Afleveringen
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Given the growing chance of a regional war in the Middle East, our guest will be one of the best analysts of Palestinian and Middle Eastern politics, Mouin Rabbani, Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, a publication of the Arab Studies Institute, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. Weâll talk about the attack in Majdal Shams, the spate of recent Israeli assassinations and the potential for a conflict that envelopes the entire region.
If you know anyone who might enjoy these conversations, please encourage them to subscribe. (Or buy them a gift subscription.)
Audio Podcasts unlock after six weeks for free subscribers. To get them right away and support my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
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Laila Al-Arian is an investigative journalist and executive producer of Fault Lines, an Emmy and Peabody award-winning show on Al Jazeera English. Sheâs also the executive producer of âThe Night Wonât End,â an extraordinarily powerful documentary about three families in Gaza during this war. We talk about how the documentary was made, what it reveals about how Israel is waging this war and about how the media is covering it.
If you know anyone who might enjoy these conversations, please encourage them to subscribe. (Or buy them a gift subscription.)
Audio Podcasts unlock after six weeks for free subscribers. To get them right away and support my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Among Other Things, Israelâs War in Lebanon Could Help Elect Trump
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James Zogby is founder of the Arab American Institute, and a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee. He recently offered a proposal for how to replace President Biden as the Democratic Partyâs nominee. Weâll talk about the pressure inside the party on Biden to bow out, and what might happen if he does.
Interview co-sponsored with Jewish Currents.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Her Own Life Story Disproves Trump and Vanceâs Lies
Kamala Harris never spoke to the camera and said, you know what, my parents are immigrants. And they contributed a lot to this country. And we have something to thank them for, and immigrants actually make this country better.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Rami Khouri is a Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the American University of Beirut, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, DC, and a regular columnist for Al Jazeera Online. Rami lived in Beirut for 17 years and has for many years written about relations between Israel and Lebanon.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Shouldnât the US Care as Much about Americans Killed by the IDF as it Cares about Americans Killed by Hamas?
Our call this week will be at our new regular time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest will be Simon Fitzgerald, a trauma surgeon in Brooklyn who has worked in telemedicine in Gaza, particularly at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis with Dr. Khaled Alser. According to colleagues, Dr. Alser has been abducted by Israeli forces and tortured at Ofer Prison and at the notorious Sde Teiman prison camp in the Negev Desert. Dr. Fitzgerald will talk about his experience doing telemedicine in Gaza and about the fate of Dr. Alser.
Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
LIVE DEBATE CHAT
Iâll be hosting a live chat during this Tuesday nightâs presidential debate for paid subscribers. Iâll be participating along with all of you. Just click the âJoin chatâ button below:
PREMIUM MEMBERSHIP - ASK ME ANYTHING
Weâve also added a new membership category, Premium Member, which is $179 per year (or higher, if you want to give more). In addition to our weekly Zoom interviews, Premium Members will get access to a monthly live âask me anythingâ zoom call and video of that call the following week.
Our next âask me anythingâ will be on Thursday, Sept 17 at 11 AM Eastern.
If youâre interested in becoming a premium or regular member, hit the subscriber button below or email us with any questions.
Sources Cited in this Video
The Americans injured or killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank.
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, Arielle Angel talks with Ben Lorber and Shane Burley, authors of Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism, about antisemitism and the left.
The Biden administrationâs double standard on âriver to the sea.â
Israelâs Radio Rwanda.
Orly Noy on the death of Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
Remembering Rabbi Michael Lerner.
On September 25, Iâll be speaking at Vanderbilt University.
Please consider supporting a scholarship fund for displaced students in Gaza who want to study in the US.
See you on Friday,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. So, last week, my video was about Hersh Goldberg-Polin and the other Israeli hostages that were killed by Hamas. And Hersh Goldberg-Polin got a particular a lot of attention in the United States because he was American. His parents spoke of the Democratic National Convention, and he became someone who many, many Americans knew. And many Americans mourned his murder by Hamas, which is as it should be. I mean, we should care about all human lives. And we have, as Americans, a particular right to be concerned about the fate of other Americans.
And now we found that an American has been shot and killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces. On Friday, an American activist named Aysenur Eygi was shot while she was protesting at an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. And this has been happening fairly frequently in recent years. Several weeks earlier, another American, Amado Sison, was struck by live ammunition in the back of the leg by Israeli forces. Earlier this year, two 17-year-old Palestinian Americans were killed in the West Bank: Tawfic Abdel Jabbar from Louisiana and Mohammad Khdour from Florida. In 2020, a 78-year-old Palestinian American, Omar Assad, was dragged from his car by Israeli forces bound and blindfolded, and then had a heart attack, while in Israeli custody after heâd been left under those conditions for like an hour so by Israeli forces. In 2021, a prominent Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed by an Israeli sniper while she was wearing a press vest, covering an Israeli Defense Forces raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
There is, I think, by any honest assessment, a tremendous difference between the way in the United States in public conversation, and indeed the American government, respond when American Jews are killed in Israel versus what happens when Palestinian Americans, or in the case of this young woman, Aysenur Eygi, a Turkish American, were killed in the West Bank. The US government does not respond in the same way. Thereâs not the same level of public outcry, and thereâs not the same level of demand by the US government that the people who committed these killings be held responsible.
And what disturbs me about this so much, and I think makes this so important beyond the preciousness of the individual lives at stake, is that the Biden administrationâand remember, all of these deaths have been happening, these killings by Israelis of Americans, have been happening under the Biden administration. The Biden administration is engaged in a fight against Donald TrumpâKamala Harris and Joe Bidenâessentially about the idea of ethnonationalism, about the idea of whether America is a country in which all of its citizens are considered equal under the law, that their lives are equally valuable, irrespective of what their race, religion, and ethnicity is.
That, of course, is not the principle that governs Israel as a Jewish state, which elevates the rights and the lives of Jews over Palestinians. But what you see in the way that even a Democratic administration responds to the deaths of Americans in Israel is that they essentially adopt the ethnonationalist prism, in which certain lives are more valuable than others that exists in Israel, and they essentially therefore end up taking the position that the Trump campaign is arguing about what kind of country America should be, right. This is Donald Trumpâs vision of America. An America in which there are hierarchies between different citizens based on religion, ethnicity, race, etc.
And the Democratic party is ostensibly fighting in a desperate fight to make sure we are not that kind of a country. And yet, when it comes to the Americans who are killed in Israel, either by Hamas or by the Israeli Defense Forces, we essentially adopt that very hierarchy, and the American lives matter more if theyâre Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a American Jew, then they are if they are Shireen Abu Akleh, an American Palestinian, or Omar Assad, an American Palestinian, or indeed I center as Aysenur Eygi, a Turkish American. And so, it seems to me, as a fundamental matter of principle in terms of what the Biden Administration and what the Harris campaign says they want to stand for, that this represents a portrayal of their of the vision of America that they are fighting for. And on that basis alone, it seems to me, they should be that that there is every bit as much justice for the Palestinian and other Americans who are killed by Israel, as there are for the American Jews like Hersh Goldberg-Polin who were killed by Hamas.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Raja Khouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson are co-authors of the book, The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Donât Want to Know About Each Other. Since October 7, dialogue between Palestinians and Jews has become even more difficult, and there are those in both communitiesâand on the left and rightâwho question its value. Iâm excited to ask Raja and Jeffrey to respond to those criticisms, and to explain how they believe that greater dialogue between Palestinians and Jews can contribute to the struggle for equality, freedom, and safety for everyone.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Our call this week will be at a special time: Wednesday at 11 AM Eastern
Our guest will be Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute and one of the most thoughtful and best-informed observers in Washington about the relationship between Israel, Hezbollah and Iran. Weâll discuss Israelâs recent attack, US policy and the danger of a regional war.
Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
Weâve added a new membership category, Premium Member, which is $179 per year (or higher, if you want to give more). In addition to our weekly Zoom interviews, Premium Members will get access to a monthly âask me anythingâ zoom call.
Our first âask me anythingâ will be this Thursday, August 29 at 11 AM Eastern. Premium Subscribers will get a Tuesday email that includes links to both our Wednesday call with Trita and the âask me anythingâ on Thursday. (If you have any questions, email me).
If youâre interested in becoming a premium or regular member, hit the button below.
Weâre also slightly increasing the prices of regular paid subscriptions. Itâs the first time Iâve done this since I launched the newsletter a few years ago. Starting September 1, regular subscriptions will be $79 per year (up from $72) and $7.99 per month (up from $7). This will apply to all new subscriptions and to everyone whose subscription renews. If this increase creates a hardship for you, email me and weâll figure it out.
Sources Cited in this Video
The cancellation of Joshua Leiferâs book launch event.
A poster calls for âZionistsâ to leave a London neighborhood.
Mira Sucharovâs study of what American Jews mean by the word âZionist.â
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 the Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Maya Rosen investigates the Israelis who want to settle southern Lebanon.
Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jon Stewart on the exclusion of Palestinian speakers at the DNC.
A Black and Palestinian Mississippian reflects on the Democratic conventions of 1964 and 2024.
Benjamin Netanyahu never pays the bill.
Please consider supporting a scholarship fund for displaced students in Gaza who want to study in the US.
See you on Wednesday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. There was a fair amount of attention last week to the experience of my friend, Josh Leifer, whoâs launch event for his excellent new book, Tablets Shattered, was closed because the bookstore wouldnât permit him to be speaking alongside a moderator who was a âZionistâ rabbi. It produced a lot of commentary. And I do think this is something which is growing as a tendency, this tendency to say that if you are a Zionist, then you are kind of excluded from conversations. There was even a thing that happened in the UK where there was a march, which said that Zionists had to leave a certain neighborhood in London.
I wanna explain why I think this is self-defeating and unwise. The first reason is that Palestinians, and Jews who support Palestinian freedom, have been excluded from a very, very long time, and still are, sometimes even by force of law. And the argument against that is that these are restrictions on free speech, and that people should have the right to be heard, and to make their case. So, this is what many of us have argued about: the rights of, you know, Jews who donât support a Jewish state to speak at Hillel, for instance, or the rights of Palestinians to express their point of view and not be called antisemites just because they donât support a Jewish state.
And I do think you undermine the clarity of that argument when people on the Left turn around and then basically say, Zionists are not allowed to have a platform in our spaces, right? I think it undermines the effort, the really important effort to say that in other spaces, whether theyâre establishment Jewish spaces or kind of more mainstream American political spaces, that Palestiniansâthe vast majority of whom, of course, donât support the idea of a Jewish state, or other people who donât support a Jewish stateâshould have the right to speak, right. That was something that tragically didnât happen at the Democratic National Convention. But I think it makes it harder to make that case if youâre excluding people on your own turf.
Secondly, I of course understand the logic, which would say, well, Zionism is the ideology of the state. This state is classified as an apartheid state by a lot of human rights organizations. Itâs therefore racist ideology, and we wouldnât have, you know, white supremacists come and speak in our bookstores, or whatever. But I think there are some important differences, and some problems with that logic.
The first is that for many Jews, Zionism has an intimate, and often somewhat vague, meaning, which does not actually line up with supporting the actions of the state, and sometimes doesnât even actually line up with supporting Jewish statehood at all. There is a tradition of cultural Zionism, which opposed the Jewish state. And, even among people who have never heard of cultural Zionism, what Mira Sucharovâs polling has found, which is really fascinating, is that American Jews define themselves as Zionists under certain definitions. But if you tell American Jews that Zionism means a state in which Palestinians are not treated equally to Jews, then they actually say theyâre not Zionists.
So, the point is that the discourse in the Jewish community about what Zionism means can often be quite different than I think what it is on the Left. And Iâm not saying that the Jewish one is right. Itâs understandable that people on the Left would say, Zionism is what Israel does. But I think when you close down conversations with Jews for whom Zionism means essentially a kind of an affinity, a connection with that place, with those people, but who havenât actually necessarily grappled that much with the contradictions of the principles of equality and liberal democracy, those are in some ways, I think, the very people that you want to be in conversation with if youâre trying to change the American debate, trying to change the American Jewish debate.
Because what Mira Sucharovâs polling shows is that when you confront people who call themselves Zionists with the reality that Israel is fundamentally unequal under law towards Palestinians, that actually many of them rethink their perspective and may even rethink the term Zionist and whether it applies to them. So, do you really want to not give the opportunity to have those conversations? I think that we are in a momentâitâs been true for quite a long time, but especially nowâin which people who are making a critique of the idea of Jewish statehood based on the idea of equality under the law, based on the idea that ethnonationalism, tribal supremacy, is wrong in Israel-Palestine, and just like itâs wrong in the United States, like itâs wrong in France, like itâs wrong in Hungary, like itâs wrong in India, those people have a very powerful argument.
And the more they can get into those discussions with people who have been raised to believe in the idea of a Jewish state, but have not necessarily thought a lot about what a Jewish state means fromâas Edward Said famously saidâfrom the standpoint of its victims, those conversations, I actually think, can be extremely productive in terms of changing debate inside the American Jewish community and changing debate inside the United States as well. And when you basically say, no Zionists are allowed in that conversation, I actually think youâre forfeiting a chance to make change. And what you end up doing is basically just making people become very alienated and very angry. And that exclusion doesnât, I think, actually move one towards a shift in the public conversation at all.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Our call this week will be at our new regular time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest will Joshua Leifer, author of the new book, Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life. Itâs the best history of American Jewish politics Iâve read and offers a provocative analysis of the American Jewish future.
Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky and Bret Stephens.
Weâve added a new membership category, Premium Member, which is $179 per year (or higher, if you want to give more). In addition to our weekly Friday calls, Premium Members will get access to a monthly âask me anythingâ zoom call.
Our first one will be on Thursday, August 29 at 11 AM Eastern.
Weâre also slightly increasing the prices of regular paid subscriptions. Itâs the first time Iâve done this since I launched the newsletter a few years ago. Starting September 1, regular subscriptions will be $79 per year (up from $72) and $7.99 per month (up from $7). This will apply to all new subscriptions and to everyone whose subscription renews. If this increase creates a hardship for you, email me and weâll figure it out.
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 the Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Alex Kane profiles Florida State Representative Randy Fine, one of a new breed of MAGA Jewish Republicans.
In The New York Times, I argued that Kamala Harris could radically change Joe Bidenâs policy on Gaza by simply enforcing US law.
Israeli-born Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov on how Jewish Israelis justify what he now considers a genocide.
An Uncommitted delegate who grew up being bombed by Israel on what itâs like to watch the destruction of Gaza.
Please consider supporting a scholarship fund for displaced students in Gaza who want to study in the US.
See you on Friday at 11 AM,
Peter
TRANSCRIPT
So Monday night at the first night of the Democratic Convention. It's going to be devoted to Joe Biden, and I think to say it will be a love fest is probably an understatement. There will be raucous applause and tears, and the whole thing will be devoted to the heroism, the courage, the magnanimity of Joe Biden, what he's achieved, particularly the fact that he was willing to abandon his own ambition to step aside and give the Democrats a better chance of defeating Donald Trump. And, to be clear, I do think it's a very good thing that he did that. But I don't think he should be celebrated. Certainly not in that unambiguous way.
And it really bothers me that so many people in the US center, even center-left people, will be doing that tomorrow night. They'll be saying, "Joe Biden is that rarest of person in American politics, someone who really puts country above himself as an individual." I just don't think when you're analyzing a Presidency or a person, you sequester what's happened in Gaza. I mean, if you're a liberal-minded person, you believe that genocide is just about the worst thing that a country can do, and it's just about the worst thing that your country can do if your country is arming a genocide.
And it's really not that controversial anymore that this qualifies as a genocide. I read the academic writing on this. I don't see any genuine scholars of human rights international law who are saying it's not indeed there. People like Omer Bartov, holocaust scholar at Brown, who initially were reluctant to say that, and now, indeed, have said that they consider it a genocide. So if you believe that a genocide is just about the worst thing that America can do in terms of its foreign policy, arming and funding at genocide, how can you simply say that you're gonna put that aside even for a night, and focus entirely on the fact that Democrats now have a better chance of beating Donald Trump?
I see so many people in media who somehow feel like they get to define their work as focused on the election, focused on the mechanics of the election, and those domestic issues. And somehow Gaza is not their beat. They don't focus on that. They don't write on foreign policy. That's difficult. That's controversial. And they're making these moral judgments as if they don't have to take a position on this. And I just don't think it makes any sense. I really don't.
If you're gonna say something about Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, you have to factor in what Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, has done, vis-a-vis Gaza. It's central to his legacy. It's central to his character. And if you don't, then you're saying that Palestinian lives just don't matter, or at least they don't matter this particular day, and I think that's inhumane. I don't think we can ever say that some group of people's lives simply don't matter, because it's inconvenient for us to talk about them at a particular moment.
And so I really would hope that people who want to say something nice about Joe Biden on Monday, because he stepped aside, put that in the larger moral context, because I really do think, or at least I desperately hope, that historians certainly will, when they look back on this horrifying and shameful moment in the history of our country.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Our call this week will be at our new regular time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest will Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, the largest city with an Arab-American majority in the United States. Weâll talk about how residents of Dearborn have reacted to the war in Gaza and whether Kamala Harris is doing enough to win their votes.
Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
Weâre slightly increasing the prices of paid subscriptions. Itâs the first time Iâve done this since I launched the newsletter a few years ago. Starting September 1, subscriptions will be $79 per year (up from $72) and $7.99 per month (up from $7). This will apply to all new subscriptions and to everyone whose subscription renews. If this increase creates a hardship for you, email me and weâll figure it out.
Weâve also added a new category, Premium Member, which is $179 per year (or higher, if you want to give more). In addition to our weekly Friday calls, Premium Members will get access to a monthly âask me anythingâ zoom call, which will start later this month. If that interests you, or youâd just like to do more to support the newsletter, please consider signing up. Whatever you decide, I appreciate it.
Sources Cited in this Video
Benjamin Netanyahuâs 1982 interview with Pat Robertson.
Merriam-Websterâs definition of âproxy.â
When Hamas broke with Iran over Syria.
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!), Raphael Magarik spoke to Rania Batrice about what Jewish texts can teach us about whether to vote for the lesser of two evils.
For the Foundation for Middle East Peace, I spoke to Harrison Mann, who resigned from the Defense Intelligence Agency to protest his officeâs support for Israelâs war in Gaza.
In The New Yorker, David Remnick writes about Yahya Sinwar.
Help Abir Elzowidi rescue her brother from Gaza.
See you on Friday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. I recently came across an interview that Benjamin Netanyahu did all the way back in 1982. So, this was before his political career, before his diplomatic career at the United Nations, and at the Israeli embassy in the United States. Back then, he was really known in 1982 fundamentally as the brother of Yoni Netanyahu, who famously died in the Entebbe raid. And Bibi had kind of fashioned himself as an expert on international terrorism. And so, heâs doing this interview with the evangelical broadcaster, Pat Robertson. And Robertson asks, âwhat is the source of terrorism?â And Netanyahu replies, âthe more we look, the more we found that terrorist incidents are not just isolated. There is a major force behind most of these groups that is the Soviet Union. If you take away the Soviet Union, itâs chief proxy, the PLO, international terrorism would collapse.â
So, of course, as it turned out, within a decade of that interview, the Soviet Union itself had collapsed. But the PLO had not collapsed. And international terrorismâwhatever exactly Benjamin Netanyahu meant by that, presumably he meant armed actions against Israel or against the Westâhad not collapsed either, right? Because, in fact, the PLO was not a proxy of the Soviet Union. It wasnât being controlled by the Soviet Union. It was getting weapons from the Soviet Union. But the PLO was fundamentally an organization that emerged out of Palestinian opposition to Israel and Zionism, which went back a very, very long time, and grew out of the Palestinian experience, and indeed existed before the Soviet Union was supporting that resistance and continued after the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
So, why bring this up now? Itâs because when one hears about the relationship between Iran and Hamas, one very frequently in the American mediaâif you listen to American politicians, or Israeli politicians, or kind of American Jewish communal discourseâyou will hear again and again this word: proxy. The same word that Netanyahu used to describe the PLOâs relationship with the Soviet Union. Now, a proxy, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is âa person authorized to act for another.â Some of the synonyms are: agent, surrogate, representative, stand- in. So, the idea is there is a person or an entity that has the authority. It makes the decisions. And it authorizes, it delegates some other entity to do a certain action for it, right? So, when you say that Hamas is a proxy for Iran, what youâre saying is that Iran is making the decisions. Iran is the fundamental actor here. And Hamas is basically doing its bidding and acting as an agent, a surrogate, a delegate, a proxy, right?
In fact, I think this completely misunderstands the relationship between Hamas and Iran. Itâs true that Hamas gets weaponry from Iran, and thatâs very valuable for it. And if Iran were to stop that support, that would be a significant problem for Hamas. But Hamas is not an agent or a proxy of Iran in the sense that it exists because Iran wants there to be an organization like Hamas around. Hamas exists because the Palestinians have been fighting against Israel for a very, very long time, and because one of the branches of that Palestinian resistance against Israel is an Islamist branch. And that for various reasons Hamas has become a very, very important actor in Palestinian politics, kind of fusing this desire to resist against Israel with its own, I think, quite problematic and deeply illiberal kind of Islamist ideology.
And so, if Iran were to cease to exist, Hamas would still very much exist because it is embodying this Palestinian resistanceânot embodying it in ways that I would like, certainly, but embodying it, along with a range of other organizations. And it would look for other external entities to support it. And indeed, so Hamas has gotten support from forces in Turkey, from people in the Gulf. And it would try to rely on those more if it didnât have Iran as a supporter. But Iran is not the reason that Hamas exists. And Palestinians have been fighting against Israel since long before the Islamic Republic revolution in 1979 meant that Iran suddenly became interested in supporting various different Palestinian groups.
This tendency to not want to face the reality that your problem is the people amongst you who youâre denying basic rights, who are resisting that oppression, is not unique to Israel. So, in South Africa, for instance, under apartheid, it was very common to hear the idea that the African National Congress was simply a proxy for the Soviet Union because it was more convenient to imagine that the real problem was far away, rather than recognizing that your fundamental problem was to deal with the people amongst you who were resisting their lack of freedom.
And itâs worth remembering, in fact, that Hamas actually broke with Iran just to show that itâs an independent actor, broke with Iran over the Syrian Civil War around decade or so ago, a little more, because Iran supported the Assad regime and Hamas supported the Sunni resistance in Syria. So, this idea that Hamas is a is a proxy for Iran is fundamentally a kind of another way that people used to not take Palestinians seriously, right, to not recognizing that the central problem that Israel has, the thing that makes it unsafe in Israel, is the lack of safety of the Palestinians that Israelis are living amongst.
And I think one of the reasons that Americans tend to kind of find it quite plausible to imagine this as the way the world works is this language of Hamas as a proxy for Iran mirrors the way Americans talked during the Cold War, right? Whereas Americans often, for our own reasons, didnât want to face the fact that the movements that we were having trouble withâwhether it was the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong, or the Sandinistas, or various other groupsâwe didnât want to face the fact that these were national anti-colonial, anti-imperial, often leftist organizations that were getting support from the Soviet Union, but that fundamentally were fighting us because they didnât want the United States to be kind of controlling their country. And it was easier for Americans to, instead of taking them seriously on their own terms, think that they were basically kind of being puppeteered by the Soviet Union. If you could just basically deal with the Soviet Union, then you wouldnât have a problem with Vietnam, for instance. That always turned out to be fundamentally wrong. And itâs fundamentally wrong in this case as well.
Now, itâs true Iran has more influence with some of these different groups than with others. So, Hezbollah, for instance, is more closely militarily integrated in with Iran than Hamas. Itâs a Shia organization like Iran. It shares a kind of more similar perversion of Islamist ideology. But even Hezbollah, which of all of these groups is the one thatâs most closely tied into Iran, even Hezbollah is still a group that emerges in response to Lebanese political realities and plays a certain role in internal Lebanese politics and in the Lebanese conflict with Israel and hostility and resistance to Israel that goes all the way back to Israelâs invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
And so, I think that one of the real dangers of this moment is precisely because Israel doesnât have a way of dealing with Hamas on its own terms because itâs invasion of Gaza, which was supposed to destroy Hamas has manifestly failed, that this language of proxy becomes particularly appealing. Then you can locate the problem externally in Iran and say, weâre going to turn and focus our attention there. I think this is a disastrously delusional way of thinking, first of all, because it wouldnât solve the problem. Even if by some miracle, you could destroy Iran or change the regime, or basically get rid of all of their weaponry, you would still not be dealing with the root of the problem, which is Palestinians. And Palestinians are resourceful enough that if Iran doesnât support them in their fight, they will find somebody else who will.
But beyond that, the other tremendous danger is that in this desire to find a solution to Israelâs problem outside of the Palestinians, you literally then are leading yourself towards a really cataclysmic regional war that doesnât address the root of the problem you have, and potentially creates enormous, enormous dangers. And so, George Orwell said, if you wanna critique the actions of people in power, you have to critique their language. And so, unless we critique words like âproxy,â it seems to me we canât actually do the political criticism thatâs necessary in this moment to try to avoid war, and to try to ultimately move towards greater justice and greater peace.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Our call this week will be at our new regular time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Given the growing chance of a regional war in the Middle East, our guest will be one of the best analysts of Palestinian and Middle Eastern politics, Mouin Rabbani, Co-Editor of Jadaliyya, a publication of the Arab Studies Institute, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. Weâll talk about the attack in Majdal Shams, the spate of recent Israeli assassinations, and the potential for a conflict that envelopes the entire region.
Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
Sources Cited in this Video
Israeli columnist Nadav Eyal on Israelâs lack of preparedness for a Hezbollah assault. (His comments are near the end of the podcast. In my video, Iâve slightly compressed his remarks, but the substance is the same.)
Even Israeli security officials admit that Israel canât destroy Hamas.
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 the Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon discuss Israelâs use of âhuman shieldsâ as a justification for the Gaza war.
Why Iran may not want a regional war.
The problem with Josh Shapiro.
Joe Bidenâs long relationship with AIPAC.
Help Abir Elzowidi rescue her brother from Gaza.
See you on Friday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. Iâm recording this on Sunday. So, by the time people see it on Monday or later, there may have been more serious retaliation by Hezbollah and/or Iran for Israelâs recent spate of assassinations of a Hezbollah operative in Lebanon, of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader in Iran, and perhaps even for the Hamas leader Mohammed Deif in Gaza. This whole trajectory is not only so frightening, but I find it so deeply depressing for so many reasons. One of which is just that, for me, as someone who cares about the safety of Israelis, worries about that a lot, I think that what Benjamin Netanyahu is doing just from the perspective of the safety of Israelis is incredibly, incredibly reckless, a kind of Trump-level action of just complete disregard for the safety of your own people.
And I just want to give a quote. This is from Nadav Eyal, whoâs a columnist at the Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth. Not a leftist by any means. Someone with very, I think, generally establishment views. Very close to the Israeli security apparatus. And heâs talking about the question of whether Israel is prepared for the kind of attack that Hezbollah is capable of. Remember, Hezbollah has a much stronger arsenal, a more formidable arsenal than Hamas, one that could really overwhelm the Iron Dome system, devastate Tel Aviv.
And this is what Nadav Eyal is saying about whether the Israeli security officials believe that Israel is prepared for what Hezbollah might do in response, or Iran. And Nadav Eyal saysâand this is from Dan Senorâs podcast, Call Me BackâEyal says, we have numerous reports by the defense community that the home front isnât ready. I didnât see any report saying that the home front is to any extent ready. And by ready, I mean, Iâm talking about electricity. Iâm talking about infrastructure. The Israeli administration is saying to itself that theyâre not ready. That Israelis are not prepared from the perspective of civil defense for the kind of retaliation that Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu would have had to know was very likely after this spate of assassinations, which followed the attack of the Druze town of Majdal Shams earlier.
But itâs part of this larger cycle thatâs been going on since October 7th. And Iâve been worried about this for a few months now because if you listen to Israeli officials and kind of commentators who are close to the Israeli government, the dynamic of their conversation in the past few months, if you notice, has really changed. If you listen to Israeli discourse and kind of pro-Israel discourse in the US in, you know, in the winter, even into, letâs say, the early spring of this year, you heard people saying, we have to destroy Hamas, right? That of course was the Israeli government line. We are gonna go into Gaza. Weâre going to destroy Hamas.
But I started to notice over the last few months a real shift. And some of this even came from official Israeli spokespeople. Like Daniel Hagari, the spokesperson, said, âwe canât destroy Hamas.â And you notice that people started to kind of acknowledge, or at least implicitly stop saying weâre going to destroy Hamas because itâs becoming more and more obvious that Israel cannot destroy Hamas. It may ultimately end up with a situation where Hamas is no longer in charge of picking up the garbage in Gaza. But thereâs lots of reporting that Hamas doesnât actually particularly want to be doing that anyway. But in terms of whether Hamas still is a rebel force that can be attacking Israel, thereâs no question now that that will remain after this war. And, in some ways, Hamas will be more formidable because itâs more popular in the West Bank. It has a huge new group of potential recruits.
And so, Israel, in some ways, has kind of given up on that goal in Gaza, the central goal of the war as stated by the Netanyahu administration. And as it has moved away from that goal, weâve seen more and more of this conversation of kind of turning towards this focus on the north, right? Itâs almost as if, kind of, well, you canât win this war. But this war, now, it turns out is not the most important war anyway. That Hezbollah is much more dangerous. And so, letâs go and focus on the war in the north. Itâs a deeply distressing, to me, and an incoherent kind of line of argument, right? If you canât defeat Hamas, which is a much weaker force in terms of military arsenal than Hezbollah, why on earth would you think you can defeat Hezbollah, right?
But you see this, kind of, in some ways, I feel like, almost like a compensating for the failure of this war in Gaza. Instead of asking some really fundamental questions about the limitations of military force as a strategy in general, you basically up the ante and say, okay, maybe we havenât won this war, but weâre going to win an even bigger war, right? And the logic one often hears is, well, Israel has to go to war against Hezbollah, and maybe even Iran, because it has all of these people who had to evacuate the north of Israel because of Hezbollah rocket fire. Which again also reminds me very much of the things that I heard right after October 7th, which is that people said, we have to destroy Hamas because otherwise people will never feel safe living in the south of Israel again in all these communities, in what was called the Gaza Envelope, that people had to flee or be evacuated from after the massacre on October 7th, right?
But thereâs a fundamental flaw in this logic, right, which is to say, we have to go and do something that weâre not actually able to do because thatâs the only way of returning these people to these areas from which theyâve been evacuated, right? Itâs all well and good to say, we have to go and defeat Hezbollah, because thatâs the only way we can convince people to return to the north of Israel. But it only makes sense if you can actually do it, right, if you can actually defeat Hezbollah. And I havenât heard anyone explain how Israel could do that. I mean it could do massive, massive damage to Lebanon, to Beirut, as itâs done massive, massive damage to Gaza. But thereâs no reason to believe that that actually will destroy Hezbollah. Israelis talk in terms of restoring deterrence, right, by basically just bombing the crap out of everything. But whatever you buy, it seems to me, in terms of buying deterrence has to be balanced against, right, the intense hatred that you produce, which is a driver of new recruits for the organizations youâre fighting against, right?
So, I am sympathetic, of course, to those Israelis who say, we want people to go back and live in the north of the country, just as you wanted people to live in the south of the country. But whatâs not considered in this whole mainstream discourse that dominates Israeli discourse, and I think dominates so much American discourse too, is the basic idea that the only way to solve these problems is political. Itâs not military. That the best wayâprobably the only wayâto be sure you could stop Hezbollah rocket fire would be a ceasefire in Gaza, right? That Hezbollah has said this again and again, right, that they will stop firing rockets once there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Israel has now done exactly the opposite. Itâs torpedoed the possibility of a ceasefire in Gaza by assassinating Ismail Haniyeh, the very guy who was doing the negotiation, right?
Another thing you could do if you wanted to make it less likely that Hezbollah was going to send rockets into the north of Israel, which makes it impossible for many Israelis to live in the north of Israel, would be to stop bombing Lebanon, right? And Syria, right? Because, often times in the media discussion, you would think that Hezbollah is just launching these rockets, and Israelâs not doing anything on the other side. Israel has been for years and years and years basically been bombing Lebanon, bombing Syria, in the name of reducing Hezbollahâs arsenal, right? And maybe they have reduced Hezbollahâs arsenal to some degree. But itâs not realistic to be continually bombing a place and not expect that people are gonna shoot back, right?
So, there are political decisionsâand not to mention the more fundamental question of which is that Hezbollahâs fight against Israel is very much interconnected with the Palestinian struggle against Israel, right? And if you create a situation where Palestinians have absolutely no hope that they are going to have basic freedoms, right, thatâs also a context in which itâs going to be much less likely to have an enduring kind of ceasefire, even a political agreement, thatâs gonna make the north of Israel safe again vis-Ă -vis Hezbollah.
So, it just seems to me, again and again, Israel reminds me a little bit of America, especially in the post-9/11 era. I think things have changed a little bit in America now because weâve seen how disastrous this has been. But Israel has this idea that basically every problem must be a nail because what you have is the hammer of military force, right, and a complete unwillingness to try to solve some of these problems through a political lens, which takes seriously, right, the needs and concerns of the people on the other side of this conflictâPalestinians above all. And because we donât have that, it seems to me, weâre potentially headed, and could even be by the time youâre watching this, into an enormously frightening regional war, something that could even dwarf the horrors that weâve seen so far.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Paid subscribers will get the link to Friday Zoom calls on Tuesdays and the video and podcast the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
Sources Cited in this Video
Senator Josh Hawleyâs speech at the National Conservativism Conference.
Suzanne Schneider discusses Israelâs model for the nationalist right.
Jeremy Scahillâs interview with Dr. Mohammed Al-Hindi, the deputy leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Benjamin Netanyahuâs response to the International Court of Justice.
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, Jonathan Shamir interviews Hana Morgenstern, Yaël Mizrahi-Arnaud, and Moshe Behar about Arab-Jewish identity.
Help Abir Elzowidi rescue her brother from Gaza.
Last week the Knesset voted to reject the two state solution. Not a single Knesset member from a Jewish party opposed the resolution.
Pete Buttigieg on J.D. Vance.
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. Youâll notice that if you listen to defenders of the Israeli government, one of the thingsâin the United States in particularâone of the things they hate the most is when people make analogies between Israelâs treatment of the Palestinians and basically any other place in the world, whether itâs apartheid South Africa or, you know, Black Americans. They hate these analogies. And I think itâs because the defense of what Israel is doing requires a kind of an exceptionalization of Israel. That if you step back, and you actually just try to apply kind of broad basic principlesâyou know the idea of equality under the law irrespective of race, religion, ethnicity, etc.âif you see Israel and the Palestinians in that light, according to some kind of universal criteria that you apply to all places, youâre going to have a big problem with what Israelâs doing.
So, this exceptionalization of what Israel does is really, really important to defending what Israel does because itâs a way of saying, basically, you have to check those universal principles at the door because this is so complicated, sui generis, whatever, basically that you have to look at it in a completely different light. But I think itâs really important to de-exceptionalize this conversation and see the things that it has in common with many other struggles in the world today. Of course, every place is different in its own way, but the idea that there are common universal principles that one applies in all circumstances, I think, is really important.
And in this regard, I want to try to draw an analogy between Benjamin Netanyahu and the things that he believes, and that heâs going to speak about in Congress on Wednesday, and two other figures that one might not immediately think of as having a lot in common with him. And those two other figures are: Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri, and Mohammad Al-Hindi, whoâs the deputy leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And I want to give three quotes: one from Hawley, one from Al-Hindi, the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and then one from Netanyahu to illustrate this common point. All three of these people basically believe that countries should be dominated by members of a particular ethnic, religious, racial group. And those people can be trusted to treat everybody else fairly, even though those other people will not have equality under the law. And this is a huge central struggle in our time across the world, between the idea of equality under the law, and the idea that basically countries are properties of one particular tribe, whether theyâre defined racially, religiously, ethnically, or some combination of both. And those tribes can be trustedâbecause they are somehow benignâto treat everybody else well, even those other people who are not equal members of the nation.
So, letâs start with Josh Hawley. This is Josh Hawley from the National Conservatism Conference, which, not coincidentally, whoâs guiding spirit, Yoram Hazony, is actually an Israeli whoâs taken a lot of the ways he thinks about Israel and is exporting them to the United States, but also Hungary, India, many other places. There is a great podcast discussion of this, which Iâve linked to with Suzanne Schneider. And so, this is Hawley. Hawley says: âIâm calling America a Christian nation. Some will say Iâm advocating Christian nationalism. And so I am.â And then he goes on: âReligion unites Americans. Most Americans share broad and basic religious convictions: theistic, biblical, Christian. Working people believe in God. They read the Bible. They go to church, some often, some not. But they consider themselves, in all events, members of a Christian nation.â And he goes on to say that other people are gonna be treated fine who are not Christians. But they have to recognize that they live in a Christian nation. But because Christianity is so benign and such a unique special tradition, that they have nothing to worry about. Because in this Christian nation run by Christians, theyâre gonna be treated fine.
And then this is Mohammed Al-Hindi, whoâs the deputy leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And heâs being interviewed by Jeremy Scahill. Now, I think itâs good that Jeremy Scahill, whoâs formerly The Intercept now has this new site called Drop Site News. He went out and interviewed a whole bunch of Palestinian Islamist leaders. And I think thatâs good. Itâs good to hear from these folks because often times one doesnât hear from them in the Western media. And this is what Mohammed Al-Hindi says about the principles of Islamic Jihad, and he also speaking about Hamas. He says: âin terms of the founding principles, Islam constitutes the faith, culture, and history of our Palestinian people. It is a faith for Muslims and a culture for Christians. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad use the faith of our people and their culture in the creation of Christians as a point of departure.â
Now, of course, there are lots of lots of differences between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Josh Hawley. Palestinian Islamic Jihad represents Palestinians who are being oppressed. Itâs also done terrible, terrible things in terms of purposely targeting Israeli civilians. Josh Hawley has a whole different set of things that he should be held responsible for that heâs done. But you notice the similarity. Islamic Jihad, even though theyâre representing a group that doesnât have a country, when it talks about its vision of a country itâs actually not so different than Hawleyâs. The idea is Islam will be the defining culture. And Christians will accommodate themselves to an Islamic culture because Islam is benign, and we donât need to define this territory that we imagine to be in kind of secular, equal terms. But basically, Muslims will treat everybody in a benign way, even though they have a special superior status, which is exactly what Josh Hawley is saying about his vision of a Christian nation. That Hawley and Al-Hindi are both, in a certain sense, kind of right-wing figures in this global struggle, alongside Victor Orban and Narendra Modi and Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, right. Itâs obscured by the fact that, again, that that Al-Hindiâs group, Palestinians, are on the bottom and donât have their own country now. But when he thinks about the vision he wants, it actually quite fits quite well into this global right-wing vision of basically every country being controlled by a particular religious or racial or ethnic tribe.
And then hereâs Netanyahu, who again is going to speak on Wednesday. This is Netanyahu responding to the International Court of Justice, saying that Israelâs occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is illegal. And Netanyahu says: âthe Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land. Not in our eternal capital Jerusalem. Not in the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria.â You notice whatâs missing there, right? Any recognition that this is not only the land of Jews but also the land of Palestinians, right? That itâs not the property, this land, this country, of one ethno-religious group, one tribe, but that it actually should be shared by people across religious ethnic differences, all of whom should be equal in the eyes of the law. That is what Netanyahu rejects, just as Hawley rejects, just as Al-Hindi rejects.
And so, this is why itâs such a moral and intellectual disaster for the Biden administration and the Democrats to allow Benjamin Netanyahu to come and speak. Because itâs not just morally reprehensible in terms of what Netanyahu is doing to the Palestinians and what heâs done to Gaza. It guts the central logic that Biden has been talking about since he came in, which is that his struggle against Trumpism is part of a global struggle for liberal democracy, which means equality under the law. And this is a point that Sam Adler makes in that podcast with Susan Schneider: you canât coherently say that when youâre basically feting Benjamin Netanyahu who holds exactly that same ideologyâbasically tribal supremacyâand you trust people of that tribe to be benign, because somehow thatâs just the way they are, rather than believing that all people have equal rights under the law, irrespective of who they are.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Our call this week will be at our new regular time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
In light of Joe Bidenâs decision to drop out of the presidential race, weâre going to talk to two Democratic strategists about what happens now, and what impact it could have on US policy towards the Gaza War. Rania Batrice is a Palestinian-American political consultant. She served as deputy campaign manager for Bernie Sandersâ 2016 presidential campaign and this year has been the media consultant for the Uncommitted campaign. Matt Duss is executive vice-president of the Center for International Policy and served as foreign policy advisor to Bernie Sanders from 2017-2022. Iâm excited to talk to them both.
Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
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, Jonathan Shamir interviews Hana Morgenstern, Yaël Mizrahi-Arnaud, and Moshe Behar about Arab-Jewish identity.
Help Abir Elzowidi rescue her brother from Gaza.
Last week, the Knesset voted to reject the two state solution. Not a single Knesset member from a Jewish party opposed the resolution.
Pete Buttigieg on J.D. Vance.
See you on Friday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. So, Iâm recording this on Sunday. Just heard the news that President Biden is gonna drop out of the presidential race. And obviously thereâll be just a tremendous amount of commentary and all this. I would just say, for me, this is the first thing thatâs happened in a while that kind of reminds me whyâwith all its flawsâthe Democratic Party is still the party that I associate with. And itâs because both of these parties faced a situation in which they were under pressure to deny basic reality. In the case of the Republican Party, the denial of reality is the idea that Donald Trump is not what he palpably is, which is: an authoritarian racist, misogynist, pathological liar. And the Republican Party has really coalesced around denial of those really obvious truths.
And the Democratic Party was headed down a path of doing something which was in some ways similar, which was that the leadership of the party was going to coalesce around the denial of the reality that Joe Biden is no longer fit to be a presidential candidate, in the sense that he cannot vigorously make a case for himself to the American people, and I think cannot be, certainly for years going forward, an effective president. Because part of the job of being present is making a case to the public to rally them in support of what you want to doâsometimes rallying the entire world behind a certain policyâand being forceful in private, whether itâs foreign leaders, or members of Congress.
And we were entering this situation, and what was so profoundly depressing was to see the Democratic Party, which I thought is the more benign of the two parties and the more in touch with reality of the two parties, essentially going down that same road of denial of reality that the Republican Party was. And what we saw was because of the different constituency groups in the Democratic Party, because of its different relationship with the media, because of its different relationships with members of Congress, for variety of reasons, that Democrats were able to force Joe Biden to face this reality in a way that Republicans have never been able to do vis-Ă -vis Donald Trump. And so, that to me is just a sense of tremendous relief. Of course, there are very, very, very major concerns about Kamala Harrisâassuming she is the nomineeâabove all, for those of us who care about Israel-Palestine, the fact that she was still implicated in this administrationâs just horrific policy towards the Gaza War.
But I at least think that there is the hope that this recognition of reality in the party could perhaps be the beginnings of a reckoning with other kinds of reality. The reality that just as the party cannot continue to deny the reality of the fact that Joe Biden is no longer fit to be a presidential candidate, heâs not fit to serve as president for the next four years, that it will move towardsâunder pressure again from the from the party, from members of the party coalitionâthat it could move towards the recognition that this claim that this war is just and necessary is a denial of reality as well. And so, it shows that there is just some possibility that the Democratic Party can be moved to the place where it faces things as they actually are, as opposed to the Republican Party, which is living in a very, very dangerous fantasy about who Donald Trump is, and indeed what America is.
And so, itâs for that reason that I would say this is the first time that I felt hopeful about this presidential campaign in at least a month, probably more than a month. And itâs the first time that I havenât felt just utterly demoralized thinking about this presidential campaign. Itâs not that Kamala Harris would have been my chosen, you know, Democratic nominee, if I was given a list of, you know, a dozen or a hundred people, but there is at least the chance for movement, for change, for energy, for making a case, and perhaps ultimately for coming to reckon with some of the really, really important moral truths that Joe Biden was not able to reckon with.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Our call this week will be at our new regular time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest will be Laila Al-Arian, an investigative journalist and executive producer of Fault Lines, an Emmy and Peabody award-winning show on Al Jazeera English. Sheâs also the executive producer of âThe Night Wonât End,â an extraordinarily powerful documentary about three families in Gaza during this war. Weâre going to talk about how the documentary was made, what it reveals about how Israeli is waging this war, and about how the media is covering it.
Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
Sources Cited in this Video
Joe Biden and Barack Obamaâs response to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump versus Trumpâs response to the attack on Nancy Pelosiâs husband.
J.D. Vance and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise claim that Democrats are inciting violence by calling Trump a threat to democracy.
Czeslaw Miloszâs The Captive Mind.
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!), Maya Rosen reports on the rise of October 7 tourism.
Although overshadowed by the horror in Gaza, many Palestinians in the West Bank have grown desperate economically as Israel has further restricted their right to travel and work since October 7. Please consider supporting this crowdfunding campaign for two West Bank families in dire need.
Muhammad Al-Zaqzouq on burning books for fuel in Gaza.
For the Foundation for Middle Peace, I talked to Professor Rashid Khalidi about the threat to his familyâs library in Jerusalem.
A new podcast about Palestinian citizens of Israel.
In the Jewish News of Northern California, Ben Linder writes about the bulldozing of the West Bank village of Umm al-Khair.
Professor Alon Confino died last month. I got to know him when I began writing about the Nakba and how it isâor isnâtâremembered by Israeli Jews. I was struck not only by the depth of his knowledge but by the quality of his spirit. Here is a memory of him by a colleague. And here is a lecture he gave about antisemitism and Zionism in Italy, the country of his grandparentsâ birth. May his memory be a blessing.
See you on Friday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. So, every time it seems like things canât get worse in American politics and American society, they do. And now we have the attack, the assassination attempt, on Donald Trump, which is just a catastrophe for a variety of reasons.
First of all, itâs a catastrophe because political violence is simply wrong. Period. It doesnât matter who itâs against. Itâs very, very dangerous for this to be kind of re-injected into American politics. So, thatâs the most important thing. No matter how one feels about Donald Trump, itâs just appalling that someone tried to murder him. Secondly, itâs a disaster because this will help Trump, I think, who was already clearly ahead, maybe even heading towards a landslide victory, and now defeating him will be that much harder. And thirdly, because I think everything we know about Donald Trump, and the entire Republican party at this point, suggests that they will use this as an excuse for further authoritarian crackdowns on their enemies.
And so, itâs really I think important to kind of be clear about the political environment in which this actually took place, right? That this is not a political environment in which the two parties have equal relationships to the question of violence and the question of conspiracy theories, right? So, Joe Biden, you know, responded to this as any decent politician would. He said, âthereâs no place in America for this kind of violence. Everybody must condemn it.â He took down his television ads. Barack Obama said, âthereâs absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,â right?
It is worth contrasting that with Donald Trumpâs reaction when a man attacked Nancy Pelosiâs husband with a hammer in his home. And Trump said, âitâs weird things going on in that household. The glass it seems broken from the inside to the out. So, it wasnât a break in. It was a break out,â playing into various conspiracy theories that were floating around in the Republican party at that time, right? So, itâs just important to remember that there is a difference between the way the leaders of the two political parties respond to acts of violence.
And itâs also extremely important that people reject this line, which is now coming out from Republicans, which is to say that because Democrats were saying they were worried about Trump as a threat to democracy, that that emboldened or is responsible for this shooter right? So, you had J. D. VanceâI mean, gosh, J. D. Vance. I mean, thereâs so many people who one can look atâI donât know if anyone is familiar with this book, CzesĆaw MiĆoszâs book, The Captive Mind, which is an extraordinary book about basically how peopleâs characters are transformed, or things inside their characters are brought out, as a society is overtaken by totalitarianism. But I think, you know, you could do a study, a chapter in a book like that, on Lindsey Graham, on Marco Rubio, on all of them, but especially on J. D. Vance. I mean what a horrifying person heâs turned out to be.
So, J. D. Vance says, âtoday is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trumpâs attempted assassination.â I mean, thatâs just a complete bald-faced lie. It is true that the central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Trump is an authoritarian fascist who should be stopped, but not at all costs. They want to stop him by defeating him in the election, and they also believe that he should be subject to the rule of law when he commits crimes. Thereâs nothing that President Biden has said, or come close to suggesting, that he wants to stop by trump at all costs, meaning by shooting him or having people shoot him. Itâs just itâs an utter lie!
And yet, you see, the Republicans repeating this. This is their line, right. House majority leader Steve Scalise: âfor weeks, Democrat leaders have been fueling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning reelection would be the end of democracy in America. Clearly, weâve seen far left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop.â Sorry, it is not incendiary rhetoric to say that Donald Trump represents a threat to democracy when he tried to overturn the last election and has said he wonât respect the result of this election unless he wins, right. And to suggest that by saying that somebody is a threat to democracy is an incitement to violence is so perverse because the whole reason that you need to protect liberal democracy is that liberal democracy puts constraints on the violence that the state can enact. States are violent entities. But liberal democracy checks and balances some popular will. Those things can be some restraint on the violence of the state. And when you eliminate those, or strip those away as Donald Trump tried to do and clearly will try to do again, you are actually creating environment of much greater state violence.
So, itâs just Orwellian to say that youâre emboldening violence by trying to stop someone from overthrowing liberal democracy and turn the country into an authoritarian state. And yet that is what the Republicans are saying in this terrible, terrible frightening moment. I donât know that I can remember another moment in my adult life where I felt things were this bleak. But here we are.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Our call this week will be at our new regular time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest will be James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, and a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee. Last week he offered a proposal for how to replace President Biden as the Democratic Partyâs nominee. Weâll talk about the pressure inside the party on Biden to bow out, and what might happen if he does.
Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
Sources Cited in this Video
The transcript of Bidenâs interview with George Stephanopoulos.
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!), Rabea Eghbariah talks about why the Harvard and Columbia Law Reviews tried to censor his article on the Nakba as a legal concept.
Although overshadowed by the horror in Gaza, many Palestinians in the West Bank have grown desperate economically as Israel has further restricted their right to travel and work since October 7. Please consider supporting this crowdfunding campaign for two West Bank families in dire need.
A long and fascinating interview with Rashid Khalidi in The New Left Review.
Olivia Nuzzi on the conspiracy of silence to conceal Bidenâs decline.
See you on Friday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
It seems pretty clear at this point, to me, that Joe Biden is probably not going to be the Democratic nominee, that thereâs been a kind of a tipping point thatâs gonna play out in the days to come. And I almostâalmostâfeel a little bad for Biden because he wasnât that bad in the George Stephanopoulos interview on Friday compared to the debate. He was, actually, I think significantly better. But people now realize theyâre judging him on such a low bar and have so little faith that he can come back and defeat Donald Trump.
And I think the media is in a kind of remorse because they didnât actually put more pressure on this question earlier in the reporting, has now swung into in a direction where theyâre basically just nitpicking every single phrase, looking for some signs of mental decline that I just donât see how this is sustainable. And I think thatâs a good thing. I think the Democrats are a lot better off rolling the dice, and at least giving themselves a chance of beating Donald Trump since I just donât see how Joe Biden could change the dynamics of this race and make it a race about Trump because it is now really a race about his fitness to serve. And even many of the people who tend to agree with him ideologically just donât think he is.
But what I thought was interesting about the Stephanopoulos interview thatâs gotten less attention was less what it revealed about Bidenâs mental decline in the kind of how old he is, but more just about the way his thinking is very old. And I think this is a problem that still hasnât gotten enough attention. This is a man who, I think, when he thinks about Americaâs relationship with the world, is really in a Cold War paradigm that Iâve always thought was very, very dangerous, and since the war in Gaza just seems to me even more so.
So, in that interview, when he was trying to tell George Stephanopoulos why he had been a good president and why Americans needed to reelect him, if you notice the thing that Biden kept coming back to again and againâhe mentioned it six timesâis NATO. He says, âI was the guy that expanded NATO.â He talked about what heâs doing in Europe with regard to expansion of NATO. âIâm the guy that put NATO together,â he says. âIâm doing a hell of a lot of other things, like wars around the world, like keeping NATO together. Whoâs gonna be able to hold NATO together like me?â
He talks about NATO again and again and again. And it seems to me somewhat disconnected from reality. Where is the chorus of people in America who want to be expanding NATO? I think, morally, the case for defending Ukraine was a very strong case. But itâs really clear at this point that that policy on Ukraine has not really been a success. Maybe it was a success initially in preventing the Russians from taking Kyiv. But the sanctions have not basically been able to get Russia to stop this war. And Ukraine is closer to losing than it is to winning. And thereâs gonna have to be some peace agreement thatâs probably gonna leave Ukraine worse off than it was before this war.
And so, I think that this notion that what heâs falling back on again is the fact that they kept pushing NATO forward rather than, in retrospect, thinking that maybe actually some kind of negotiation with the Russiansâat least in retrospectâmight have been a better deal just to me suggests a disconnection from reality, and a way in which this Cold War kind of great power competition really dominates Bidenâs way of thinking about what his purpose is as president.
And he also talks that way about China. He talks about the South Pacific Initiative with AUKUS. This is with, you know, the United Kingdom and Australia to get them these better nuclear submarines. And he says, âweâre checkmating China now.â He never mentions climate change. He is a Democratic president. When heâs talking about the most important issues, and he actually does have some accomplishments on climate change, he never mentions that. He never mentions the word Gaza. He does say he has a peace agreement thatâs coming with the Middle East. But this, again, seems to me like completely delusional, right? This notion that thereâs gonna be some peace agreement thatâs gonna bring us towards a Palestinian state when the Israeli government is vehemently opposed to it, and when the Biden administration is not willing to hear any pressure to make it happen, right.
So, to me what struck me about this interview that made me even more, you know, relieved that I think we may be headed toward a new nominee is that a new nominee could rethink this paradigm that Joe Biden is not just old in terms of, you know, his age, and is not just experiencing mental decline, but his paradigm for Americaâs role in the world is so much a kind of repeat of the Cold War with this kind of moral Manicheanism between America and its enemies, in which the world is just automatically a better place when America has more power. And itâs just assumed that America is standing for these values like, you know, the rule of the international liberal order and these kind of things, even when the war in Gaza that Americaâs support of has made a complete mockery of that now in the eyes of so many people, and in which itâs more and more obvious that climate change, not geopolitical competition, is the existential threat to the world, and that that needs stronger international cooperation and international institutions.
Now, this is not what Trump is saying, of course. But Trump, in a way at least, is recognizing and responding toâeven, you know, in his kind of horrific and disastrous waysâthe sense that Americans have that actually they donât want to be fighting another cold war, right? That they want a less-costly form of intervention around the world, even though, again, he has no moral code, and though he doesnât recognize climate change and all these things. But there is at least a possibility, I think, that a new nomineeâa younger nominee, less formed by the set of experiences that Biden has been formed by, perhaps with a different set of advisorsâmight think anew a little bit about Americaâs role in the world, about the war, about the relationship with Israel, about the war in Gaza, and with a less Cold War-driven view of foreign policy. And that would be a kind of change that would mean not only that weâre getting someone who is younger and had more energy and who is mentally sharper, but I think someone who is more in touch with the genuine threats and the genuine realities that America faces in the world today.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Our call this week will be at our new regular time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest will be Rami Khouri, Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the American University of Beirut, Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, DC, and a regular columnist for Al Jazeera online. Rami lived in Beirut for 17 years and has for many years written about relations between Israel and Lebanon. Weâll talk about the terrifying reports that a full-scale war may break out between Israel and Hezbollah.
Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
Sources Cited in this Video
Ezra Klein, Ross Douthat, and Michelle Cottle on whether Biden can not only win, but govern.
Jonathan Sacks on the fear of freedom.
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 explains why ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas are stuck.
Although overshadowed by the horror in Gaza, many Palestinians in the West Bank have grown desperate economically as Israel has further restricted their right to travel and work since October 7. Please consider supporting this crowdfunding campaign for two West Bank families in dire need.
Al Jazeeraâs chilling new documentary, âThe Night Wonât End: Bidenâs War on Gaza.â
An extraordinary essay by Ayelet Waldman about her familyâs history and the delusions of liberal Zionism.
A Pennsylvania voter pledges to vote Biden even if heâs dead.
A fascinating thread on the scholarship of Raz Segal, the Israeli-born genocide scholar whose appointment at the University of Minnesota is now in doubt.
Former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon says the occupation puts Israelis in danger.
Last week, I talked to MSNBCâs Joy Reid about Jamaal Bowmanâs congressional primary.
For the Foundation for Middle East Peace, I interviewed Hebrew University Professor Yael Berda about Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrichâs de facto annexation of the West Bank.
John Judis, one of the writers I admire most, has launched a Substack. Please check it out.
See you on Friday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. Iâm beginning to fear that when we look back at this moment in history, people will look at Democrats, influential people in the Democratic Party, and ask the question of why it was that they lacked courage? Why it was indeed that their lack of courage was perhaps their essential defining characteristic, and it had disastrous and historic consequences? Itâs interesting because, throughout the Trump era, so many of us have talked about the lack of courage of Republicans. That there was, you know, again and again reporters would say, you know, that privately Republican politicians would laugh about Trump, denounce Trump, that many of the same people who had even publicly earlier on when Trump wasnât so formidable said that he was an autocrat, a dictator, then became these obsequious fawning supporters of him. So, we got used toâas people who were more progressive kind of denounced these people for their lack of courage.
But I actually think, at this point, Democrats are actually showing even less courage than Republicans. Because, in a way, the Republican Party has transformed itself, certainly among people in Congress. I think there are fewer actually of those people who snicker about Trump privately because this has become a Republican party, more a party of true believers. I think, actually among Republican voters, there is a genuine tremendous amount of support for Trump. Now thatâs horrifying. Itâs incredibly frightening, but itâs not actually cowardice. Itâs a kind of psychosis to me. Itâs an embrace of white Christian nationalism, authoritarianism. But itâs not exactly cowardice because I actually think that in the Republican Party today, compared to the Republican Party letâs say five years ago, thereâs actually more a broader sense of true belief for Trump. Many of the members of Congress who really didnât like Trump, most are no longer in Congress.
Whereas among Democrats, I think you actually have a situation where people genuinely donât believe that Biden should be the nominee. But theyâre too afraid to do anything about it. And itâs not just with Biden. I think there is a kind of parallel between the partyâs response to Gaza and the partyâs treatment of Trump. Which is, on Gaza too, I think if you put a lot of Democratic members of Congress to a lie detector testâand a lot of people in the Biden administration to a lie detector testâand they said, is American policy on this war in Gaza, is it ethical? Is it ethical? They would say: no! And yet, they shrug their shoulders and they go through their day because they want to preserve their political support. They donât want to end up like Jamaal Bowman. They donât want to end up without a job if theyâve spent their lives working their way up through the foreign policy establishment.
And now we see, basically, a version of the same thing when it comes to Bidenâs re-election. Iâm not going to rehearse all the arguments that everyoneâs making, but just suffice to say, to remember, that Biden is behind in this race. Heâs significantly behind. And remember, Trump has over-performed his polls both in 2016 and in 2020 when he was behind. Now, Trump is clearly ahead; not just in polls, but in the electoral college, which favors him even more. And Bidenâs advisors themselves basically took the view that they needed an early bait to try to change the dynamic. Theyâve made this dynamic worse. And itâs not clear that there would be a second debate. And thereâs certainly no particular reason to believe that Biden would perform any better even if there was.
And yet, Democrats are too afraidâmany of themâof taking the risk of trying something different. Yes, it is very risky for a whole bunch of reasons that people are talking about. But I donât see how anyone in their right mind could not say that any potential replacement for Biden would not have been better on that stage than Joe Biden was against Donald Trump. Itâs inconceivable to me that any of them, including Kamala Harris, could be worse. And yet, despite the fact that all of these people in the media, and ordinary voters, are saying they want somebody else, the Democratic politicians are not willing to say that. And when they do say it, they say it off the record.
I was talking to someone whoâs on the Democratic National Committee about this. And he said, âPeter, itâs like the Bulgarian Communist Party in the 1950s. In the hallways, privately, they whisper to each other what a catastrophe this is. But when they actually get in a room and they have to act publicly or in some official capacity, they wonât do it because theyâre too scared.â Why is this generation of Democratic politicians and foreign policy people, why is it so fearful? Why is it not able to put the countryâs interest, the moral interest, both in in terms of Biden and in terms of Gaza, ahead of their own personal interests? I donât know. I think itâs something that weâre going to have to try to understand, and maybe we will be having to wrestle with for many, many years. Itâs important also, I think, to remember that Bidenâs failure is not only a failure to be able to beat Donald Trump. I think Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat have been making this point and theyâre exactly right. Itâs false to make a clear distinction between your ability to run effectively and your ability to govern because to govern as president has to do with your ability to communicate to the public, and also to communicate in private forcefully.
And I want to bring, again, bring this back to Gaza. Any president who wanted to try to do anything but supporting Israel unconditionally in this war would have faced enormous, enormous political challenges given how strong the pro-Israel lobby is in Washington, given how formidable an opponent Benjamin Netanyahu is, all of these reasons. Now, we donât know that Joe Biden ever really even wanted to do that. But if he had wanted to do thatâif he had wanted to say much earlier that America would not support this war because itâs catastrophic for the people of Gaza and itâs actually going to make Israel less safeâthat would have been an enormous, enormous task of communication: going to the American people, going to members of Congress, to making the case, to pushing them, to convincing them, to inspire them to do something thatâs very hard in Americaâs political system, which is to challenge Israel and to publicly care about the lives of Palestinians.
And even if Joe Biden had wanted to do thatâI donât know that he didâhe does not have the capacity to do that. He does not have the capacity to go to the country, to go to Democratic members of Congress, to take on Benjamin Netanyahu, both privately and publicly. Bill Clinton could have done it. Barack Obama could have done it. Joe Biden canât do it. So, in some ways I think his options in terms of taking a different path on Gaza were limited by his political infirmity.
And the question of why it is that Democrats facing the enormity of the threat to the existence of American liberal democracy, and the enormity of whatâs happening in Gaza, where I saw a statistic that said that 5% of the population is either missing, injured, or killedâfive percent, rightâa level of destruction and horror that will haunt the entire world for generations and lay down a precedent for what other leaders will feel emboldened to do that is frankly terrifying, why is it in the face of these two enormous challenges that more people have not been able to actually rise to this challenge? And I do wonder whether weâre gonna have to go back and look at some of the writing that was done in the 1930s and 40s in the face of the rise of fascism and look at writers who questioned whether in fact people wanted freedom that much. Faced with the inability of people to fight for it, was there an unwillingness to actually want freedom, or at least want it enough?
This was the Parshah that Jews read over last Shabbat, which was Parashat Shâlach, which has to do with the question of the spies and why theyâre not willing to urge Bânai Israel to enter into the land. And there are a lot of debates about this question. And I recognize that itâs also in some ways problematic to make this idea of conquering Canaan into a test of moral courage, given of course that it meant that the destruction of those people. But still, if you kind of take it in a more metaphorical sense, not thinking about the conquering of the land itself, but just the larger question of what it takes to do something thatâs really hard, right? What it takes to overcome your fears and take an action thatâs risky, but if you know that the consequences of not action acting are really disastrous?
One of the points that the Lubavitcher Rebbe makes about this is that he suggests that perhaps Bânai Israel didnât want to enter into the land, not because they feared defeat, but because they feared victory. Which is to say they feared the consequences of actually truly having freedom. And one of the points that Jonathan Sacks makes about this point is he relates it to the question of what happens, according to the Torah, if a Jewish servant, a Jewish slave, decides that they donât want to be free, even after the requisite period of time when they are allowed to be free? And he notes that what happens is that thereâs a ceremony in which their ear is pierced if they willingly give up their freedom. And then he quotes Rabbi Yochanan Ben Yochai in the Palestinian Talmud as saying, âthe ear that heard God saying at Sinai, âthe Israelites are my slaves. They are my slaves because I have brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your G-d.â But, nevertheless, preferred subjection to men rather than to G-d deserves to be pierced.â The point theyâre making is there is a stigma, a shame, in when you have the opportunity to fight for freedom, to voluntarily relinquish it.
And it seems to me that is what this class of Democratic leaders is doing. There is an opportunity to fight for freedom in the United States by taking the best possible shot at defeating Donald Trump. Yes, itâs uncertain. But at least it gives you a better shotâa real shotâat defeating Donald Trump in a way that you donât have with Joe Biden. And there is a fightâagain, uncertainâbut a political fight to be waged for the principle of human rights, the principle of international law, the principle that Palestinians deserve to live and be free. And that would also be enormously difficult. But the question is: are you willing to actually take on that fight? And the answer weâre getting from leading Democrats is: no. And that there is a shame to that. Thereâs a deep shame to that and weâre going to be living with the consequences I fear for a very long time.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
I made a second video this week because I wanted to say something about Jamaal Bowman, who lost his primary race for Congress last night. He lost because he had the courage to visit the West Bank and speak about what he saw. He lost because heâs an unusual politician. He has moral courage.
Sources Cited in This Video:
A Politico article about Bowmanâs trip to the West Bank.
A Jewish Currents article I wrote about how Pro-Israel groups keep US foreign policy white.
Our guests this Friday at 11 AM will be Raja Khouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson, co-authors of the book, The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Donât Want to Know About Each Other. Since October 7, dialogue between Palestinians and Jews has become even more difficult, and there are those in both communitiesâand on the left and rightâwho question its value. Iâm excited to ask Raja and Jeffrey to respond to those criticisms, and to explain how they believe that greater dialogue between Palestinians and Jews can contribute to the struggle for equality, freedom, and safety for everyone.
Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
See you on Friday,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So, last night, Jamaal Bowman lost his race for re-election to Congress. And I wanted to say something about him and that race. Now, itâs important not to be willing to overlook the flaws of people just because you profoundly agree with them on really important policy issues. So, I donât want to suggest that Jamaal Bowman didnât make any mistakes in this race. I think it was unfortunate when he said that Jews in Westchester segregate themselves. If you look at the context, I think you can understand what he was trying to say, which was essentially that people would understand him better if people live together more, and that would actually break down antisemitism. But still, I think it was probably a territory that he shouldnât have ventured into. But that said, again, even though we need to be willing to be critical of people we disagree with, itâs also important that we not be naive.
And that comment had nothing to do with the onslaught that Jamaal Bowman faced from AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups. That onslaught was fundamentally about one thing. It was about the fact that Jamaal Bowman was a passionate supporter of Palestinian freedom. When members of Congress are staunch supporters of Israel, they can say things that are far, far more problematic vis-Ă -vis Jews than anything that Jamaal Bowman ever said, and get a complete pass. The reason that Jamaal Bowman had a target on his back was really simple. Itâs because he went to see what life was like for Palestinians in the West Bank. Now, that might not seem like a big deal, but it actually is because the vast majority of members of Congress avert their eyes. They make a conscious choice to go to Israel on AIPAC junkets that donât show them the reality of what itâs like for Palestinians to live their entire lives without the most basic of human rights. I suspect perhaps they just donât want to know because they know that if they did see, it would only cause problems for them. But Jamaal Bowman went to see. He even went to Hebron, which is perhaps the most brutal of all the places in the West Bank, a place where Palestinians canât even walk on certain streets in their own city. And he had the courage to see. And he had the courage to talk about it. And thatâs unusual for a member of Congress.
And the thing you always need to remember about these people, you know, who spent untold amounts of money, unprecedented amounts of money, on trying to defeat himâthe people who gave all this money to AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups to defeat himâis that, overwhelmingly, they have not seen the things that Jamaal Bowman has seen. I have lived in proximity to those people my entire life. Iâm telling you they may have been to Israel 40 times. But those kind of AIPAC donors, they donât go to see what life is like for Palestinians who have lived their entire lives in the West Bank without the right to vote for the government that has life and death power over their lives under a different legal system, a military legal system, while theyâre Jewish neighbors enjoy free movement, and due process, and the right to vote, and citizenship. If they had gone to see those things, I think many of them would not be AIPAC donors because it would shake them to their core. But one of the reasons I think they find the kind of things that Jamaal Bowman says so frightening is because they havenât had the courage to go and actually face these realities for themselves. But Jamaal Bowman did go to face these realities and then he took it upon himself to talk about what he had seen. And he paid a political price.
The second thing I want to say about Jamaal Bowman and this race is that you canât disentangle the attack that he came under because of his views about Israel from the opposition to him simply because he was a courageous and passionate progressive on a whole range of issues. The thing thatâs important to remember about people who give a lot of money to AIPAC is itâs not just that theyâre pro-Israel, or that theyâre generally Jewish. Theyâre also extremely wealthy. And itâs often difficult to disentangle their pro-Israel politics from their class perspectives. But things fuse together, right? They donât want supporters of Palestinian rights in Congress. But they also donât want people who are going to raise their taxes or try to fundamentally change the American economic system.
And so, when you defeat Jamaal Bowman, itâs kind of a twofer because you get rid of a critic of Israel, but you also get rid of someone who potentially could threaten your own bottom line. And one of the dirty little secrets, I think, about kind of American Jewish organizational life is that people find it often easier to say that they oppose progressives because those progressives are anti-Israel or supposedly âantisemiticâ than to admit that partly theyâre doing it for economic self-interest because theyâre just really rich people who donât want progressives like Jamaal Bowman because those people might threaten their bottom line. So, thatâs another reason I think that progressives like Jamaal Bowman come under such fierce assault. Itâs much nicer if youâre one of the very, very wealthy people who gave all this money to AIPAC to have a kind of milquetoast moderate like George Latimer who wonât rock the boat on Israel. And he wonât really rock the boat by challenging corporate interests on anything.
The third point I want to make about Jamaal Bowman has to do with race. Now, itâs not true that AIPAC opposes Black members of Congress simply because theyâre Black. Which is to say if thereâs a really, really pro-Israel Black member of congress, like Ritchie Torres, theyâre thrilled about that, right. But itâs also not coincidental that so many of the people that AIPAC tries to destroy politically are Black or other people of color. And thatâs because people who have a family history of oppression in the United States are more likelyânot always, by any meansâbut, on average, are more likely to identify with the Palestinians because of their own experience. Theyâre more likely to feel, as Jamaal Bowman did, a kind of moral obligation to themselves and their own ancestors to go and see whatâs actually going on to Palestinians who lack basic rights in the West Bank.
And so, when you go to politically destroy people who care about Palestinians, youâre going to end up destroying a disproportionate number of those people who will be Black or other people of color. And thereâs a whole history to this. It didnât start with Jamaal Bowman. You can think about Andrew Young, Jimmy Carterâs Ambassador to the United Nations, who, coming out of the Civil Rights movement, felt he had an obligation to have a concern for Palestinians, and met a PLO representative in the late 1970s, and there was a big pro-Israel outcry, and he was forced out of his job. Or Jesse Jackson, who came under assault in the 1980s when he ran for president, or a congressman like Walter Fauntroy or Barack Obama or Raphael Warnock. You may remember that Raphael Warnock went on a trip of Black pastors to see Palestinian life for himself, wrote a very passionate, eloquent letter talking about the parallels between the oppression of Palestinians and the oppression of Black Americans. And Raphael Warnock came under fierce assault and had to walk that back. And if he hadnât walked that back, he probably wouldnât be a senator right now.
Jamaal Bowman is a different kind of person. Heâs a very unusual politician in that he is a man of genuine moral conviction, of genuine moral courage, and he was willing to put his political life at risk. And he did so perhaps partly because we are in this extraordinarily horrifying momentâa moment when people are being tested, when people are doing things that I think we will remember for a very long time. I saw yesterday that Save the Children was reporting that, by their estimates, as many as 20,000 children in Gaza are either detained, missing, lying in mass graves, or dead under the rubble. Twenty thousand. I think perhaps Jamaal Bowman knew that this was a moment on which he was willing to be judged and he was willing to risk his political career for that. And I really, really hope that I live long enough to live in an America in which Palestinian lives are considered equal to Jewish lives. And in that America, I believe, that people will look back with shame at what was done to Jamaal Bowman, and maybe even some of those AIPAC donors or their children or grandchildren will feel shame, and we will look back at Jamaal Bowman in this race as a hero.
It says in Pirkei Avot in the Mishnahâand forgive the gendered language, it was written a long time agoâit says, âin the place where there is no man, be a man.â Or we might retranslate it as, âin the place where there is no humanity, bring humanity.â Jamaal Bowman was in a place in Congress in Washington where there are very, very few people who are willing to risk anything politically for the cause of Palestinian lives, for the cause of Palestinian freedom. And he did. In a place where there was no man, he was a man. And for that reason, I believe we will one day look back on him as a hero.
This is a public episode. If youâd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe -
Our call this week will be at our new regular time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guests will be Raja Khouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson, co-authors of the book, The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Donât Want to Know About Each Other. Since October 7, dialogue between Palestinians and Jews has become even more difficult, and there are those in both communitiesâand on the left and rightâwho question its value. Iâm excited to ask Raja and Jeffrey to respond to those criticisms, and to explain how they believe that greater dialogue between Palestinians and Jews can contribute to the struggle for equality, freedom, and safety for everyone.
Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
Sources Cited in this Video
Mehdi Hasanâs interview with Representative Dean Phillips.
The New York Timesâ investigation of Israelâs Sde Teiman detention center. Hasanâs reference to a prisoner who reportedly died by rape comes from an UNRWA interview with a 41-year-old detainee who gave an account similar to the one that Younis al-Hamlawi gave The New York Times about being forced to sit on a hot metal stick. That prisoner claimed another detainee subjected to the procedure had died as a result.
Why the history of Israelâs restrictions on movement from Gaza dates back to 1991.
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!), Shane Burley and Jonah Ben Avraham explain the flawed methodology that the ADL uses to measure antisemitism.
Like so many people with family in Gaza, the political analyst Khalil Sayegh has endured unthinkable agony since this war began. Heâs seen his father and sister killed. Heâs trying to bring his remaining family members to safety. If you can help, please do. Please also consider helping the Alshawa family, which is sheltering in central Gaza and hoping to evacuate to safety.
Aziz Abu Sarah on the absurdity of pro-Palestinian demonstrators protesting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The deputy assistant secretary for Israeli-Palestinian affairs resigns after opposing Bidenâs policies on the war.
Israelâs military spokesman says âanyone who thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong.â
See you on Friday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. I wanted to say something about an extraordinary interview that Mehdi Hassan did last week with Congressman Dean Phillips from Minnesota, who had been a candidate for president against Biden this year. This was for Mehdiâs new platform, Zeteo. What makes the interview so remarkable, I think, is that it kind of offers a glimpse of what American public and media discourse about this war, and about Israel and Palestine more generally, might be like if Palestinian lives were considered equal to Israeli lives.
So, Mehdi Hassan starts by asking Dean Phillips: was it okay in your view for Israel to kill all of these Palestinians, including many children in the military operation that freed for Israeli hostages? And Philip says, âitâs an unacceptable price, but I think itâs a price that has to be paid.â So, he says, basically, it was really awful, but it was necessary. And then, Mehdi Hasan takes the question in a direction that I really donât think Dean Phillips was expecting because itâs so rarely asked. And he says, âif youâre saying that to free people from the clutches of horrible captivityââthis is Mehdi Hasan speakingââhostages, people possibly being abused in captivity to free them, you have to pay a price, a horrible price. Does that ratio work the other way?â
And then, Medhi Hasan continues: âhow many Israelis can Palestinians kill to free Palestinian detainees who are currently being tortured in Israeli captivity, some of them being raped to death according to the New York Times last week. Can they kill 200 Israelis to free four Palestinians who are being tortured in an Israeli prison?â And Phillipsâ response is kind of remarkable. And by the way, I donât think Phillips is a dumb guy. I actually think if you listen to the interview, heâs probably more thoughtful on these issues than your average member of Congress, although that may be a low bar. And to give him credit, heâs also appearing on an interview with Mehdi Hasan, which he probably knew was going to be a really challenging interview.
But so, hereâs what Dean Phillips says. Heâs quite startled. You can listen in the interview. Heâs clearly surprised by the allegation. He saysâPhilips saysââyou said Palestinian prisoners are being raped to death by Israeli soldiers? I donât believe that to be true,â right. Hasan has just quoted The New York Times, which is about as respectable a media outlet as you can have. And then Philips said, âI donât believe that to be true.â And then Mehdi Hasan goes into detail about the allegations that heâs talking about. And if you read The New York Times report that they did on this military base called Sde Teiman, where Israel has been holding a lot of Palestinian prisoners, first there was an UNRWA report that was done where they interviewed Palestinians who had been released from Sde Teiman.
I know people will say, oh, you canât believe anything UNRWA says. But then actually The New York Times kind of went and did a lot of these interviews itself. It found, for instance, that eight former detainees had said they had been punched, kicked, and beaten with batons, rifle bats, and a hand metal detector while in custody. One said his ribs were broken when he was kneed in the chest. A second detainee said his ribs were broken after he was kicked and beaten with a rifle. Seven said they been forced to wear only a diaper while being interrogated. Three said they had received electric shocks during interrogations. Three said they had lost more than 40 pounds during their interrogation. The IDF denied abuse, but an Israeli soldier who the Times talked to said that he and several fellow soldiers had regularly boasted of beating detainees. And a general named Younis al-Hamlawi, who was a nurse who was arrested when Israel was raiding the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, said that a female officer had ordered two soldiers to lift him up and press his rectum against a metal stick that was fixed to the ground. Mr. al-Hamlawi said the stick penetrated his rectum for roughly five seconds, causing it to bleed and leaving him with unbearable pain. He also recalled being forced to sit in a chair wired with electricity. He said he was shocked so often that after initially urinating uncontrollably, he then stopped urinating for several days.
And, by the way, I know some peopleâs immediate response to this is: how on earth could you compare these people to the Israeli hostages? These were Hamas fighters. The people that The New York Times was interviewing were the people who were released from Sde Teimon. They were about 1,200 people. They had about 4,000 people there, according to the Times. They released 1,200 because the Israeli military didnât think they were Hamas fighters. If the Israeli military thought they were Hamas fighters, they would still be there. The Times was only talking to people who the IDF had basically said, sorry, we picked you up, but actually we donât think you did anything, right? So, those are the people who were making these allegations.
Now again, there are obviously lots of differences between Israeli prisons in general and the hostage situation. And I donât, by any means, am not saying this to undermine in any way the severity of what Israeli hostages have been through, which is horrifying. But the point is that, according to The New York Times, which is a pretty credible source, right, that Dean Phillips would probably believe The New York Times if The New York Times did a report about the abuse of Israelis by Hamas, right? Theyâre saying the terrible things are happening to these people who the Israeli military ultimately admits basically didnât do anything, right?
And so, Mehdi Hasan turns the question around and says: would it be okay for Hamas or some of the Palestinian faction to go and free such people if it led to a lot of Israelis being killed? And Dean Philips doesnât answer the question. And I think the reason he canât answer the question is because if you genuinely believe, speaking as an AmericanâIâm not speaking about an Israeli who might have a natural sense of affinity for Israeli lives, or even letâs say a Jewish person or a Palestinian person who might have a particular loyalty, youâre talking about as an American here, right, whose stated view is that, as Phillips actually said in another part of the interview, he believes that Israeli Jewish and Palestinian are equalâthat can you actually apply that framework to American policy? Can you actually follow it through to its conclusion as Mehdi Hasan asked him to do? And he canât. He canât answer the question, right? Because he canât say âyesâ because he doesnât actually operate within a framework in which Palestinian lives are considered equal to Jewish Israeli lives. That almost nobody, very few people in American public discourse, actually operate within that framework. Itâs completely baked into American public discourse that they are not, right?
So, to give another example, right, we are a very frequently asked to imagine what it would be like for Israelisâwhat it was like for Israelisâwhen they were attacked brutally on October 7th, and how we would feel as Americans, and what we would do if that happened to us, right? Thatâs almost a cliche at this point, right? But when was the last time you heard a prominent person in the American media, or an American politician asked how you would feel as a Palestinian, right, if your family had been forcibly expelled from their homes in 1948 into this very, very overcrowded territory called Gaza, which has beenâlong before actually Hamas took over, even going back to the early 1990sâ where movement in and out of Gaza has been very, very severely restricted by Israel, again, going back even long before Hamas took over. And since 2006, the legislative elections that Hamas won, you know, have a place which is called âunlivableâ by the United Nations, called an âopen air prisonâ by Human Rights Watch, which has been repeatedly bombed and not been able to rebuild its infrastructure, right?
So, nobody says, well, what would you do if you were a Palestinian under those circumstances, right? Because there is a natural kind of tendency to think that Israelâs Jews are fully human, and therefore like us, and therefore we should ask how we would respond in their position, which is a very legitimate question, right. But if you believe that Jewish and Palestinian lives are equal, you should also be asking the other question, which is: how would you react as a Palestinian given those things, and ask people to imagine how Americans would react were we in the situation the Palestinians are in? And yet, that doesnât happen. And you see that when Mehdi Hasan does do that, does something extraordinary in American public discourse, which shouldnât be extraordinary but is, you see how Dean Phillipsâwhoâs not a stupid guy, rightâsimply canât answer that question. He canât respond to it, right, because there is such a huge gap between the stated belief, at least among Democrats, that human lives are equal, and the actual guiding assumptions that guide how they make policy on this question. And I think the more that is exposed in interviews like this, the more people can start to see that the basic fundamental principles that many Americans espouse are not being put into practice by our government, and that that represents a problem.
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Our call this week will be at a special time: Thursday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest this week will be Geoffrey Levin, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University and author of the new book, Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978, which explores a largely unknown history of American Jewish criticism of Israel in the first decades of its existence, and how it was quashed. Itâs a particularly relevant history today given the rise of Jewish organizing against the war in Gaza.
Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. Theyâll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
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.)
The Jewish Currents (subscribe!) podcast discusses the challenges of being part of an American synagogue community during this war.
Like so many people with family in Gaza, the political analyst Khalil Sayegh has endured unthinkable agony since this war began. Heâs seen his father and sister killed. Heâs trying to bring his remaining family members to safety. If you can help, please do. Please also consider helping the Alshawa family, which is sheltering in central Gaza and hoping to evacuate to safety.
A beautiful statement by the Deputy Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, Majed Bamya, about Noa Argamaniâs release from captivity.
Is the global outcry over Israelâs actions starting to hit its high-tech sector?
What happens to Palestinian Gandhiâs?
Masculinity and the New York Jewish Intellectuals.
Wajahat Aliâs new newsletter, Left Hook.
See you on Thursday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. As Iâve been following the news of the increased escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, which is really terrifying, my mind has kept going back to a conversation I had with an Israeli friend soon after October 7th. And my friend said, âyou donât understand, Peter. If we donât destroy Hamas, people will never feel safe living in the south of Israel again. And we will have lost that part of our country.â And what he was saying made a huge amount of sense, it seems to me, in terms of Israeli political culture, Israeli political psychology given the trauma of what had happened after October 7th. And so, he was saying because that is non-negotiable, we have to defeat Hamas. And what I was thinking was: but I donât think you can defeat Hamas. I think thatâs non-negotiable. So, we were essentially at loggerheads because he was saying that, for a political reason, Israel had to do something militarily that I didnât think could be done. And now, more than eight months later, I think it seems clear to me that it cannot be done.
And so, now I feel like thereâs a version of this playing out in terms of Israelâs debate in its north vis-a-vis Hezbollah, but in some ways with even more frightening stakes. Which the argument is: Israelis cannot return to the north because all of these people have been displaced from their homes unless we push Hezbollah away from that border. And that beyond that, Israel can no longer accept the kind of situation that it accepted before October 7th, which is to say the precariousness, the uncertainty, the unsatisfactory nature of the fact that Hezbollah was always there with this huge arsenal. That was acceptable before October 7th. We can no longer accept these things now because we have a greater sense of threat and also perhaps because we have lost our deterrent, and it needs to be re-established.
This reminds me a lot of the debate in the United States around Iraq after September 11th where people were saying maybe we could muddle through with Saddam Hussein, who we thought was kind of rearming and, you know, eluding the sanctions regime. Maybe that was okay before September 11th. But now, given that weâve seen the potential perilâand given that we look weakâwe need a decisive answer. Again, but like my friend in Israel, it all assumes that a decisive answer is possible, right? Itâs as if to say, militarily, this has to become possible because politically we need it to be possible.
And yet, I have not heardâjust as I did not hear as Israel was going into Gazaâanyone offering a convincing explanation of how Israel was going to defeat and destroy Hamas. I havenât heard anyone say that about how Israel is going to destroy Hezbollah, force Hezbollah off of Israelâs borders. Again, it seems to me more like this situation of kind of you start from a political necessity, and then you assume that thereâs a military solution. And to me, what this suggests is that the way in which Israeli Jewish leaders, and Israeli Jewish political discourseâand much Jewish discourse in the diaspora because it tends to often kind of follow alongâhas a sense of the political terms of discussion that canât imagine political solutions that donât require these military solutions.
Again, military solutions seem to me fantastical, which are not actually possible. That in reality, Israel going to war against Hezbollah, Israel might be able to destroy a lot of southern Lebanon and a lot of Lebanon period, and destroy a lot of Hezbollahâs weaponry, but at a massive cost to Israel. I mean, right now, itâs just the North is unlivable. I mean, Hezbollah could kind of make Tel Aviv unlivable, at least for a while, right? And in terms of what this would do in terms of Israelâs international isolation given whatâs already happened, it just seems to me strategically really, really disastrous for Israel. If you want to kind of move Israel closer to a point where people can really imagine the country no longer being able to exist, it seems to me going to war in Lebanon would be a really good way of doing that in terms of ramping up even more international isolation, just making larger sections of the country unlivable. And yet, to be able to avoid that you have to imagine political responses, again, just like you would have vis-Ă -vis Gaza, which would have been political responses, which are not really within the Jewish Israeli terms of mainstream debate. Which would involve substantial compromise and kind of reimagining of the whole question of what brings security fundamentally from a political lens, not from a military lens. Which in the Palestinian Gaza case would mean that basically there is no solution problem that Hamas represents unless you offer Palestinians a clear pathway towards basic human rights and freedom. Thatâs the central problem you have to answer if you want to deal with the military problem that Hamas faces.
And similarly with Hezbollah, there is no answer vis-a-vis Hezbollah unless you change the dynamic with Palestinians since Hezbollah is fundamentally doing this as a kind of an ally, almost as kind of an adjunct to the Palestinian case. And beyond that, that you need a different relationship with Iran, that you need some kind of thaw and detente in this cold war with Iran given the influence that Iran has over Hezbollah. And it seems to me, what frightens me so much is that those political ways of thinkingâthat it seems to me could be an alternative to the military answer and could offer a vision of Israelis returning to the north as returning to the south that did not involve a second, even more potentially catastrophic warâare just not really on the table in terms of the debate.
And I donât feel like when I look at American discourse, American political discourse, American Jewish discourse, I donât see an effort to really or push Israelis, to challenge Jewish Israelis, to ask them to think outside of their own political termsâagain, in an Israel right now where basically the terms of political debate run from the very far right to essentially the center right, right, in which people who genuinely see Palestinian freedom as the essence of trying to provide Israeli security, those voices among Jewish Israelis are basically off the table. And thatâs part of what frightens me so much about this moment.
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