudes towards Jews on the other, you find that the opinions about the two actually radically diverge, right. So, the University of Chicago found that college students were indeed far more anti-Zionist than Americans as a whole, which reflects the kind of age breakdown that we’re seeing more generally, that they were three times as likely to be anti-Zionist. But college students were less likely—less likely—to express anti-Jewish attitudes than were Americans as a whole.
So, when the University of Chicago asked questions like, do the Jews have too much power? Do Jews care about anyone but themselves? When Jews are violently attacked, do they deserve it? They found that college students were significantly less likely to give antisemitic answers to those questions even though they were more likely to be anti-Zionist than Americans as a whole. And when you look at Americans as a whole, and you say, which are the group of Americans who have the highest degree of antisemitic attitudes, you find that those Americans who express the most antisemitic attitudes are not on the anti-Israel left. They are on the pro-Trump right.
The best study we have of this is from a 2021 study by Tuft University’s Eitan Hersch, who’s done a lot of really, really interesting work on this, and Laura Royden from Harvard University. And they ask people to say yes or no to these questions: ‘Jews are more loyal to Israel than to America’; ‘it is appropriate for opponents of Israel’s policies and actions to boycott Jewish American-owned businesses in their communities’; and ‘Jews in the United States have too much power.’ They find in response to this, I’m going to quote, that they say, ‘for overt measures, we find antisemitic attitudes are rare on the ideological left, but common on the ideological right.’
So, just like the University of Chicago studied their finding that even though Jews on the left are more critical of Israel and Zionism, they’re less likely to answer these questions about Jewish power and Jewish loyalty in an antisemitic way than are Americans on the right. And Hersch and Royden note that, even on the question of whether Jews should be boycotted because they support Israel, people on the left are less likely to say they should than people on the right. Which, again, shows the same thing that the University of Chicago study is showing, which is that actually Americans on the left are quite able to distinguish between their negative attitudes towards Israel and Zionism on one hand, and their attitudes towards Jews on the other. Even though American Jewish established groups like the Anti-Defamation League are constantly insisting that basically, if you’re anti-Zionist, you are also anti-Jewish.
So, we have this completely Orwellian situation in which a Trump administration whose political base consists of the most antisemitic people in the country, right, and a president who, let’s not forget, in the closing days of the 2016 campaign ran almost certainly the most antisemitic ad ever run by a major party political candidate in modern American history, right, when he ran an ad showing pictures of Lloyd Blankfein, Janet Yellen, and George Soros—three high-profile Jews— and basically said they were responsible for wrecking the global economy and as immiserating ordinary Americans, right.
That president and that political coalition are now—we’re supposed to believe that their assault on these universities is because they’re so concerned about Jewish students, and they’re so concerned about antisemitism. In fact, what they’re doing is using Jews as a pretext for an attack on universities that they hate because these universities are outside of their control and because these universities, as universities have been in America for a long time, are centers of progressive dissent against right-wing authoritarian and kind of more generally establishment or kind of capitalist politics, right. They’re a set of entities that are outside of the control of the Republican Party, outside of the control of the Trump administration.
And if you’re trying to create an authoritarian state, you’re going to crack down on all of the institutions inside the government and then beyond the government, like in the media, universities, etc. that are outside of your control so you can centralize control, right, so you can destroy and cripple any institution that might be areas that could breed resistance to your power. That’s what’s happening. And in a kind of transparently false way, Jewish safety is being used as the excuse for this. And what makes it all the more infuriating and tragic is that mainstream Jewish organizations like the ADL are essentially going along with this, right, because they see universities as places that are incubating opposition to Israel, criticism of Israel, and a desire to change US policy. And they have put the interest of defending the Israeli state above the interests of what’s actually an interest of most American Jews, and indeed above the interest of protecting American liberal democracy.
There’s something just astonishing about watching the American Jewish establishment be complicit in an attack on American universities when American universities have been so central to American Jewish success and flourishing. And yet, in an effort to prevent these universities from producing political resistance to the state of Israel, groups like the ADL and other establishment American Jewish organizations are willing to be complicit in an assault on these universities, which is also an assault on American liberal democracy.
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Our guest is Jordan Elgrably, Editor in Chief of The Markaz Review and co-editor with Malu Halasa of the new anthology, Sumud: A New Palestinian Reader. We talk about themes in contemporary Palestinian writing and how that writing can help us better understand the horrors in Gaza and across Palestine and Israel.
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The NYU Professor wrote a negative review of Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. She joined me to discuss her criticisms.
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I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next few months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.
I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, Rashid Khalid’s classic exploration of the roots of Palestinian nationalism, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness.
I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.
Here is a new message about Hossam’s condition from his sister, Abir:
“Hossam has been diligently reaching out to various offices, holding on to hope for the progress of his passport application. Recently, he visited the hospital where he and his son, Moayad, spent a challenging four months undergoing treatment. The hospital staff informed him that the archives and reception department would be reopening next week, which filled him with optimism. Hossam has scheduled an appointment to discuss Moayad's case and to collect the essential reports needed for his treatment in Egypt.
Additionally, Hossam has requested the latest reports on his son Momen and his daughter Malak's hearing aids, as he wishes to consult with specialists in Egypt. During this challenging journey, please continue to support Hossam and his family as they seek a brighter, more peaceful future filled with dignity and relief from their struggles. Your compassion truly makes a difference in their lives.”
Friday Zoom Call
This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. Our guest will be Jordan Elgrably, Editor in Chief of The Markaz Review and co-editor with Malu Halasa of the new anthology, Sumud: A New Palestinian Reader. We’ll talk about themes in contemporary Palestinian writing and how that writing can help us better understand the horrors in Gaza and across Palestine and Israel.
Friday’s zoom call is for paid subscribers.
Book Tour
(We’ll update this every week.)
On Monday, March 3, I’ll be speaking with Professor Atalia Omer at Notre Dame University.
On Monday, March 10 and Tuesday, March 11, I’ll be giving four talks in Michigan. On March 10 at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and at St David’s Episcopal Church, and on March 11 at St. Matthew’s & St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church and at T’chiyah synagogue.
On Monday, March 17, I’ll be speaking at Mishkan Shalom synagogue in Philadelphia.
On Tuesday, March 18, I’ll be debating an old classmate, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, on the proposition “The oppression of Palestinians in non-democratic Israel has been systematic and profound” at the Soho Forum in New York.
On Monday, March 24, I’ll be speaking at the University of Vermont.
On Tuesday, March 25, I’ll be speaking at Middlebury College.
On Monday, April 7, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School.
On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Things to Read
(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)
In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Alex Kane details a progressive nonprofit’s refusal to grapple with the assault on Gaza.
For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts podcast, I talked to Harvard Medical School Professors Eman Ansari and Aaron Shakow about censorship on campus.
In Haaretz, Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard suggests that “Israel Is losing the justification for its existence,” a statement that could be considered an example of antisemitism under the IHRA definition recently adopted by Harvard University.
Juan Cole on the way Trump’s treatment of Zelensky resembles US treatment of the Palestinians.
Joy Reid speaks after the cancellation of her show on MSNBC.
Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham’s comments upon winning an Oscar.
See you on Friday, March 7,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s kind of public humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Oval Office was the kind of most extreme version of the way Donald Trump treats a lot of foreign leaders, a lot of foreign countries. Which is, he basically says were being ripped off by you and we’re going to extort you, right? Basically, if you want America’s continued help or if you frankly just don’t want us to destroy your economy through tariffs, or you don’t want us to take over your land in the case of Greenland or Panama, basically you just have to start giving us stuff. In the case of Ukraine, your mineral resources. Or with, you know, in the case of Colombia, you have to take our migrants. Or with Canada and Mexico, it seems to change, but basically the claim is we’re getting ripped off and then that’s the pretext for basically these frankly kind of thuggish imperialist kind of claims that basically you’re just going to have to start paying us if you don’t want us to really kind of wreck you.
And so, the question that I think is interesting to ask is why doesn’t Trump treat Israel that way? Right? I mean, you could imagine a world where Trump makes a version of these same arguments vis-a-vis Israel, right. Where he says, you know, why are we giving you all these weapons? Why are we protecting you from Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas? What are we getting in return? We’re being played for suckers. You should pay us twice as much money or you should give us some of your natural resources or you should basically just hand over some of your high-tech companies to us or something. I mean, it wouldn’t be really entirely logical, but it never is logical with Trump.
But you could see how this impulse, right, could be applied to Israel just as easily as it could be applied to Ukraine, you know, again, because America gives Israel a lot of a lot of military assistance. Now, it’s true that military assistance is mostly in the form of a credit card that America gives Israel to buy American weaponry. Trump probably doesn’t even know that, right. And I’m sure he could still spin some way in which America is being ripped off. And yet, he doesn’t, right? I mean, the contrast between his meeting with Zelensky on the one hand, and his meeting with Netanyahu at the Oval Office couldn’t be more extreme, right. He didn’t humiliate Netanyahu. To the contrary, Netanyahu was beaming as Trump basically gave him a series of policies that Netanyahu was thrilled about, most of all, America’s support now for mass ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in Gaza.
So, why the difference? I mean, one answer would be that simply the domestic politics are very different, right. That even a country like Ukraine, which had a lot of support in Washington, doesn’t have a kind of permanent infrastructure of lobbying organizations like that Israel has, like, you know, pro-Israel organizations like AIPAC, for instance, and the Christians United for Israel, this kind of evangelical group. So, that sustains a level of domestic political support. And now, especially in the Republican Party, right, that has an impact on Trump’s behavior, that the blowback to Trump would be greater if he did this to Netanyahu than if he did this to Zelensky or any other government, right.
But I think that in a way only begs the further question itself, right. Well, then why do we have this infrastructure, right? Why is Israel unusual in that way? And partly, it has to do with the role of the American Jewish community as an unusually politically articulate community that really, since the 1970s, has kind of reoriented its institutional life around kind of unconditional defense of Israel. But that’s not the entire story, right, because Christians United for Israel, an evangelical organization is not a Jewish organization. And even though the American Jewish organizations wield influence, especially when it comes to the Republican Party, they’re really pushing against an open door, right. I mean, which is to say that there’s a lot of a lot of Republicans who are predisposed to support Israel, whether there was an AIPAC or not.
And I think this gets at part of the answer, which is the deeper answer, which is that Israel really doesn’t function in American politics really quite like a foreign policy issue. It really functions as a culture war issue. That Israel has kind of integrated into the culture war. You can see this in the way in which antisemitism and the fight against antisemitism—or I maybe should say ‘antisemitism,’ I think a lot of it’s not antisemitism—but the way in which the right organizes to fight what it calls antisemitism as part of its attack on DEI. And it’s part of its attack on wokeism, as if the left’s antisemitism from the perspective of pro-Israel folks is kind of connected in with the left’s, you know, calling America a racist country or wanting to put in gender pronouns. It’s all kind of part of the same basket. I don’t think there’s another country which functions that way, right, in which to be anti-Israel is to be on the opposite side of the culture war struggle that Donald Trump is on.
And I think that really has to do with the fact that Israel is seen in large chunks of America, and certainly in large chunks of the Republican Party, as not exactly a foreign country, but more like an image of what they would like America to be: a country that is openly ethno-nationalist in that it has clear legal hierarchies between different groups—in this case, ethno-religious groups, Jews and Palestinians. It has an immigration policy that essentially only allows a path to citizenship for people who are of the dominant group. That it’s very militaristic. It’s very nationalistic. It’s very sovereignty oriented. It’s openly dismissive of international law. It’s quite religious. These are all things that I think offer a kind of vision of what for Donald Trump and many Republicans were like America to be.
And so, in some ways, Israel functions as a kind of not exactly a mirror, but almost like an aspiration for America. The only other country that I could think off the top of my head functions at all that way is Hungary, which I think has also become really because it’s been so frankly anti-Muslim and also anti-LGBT and whatever serves also as a kind of a model. And that’s why I think that it would be very unlikely that Donald Trump would treat Viktor Orban that way. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe Narendra Modi or I suppose Jair Bolsonaro when they were in power in Brazil also. Because I think these are countries where Donald Trump is not likely to think about the relationship so much in transactional terms because he thinks of these countries as kind of countries that embody what he would like America to be.
And I think Israel above all, because it’s the country in which ethno-nationalism is the most firmly entrenched, and it’s also because it’s also so technologically and economically dynamic, and militarily strong, that it really represents a kind of almost a fantasy of what America could be. And I think that’s why you have this dramatic dissonance between how Trump treats Zelensky and many, many other sometimes longtime US allies and the way he treats Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel.
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Our guests are two important progressive American rabbis who disagree on some fundamental questions regarding Palestine and Israel. Rabbi Alissa Wise, Lead Organizer of Rabbis for Ceasefire, former Co-Deputy Director at Jewish Voice for Peace and co-author of Solidarity is the Political Version of Love: Lessons from Jewish Anti-Zionist Organizing, is anti-Zionist. Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, supports partitioning Israel-Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian states. Despite these differences, they both signed a recent letter in The New York Times titled “Jewish People Say No to Ethnic Cleansing.” We talk about the ideological differences that separate “anti-Zionist” and “progressive Zionist” Jews, and whether, despite them, there are opportunities for cooperation in the age of Netanyahu and Trump.
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