Episodi
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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 -
Episodi mancanti?
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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
Khaled Abou El Fadl is a professor of law at UCLA and one of America’s preeminent Islamic scholars. He’s also a passionate critic of authoritarianism in the Muslim world who has paid a significant price for challenging tyrannical regimes. I recently had the privilege of appearing alongside him in a discussion about Jewish and Muslim obligations in the wake of Israel’s destruction of Gaza. I felt I was in the presence of a profound religious voice.
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For the next few weeks, most of my book events for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza are outside the US. 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.
Here is a message from Hossam, sent by his sister Abir, last Wednesday:
Yesterday, I received an invitation from the Palestinian Authority for Development for my children to attend recreational activities and psychological support sessions. My 9-year-old daughter, Malak, and her neighborhood friends were overjoyed—finally, a chance to play and feel like children again after days in shelters.
Tragically, at 11:30 AM, the site was bombed by an F-16. The blast shook our neighborhood. Malak and the other children ran in terror to escape the shrapnel. In the chaos, Malak fell, injuring her arm. She now suffers from a deep bruise and severe joint pain.
Hospitals are overwhelmed, and care is delayed as medical staff attend to the most critical cases. We wait with patience and faith, hoping Malak’s condition will improve soon.
Please keep Malak—and all the wounded children—in your prayers. Your continued support means everything to my family. Even in fear, we hold on to hope. Together, we will survive this war and one day heal and rebuild.
Friday Zoom Call
This Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at a special time: 12:30 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of law at UCLA and one of America’s preeminent Islamic scholars. He’s also a passionate critic of authoritarianism in the Muslim world who has paid a significant price for challenging tyrannical regimes. I recently had the privilege of appearing alongside him in a discussion about Jewish and Muslim obligations in the wake of Israel’s destruction of Gaza. I felt I was in the presence of a profound religious voice.
After this Friday, we will take a break. There will be no newsletter on Monday, May 19 and no Zoom call on Friday, May 23, as I’ll be travelling in Australia. We will resume on Monday, May 26 and Friday, May 30.
Book Tour
(We’ll update this every week.)
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.
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!), the Palestinian legal theorist Raef Zreik writes about the legacy of German-Jewish religious thinker, Martin Buber.
I spoke about Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza at Harvard Divinity School and via Zoom with Barnett Rubin at the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library.
Eric Alterman on the “Coming Jewish Civil War over Donald Trump.”
A former West Bank settler on why he refused to serve in the IDF.
See you on Friday,
Peter
So, the kind of American part of my book tour is pretty much over. I’m actually recording this from Canada, and then I’m going to Australia and the UK and Ireland. And I don’t have many more book events in the United States. I’ve been traveling around the US for like more than three months now. And one of the really interesting things about doing that is I get a kind of a sense of the conversation about Israel-Palestine at maybe at a more grassroots level than I would otherwise. And it’s especially interesting because I can compare what I see now to what I saw when I wrote this book called The Crisis of Zionism 13 years ago, back in 2012, just to see how things look different when I go out and speak to lots of different folks than they I did back then.
Reflecting on it, two things really struck me. Two differences have really struck me. The first is a kind of collapse of what you could call the kind of liberal pro-Israel position. In 2012, when my book came out—and that was a less radical book. I mean, I still supported two-state solution of a Jewish state next to a Palestinian state back then. But the book was still pretty harshly attacked by a bunch of people—journalists, commentators—who were kind of liberals in good standing, you know, and they thought I was being too harshly critical of Israel. And, you know, those were the most important criticisms of the book. And they were tough for me because these were people who were arguing from within a kind of similar ideological or kind of moral position that I was, you know, about liberal democracy, about equality. But they were still very, quite staunch defenders of Israel.
And I think that today what I notice, what the book kind of response to the book has really made clear to me, is that those voices are much, much weaker than they are now. It’s partly generational, I think, because that position was stronger amongst older people, and more than a decade has passed now. I think it’s partly because the whole center of gravity in kind of liberal/progressive kind of circles has moved left. I mean, you know, 13 years ago is also a time where you would have found more people who are considered liberals in good standing in the sense that like they were influential commentators, you know, who had the ear of prominent people in the Democratic Party who would have been more hawkish in foreign policy, right, who were still defending the intervention in Afghanistan, if not Iraq and supporting military intervention in Syria or Libya. That position also, I think, is largely gone by the wayside.
There was also, I think, more legitimacy to a kind of more neoliberal economic policy in the Democratic Party. So, these activist movements, starting with Occupy in 2011 and Black Lives Matter and Me Too and others, I think, have pushed the center of gravity in general in kind of mainstream progressive and liberal debate. And so, I think you see that on Israel and Palestine as well. There are, of course, still a lot of politicians who kind of are in good standing in the Democratic Party, and are very pro-Israel—you know, Ritchie Torres or John Fetterman and all these people—but if you look at kind of in public commentary among journalists, writers, people in the public culture, I think you find that position is much, much weaker and much less prominent. Some people who used to defend Israel who are liberals, I noticed, just really don’t write much about the subject, or some of them write about antisemitism as a left-wing problem, but you notice they don’t really write actually much defending what Israel is actually doing.
And so, what I’ve noticed is that it’s meant that there’s been a lot of really harsh criticism of my book, but most of it is really now coming from people who are kind of firmly anchored on the ideological right. They’re not people who speak within a kind of liberal, let alone progressive, idiom. And so, even though I don’t, you know, the criticisms are still very harsh, I don’t feel like they’re coming from people who are speaking within the same kind of ideological perspective that I am. It feels just much, much more polarized. And I think that you see this in the Jewish community in particular, in which the energy in pro-Israel circles in the United States is not among self-described liberals. It’s among people who actually are anti-liberal and are very comfortable with the Trumpian Republican Party in general.
One consequence for me of this has been that it’s actually I’m less likely to speak in ideologically mixed spaces. Or in some ways like that there’s kind of less of a centrist group of people for me to speak to because there’s such great polarization now that in more right-leaning spaces, I’m not going to be invited to speak. And so, I don’t have the experience, which I used to have more of speaking to groups of people where people really had more significant disagreements with me. And I really miss that. In some ways, the saddest thing for me about this whole experience is that while it’s nice to speak to people you agree with, I find that I’m less and less likely to be invited to speak to the kind of audiences where people would disagree with me. But I think that’s partly because my position has become more radical, but also because I think of this broader polarization in general within the Jewish community and in America more generally.
The second thing that I’ve noticed is that I feel like 13 years ago, the Palestinian solidarity world, and the kind of Jewish kind of anti-occupation world, the kind of world of J Street, you know, wanting and opposing settlements, that kind of thing, were very, very distinct. And I felt like, you know, when I used to speak to kind of liberal groups, Jewish groups, there were very few Palestinians around very frequently. And I think that over the last 13 years, what I feel like is that those two worlds have kind of come to coincide more. Which is to say, I feel like there’s a more integrated Jewish and Palestinian and other kind of community of people than there was back then, or at least that I had access to back then. And I think it’s partly because all of these years of the Netanyahu government and Israel’s destruction of the two-state solution and Israel moving further and further right has led people who were genuinely opposed to occupation and to the settlements, I think to become many of them more open—especially younger people—to become more open to the deeper, more fundamental criticisms of the idea of a Jewish state and of political Zionism.
And I think, as that’s happened, what I’ve noticed is that in this book tour, I’m much more likely to meet Jews and Palestinians and other folks who, across these different lines of ethnicity and religion and community or whatever, have built really strong ties to one another. I feel like over the last decade, the activist work that’s been done has built stronger bonds of trust between genuinely progressive Jews and Palestinians and Arab Americans and Muslim Americans and other folks than existed before. And I mean, if you saw that in the encampments with young people where you had these genuinely very, very diverse groups of people who were coming together to protest. And it’s really quite impressive and powerful to see the level of connection and trust and affection and admiration that I’ve seen again and again in Michigan, in California, in Philadelphia, in Wisconsin, between Jews and Palestinians, especially given that we are in a moment where, on the ground, the destruction of Palestinian life has been so brutal and this kind of radicalization is so great.
And it really does give me a sense of hope. I mean, the events that I do these days for the book are also much, much better attended than they were in 2012. I’d like to think that it’s because I’m a much better book writer, but I think it really has to do with a greater centrality of this issue, and a way in which many people have come to see this issue as central to what it means to be progressive. And when I look out at these crowds, these very diverse crowds, I feel like it seems to me like it’s so obvious these people are the descendants of the people who are in the anti-apartheid movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement, and even beyond that, the people who were in the movements for abolition of slavery and for women’s suffrage in the United States. That this movement has echoes of those things. And that it, at its best, it embodies in some ways, it manifests, the principles that it would like to see in Israel-Palestine, which is principles of genuine equality under the law, respect for the dignity of all people, and a political community, a kind of—what King called like a beloved community—of people who, regardless of their different backgrounds and ancestries, actually share a common vision of the way human beings should be treated.
And I’m really struck by the degree of passion and energy, even despite the terrible repression of this moment, the horror in Gaza, which gets worse and worse and worse, the fact that there are crises on so many different fronts. It’s just so obvious to me that this movement, which was building before October 7th and has grown over the last year and a half a lot in opposition to the destruction of Gaza, that the movement is really not dead. That it is very, very powerful, even though its power may be often obscured for people in Washington and some in the media. And that’s part of the reason I think that Biden and Harris made these disastrous political decisions. They didn’t understand how many people across different racial and ethnic and religious groups really cared about this subject.
And my experience going is to see not only those people care, but that they’re willing to work very, very hard to try to change US policy. And that if there were a politician with the courage and the political skill—let’s say in the 2028 presidential campaign—to put this issue front and center, to speak in the way that Zohran Mamdani is speaking in the mayoral race and connect this position—I should say Brad Lander, there are others who also have a progressive record on this in the New York mayoral race, which is great that there’s more than one. Ideally, we’d have more than one in a presidential race: people who are willing to unapologetically connect this to a larger progressive agenda about equality, and about human decency, and liberal democracy. That this movement that is there would really ignite and be a very powerful force in American politics and really have the possibility of changing the Democratic Party and changing American policy towards Israel.
And so that’s really what has been a tremendous source of hope for me, even in these incredibly awful and dark days. I just see how much talent and passion and energy there is across the United States. And I really do believe that one day that power of that movement will be made manifest for people as a whole across America.
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 -
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Our guest is novelist and journalist, Omar El Akkad, author of the new book about Israel’s destruction of Gaza, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. He’ll talk about what it’s like to live as an Arab-American in a moment in which the US—and the West more generally— are destroying any pretense of believing in the moral principles they claim to hold dear.
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I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for a few more weeks. 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 the novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad, author of the new book about Israel’s destruction of Gaza, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. He’ll talk about what it’s like to live as an Arab-American in a moment in which the US—and the West more generally— are destroying any pretense of believing in the moral principles they claim to hold dear.
Book Tour
(We’ll update this every week.)
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.
Sources Cited in this Week’s Video
Tommy Lapid and Yeshayahu Leibowitz on “Judeo-Nazis.”
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!), Sheetal Chabria offers a leftist guide to tariffs.
In The New York Times, I wrote about how Trump and establishment Jewish organizations are redefining Jewishness to silence protest against Israel.
On Seven Minute expert, I talked (or tried to talk) with Columbia University Professor Shai Davidai about Israel and antisemitism.
Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor on how American politicians can support the horror in Gaza.
Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza was reviewed in the magazine ARC and I discussed with Barnett Rubin.
Check out Ben Barber’s book, No Way But Forward: Life Stories of Three Families in the Gaza Strip.
See you on Friday,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So, the Antisemitism Awareness Act is currently being debated in the US Senate. It’s passed the House. And it’s now in committee in the Senate. And if it passes through the committee, it will go on to the Senate floor. And this would kind of be Congressional instruction to the Department of Education to use this particular definition when it evaluates alleged antisemitism on college campuses.
And so, it’s just worth, I think, saying something about one particular element of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, IHRA definition of antisemitism, to show how I think perverse it is and how in a certain kind of very strange way. It’s very dehumanizing of Jews, this definition of antisemitism. It’s dehumanizing of Jews because it suggests that it is antisemitic to imagine that Jews could act the way in which other human beings act, right?
And so, in particular, one of the examples of the IHRA definition of antisemitism is that it could be an example of antisemitism if you draw comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis. And now, obviously, there are many analogies between Israel and the Nazis that will be very, very stupid and incorrect, and potentially even offensive analogies, right? Benjamin Netanyahu, for all his sins, is not Adolf Hitler. Israel, despite the horrors that it’s committing in Gaza and the West Bank, has not established death camps in the West Bank. So, obviously, those would be very incorrect, and I think problematic analogies.
But the Nazis did many, many other things besides creating death camps, right? The Nazis took power in 1933. There was a whole system of kind of discourse and processes that the Nazis put in place—some of which was consistent with other fascist movements—that eroded liberal democracy, that ultimately eroded the rule of law and the rights of various different people. And we understand that implicitly, right, because the United States media is filled with comparisons of the Trump administration to the Nazis, right? And the vast majority of these comparisons are not suggesting that that Donald Trump has set up death camps in the United States, right, but they’re looking to this historical parallel to try to understand and analyze the dangers and also the rhetorical formulations, the relationship between a fascist movement and big corporations, the language of dehumanization, many, many, many things, which are kind of natural things for people to do when you’re looking at a system of oppression—and as Donald Trump is trying to create in the United States and authoritarianism and Israel has been doing as well, right? And remember, just to state the obvious, Israel is the country that controls millions and millions of people who live under the control of the Israeli state but cannot become citizens of that state. And now it is engaged in Gaza in a military assault that has been called genocide by Human Rights Watch and by people like Omer Bartov, right?
So, what does it mean to suggest that one can talk about Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the language of Nazis or talk about Marine Le Pen, or talk about the AFD, or talk about Viktor Orban, or Narendra Modi, or Jair Bolsonaro, or many, many, many kind of right-wing authoritarian movements around the world? But it is antisemitic to deploy any of these analogies when it comes to the state of Israel. What that in effect does is it suggests—this is what I mean by dehumanization—it suggests that in some strange way, if you’re in a Jewish state, you’re no longer fully human because you cannot have the full range of human capacities, right, some of which are very good, some of which are very terrible. And if people suggest you do, if people suggest that there’s anything you do that might have reminiscences of this horrible Nazi regime, that’s antisemitic because it is bigoted against Jews to suggest that Jews in a Jewish state could be acting in the way that we plainly recognize, that people all over the world and political movements all over the world have the capacity to act.
I think I may have mentioned before once this really extraordinary video of a conversation on Israeli television between Tommy Lapid, the father of Yair Lapid—Tommy Lapid was himself an Israeli politician, and also a Holocaust survivor—and, you know, one of my heroes, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the Orthodox Israeli social critic. And Tommy Lapid is enraged that Yeshayahu Leibowitz has used the term Judeo-Nazis to describe certain things that he’s seeing that are happening in the state of Israel, right? Yeshayahu Leibowitz in using that term could very well be found to be violating the IHRA definition of antisemitism, despite the fact that he was an eminent Jewish scholar and social critic, right?
But Tommy Lapid is enraged by the analogy, and he’s yelling at Leibowitz. Again and again, he’s saying, ‘have we put them in death camps? Have we put them in death camps? Have we put them in death camps?’ And there’s this long pause. And then Leibowitz says at the end, ‘that is your prophecy.’ That is your prophecy. And what I interpret Leibowitz is saying is of course not that Israel has put Palestinians in death camps. It hasn’t back then. It still hasn’t, even despite what it’s doing in Gaza. But to say, don’t foreclose the possibility that Jews could be capable of anything that any other human beings are capable of, right, because Jews are at the end of the day just another group of human beings not endowed with any particular special qualities.
And what is so disturbing to me about this really frankly insane definition of antisemitism, which has emerged in the United States, is it is having the effect of suggesting that it is now an act of bigotry to treat and analyze Jews as if they are other human beings. And that in a bizarre way is also othering of Jews. It’s also in a very strange way, in the language of protecting Jews, it has the effect of suggesting that Jews are something other than ordinary human beings. And that’s what frightens me about the Antisemitism Awareness Act and about the way this discourse has gone in the United States, especially in the Trump era.
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 -
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Our guest is Joy Reid, former MSNBC host and author of the Joy’s House Substack. We talk about how the mainstream media covers Israel-Palestine, and how it covers America.
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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 -
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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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The Anti-Defamation League Now Opposes Trump’s Abductions. But It Helped Enable Them.
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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.
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 -
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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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