The Beinart Notebook

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest this week is Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of three remarkable books on the relationship between the United States, Israel and Iran. For as long as I’ve followed Trita’s work, he’s been warning that if hawks in Washington got their way, we would end up with the kind of catastrophe we’re witnessing in the Middle East. I invited him to give us a sense of what the Middle East and the world will look like going forward.Topics include…the likelihood of peace talks failingthe importance of Lebanonhow this war has affected Iran’s internal trajectoryIran’s nuclear capabilitiesthe war’s effect on the US and Israeli militarieshow Trump came to the decision to fight this warfacing charges of self-hatred from the diaspora

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of three remarkable books on the relationship between the United States, Israel and Iran. For as long as I’ve followed Trita’s work, he’s been warning that if hawks in Washington got their way, we would end up with the kind of catastrophe we’re currently witnessing in the Middle East. I want to ask him how this war will end— if it ever truly does— and what Iran, the Middle East and the world will look like afterwards. Please join us.Things to Read(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Alex Kane writes about the Democratic presidential candidates who are turning against Israel.Mohammad Eslami and Zeynab Malakouti on how Iran will use the Strait of Hormuz to end sanctions and isolate the US.Nate Silver on why Trump’s approval rating will likely never recover from this war.Ziad Abu-Rish on why Lebanon won’t disarm Hezbollah.For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts podcast, I talked to Mara Kronenfeld, Executive Director of UNRWA USA, about what UNRWA does, and about the lies spread told about it.I talked to the Wisdom of Crowds podcast about whether Israel, or any state, has a right to exist.Last week, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza won the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction.AppearancesOn April 19, I’ll be speaking in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.On May 6, I’ll be speaking to the Joint Christian Advocacy Summit in Washington, DC.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, I’ve been noticing that some of the people who still support this war are saying that those of us who oppose it want America to lose. This is a kind of a common rhetorical strategy one hears during war. It kind of diverts the conversation away from the legitimacy and wisdom of a war to suggesting that people in that country who oppose the war are kind of unpatriotic. So, it’s the kind of thing that was said during Vietnam. It’s, I’m sure, the kind of thing that Vladimir Putin and his comrades have been saying in Russia to people who oppose the war in Ukraine.And it is a tricky charge to deal with, right? Because even in an unjust war, one could imagine that feeling like you wanted your country to lose would be a difficult thing. But I think there are cases in which one has to forthrightly say, yes, I want my country to lose. Those circumstances would be one in which there was a war that had overwhelming popular support among the people in your country, but you thought it was wrong, and you wanted your country to lose.In Israel, for instance, this is a war that has overwhelming popular support. Even Netanyahu’s Jewish political opponents support it. It has widespread support among Jewish Israelis. So, if you say, it’s hard to say in this war I want Netanyahu to lose without saying I want Israel to lose because Netanyahu is waging the war with the support of Israel’s Jewish citizens, who are the vast majority of Israel’s citizens.In the United States, though, I think it’s different. Which is to say, I think one can say that I want Donald Trump to lose this war—and I do—without saying that I want America to lose the war, that I think we can distinguish this as Donald Trump’s war without saying it’s America’s war. Why? First of all, because the American public has never supported this war from the very beginning, and because there was never a process of consulting the American people about going to war, as should have been required by the Constitution, in which Congress would have voted to authorize the war. There hasn’t been such a vote, and I think if there were such a vote, the pro-war position would lose. So, this really is a war without popular support, without popular consultation, and in that way, I think one can distinguish it as Trump’s war without saying it’s America’s war.It’s also the case that I think if Donald Trump loses this war, America will be better off. That America and Americans will be better off if Donald Trump loses than if Donald Trump wins. First of all, that’s because the consequences of Donald Trump losing this war will not be catastrophic for Americans. We can imagine circumstances where if you say you want your country to lose the war, that means you want… that means accepting that your country is going to be occupied, invaded.Let’s say you were a German who wanted the Nazis to lose World War II. I would say that that person deserves a lot of—is an admirable person. But you would say so knowing that Germany losing that war would mean Germany ending up in ruins. You can say you want Donald Trump to lose this war against Iran, while recognizing the United States could lose the war, Trump can fail to achieve his aims vis-a-vis this war, and it will

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comRabbi Dr. Ismar Schorsch is chancellor emeritus of The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and the Rabbi Herman Abramovitz Distinguished Professor of Jewish history. He’s had a long, illustrious career of service to the Jewish community. Last year, we spoke after he wrote critically about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In a time when so many Jews are hungry for moral leadership, Rabbi Schorsch’s courage and decency have been all too rare.I wanted to speak to him before the Passover holiday, as I and so many Jews are struggling to reconcile our Jewishness with opposition to Israel’s actions. I’m honored and grateful he agreed to speak with me again.

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comIn the shadow of the war with Iran, Israel is doing terrible things in Lebanon: demolishing homes, killing more than one thousand people, displacing close to a million from their homes and perhaps pushing the country toward civil war. To discuss all this, our guest is Rami Khouri, a deeply knowledgeable commentator on Lebanese and international politics. He is Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, Director of the Anthony Shadid Archives Research Project, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Arab Center in Washington and author of the Rami G. Khouri Substack.

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. In the shadow of the war with Iran, Israel is doing terrible things in Lebanon: demolishing homes, killing more than one thousand people, displacing close to a million from their homes and perhaps pushing the country toward civil war. To discuss all this, our guest will be Rami Khouri, a deeply knowledgeable commentator on Lebanese and international politics. He is Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, Director of the Anthony Shadid Archives Research Project, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Arab Center in Washington and author of the Rami G. Khouri Substack. Please join us.Cited in Today’s VideoI’m grateful to Dr. Dror Bondi, Corcoran Visiting Chair in Christian-Jewish Relations at Boston College, who brought the Heschel quote about Abravanel to my attention. He cites it in this lecture.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 details the way Israel is using the current war to seize more Palestinian land in the West Bank.On the It Could Happen Here podcast, Dana El Kurd explores intra-Palestinian debates about armed resistance.For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts podcast, I talked with Sari Bashi, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, about the dismissal of charges against five Israeli soldiers who were filmed violently abusing a Palestinian detainee in the Sde Teiman detention facility.AppearancesOn March 30, I’ll be speaking at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.On May 6, I’ll be speaking to the Joint Christian Advocacy Summit in Washington, DC.PartnershipStarting today, all paid subscribers of The Beinart Notebook get a 50 percent discount on a one-year paid subscription to Robert Wright’s Nonzero Newsletter. I’ve known and respected Bob for decades — my earliest appearance on his show will turn 20 this year, and the latest happened earlier this month. He’s a rare voice of reason on questions ranging from foreign policy to psychology of tribalism to AI, and I think you’ll find a lot of value in his writing. The NonZero Newsletter is part of a broader effort Bob has been building called the NonZero Network — a group of independent Substack voices, including mine, as well as Glenn Loury, Kaiser Kuo, and others with whom I may not always agree on substance, but who share a commitment to intellectual honesty and reasoned analysis.Reader CommentA listener (who asked that their name be withheld) commented on last week’s video, in which I argued that synagogues should remove the “We Stand with Israel” signs that dot their lawns.They write:“I think you mischaracterize attacks on Zionist institutions. I have seen these attacks’ defenders on social media, and their line is not support for attacks of synagogues as such. It is, rather, support (or at least apologia) for attacking institutions that align themselves with the Israeli state. I saw some people claiming that Temple Israel [in Michigan] was sending money to the IDF. That sounds dubious—I’m not intimately familiar with the Israeli military’s funding strategies, but it seems unlikely that American congregations play a major role—but it is certainly true that many Jewish American institutions’ support for Israel goes beyond the purely notional. To say, then, that one should not attack Americans who ‘share a religion, an ethnic, national ancestry, a race,’ with some disfavored foreign country—in this case, Jews and Israel—is to box with a strawman. To the attack’s supporters, it’s not about Jewishness as such, under whichever of the four rubrics you name one wishes to conceive of it; it’s about Zionism, and it’s about Israel.”See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:I recently came across a quote that just kind of stopped me, like, dead in my tracks, kind of almost dumbfounded, because it reflected a view of how Jews should live and think, which is so radically in contrast to the views propounded by the leadership of the organized American Jewish community today.The quote is from a biography that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote of a remarkable Portuguese 15th century figure named Isaac Abravanel. Now, Abravanel was an advisor to the Portuguese king, as well as being a very distinguished commentator on the Bible and philosopher of Jewish thought—really a remarkable synthesis of the kind that you were able to have on the Iberian Peninsula for a period of time.And then in some ways reflects the kind of possibilities that might be imaginable in the United States today, in which Jews have the freedom to both wield political power and also study Torah in a serious way. And this is what Heschel writes about Abravanel and the Jews of his period in the Iberian Peninsula.Heschel writes, ‘the Jews, who ha

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and political analyst with Israeli citizenship. Since this war began, I’ve struggled to understand why most Israeli Jews support it. I discussed this last week with the Iranian, Jewish, and Israeli writer Orly Noy. But sometimes, the people who best understand a society are those who live within it as outsiders. It’s that experience of marginality, of seeing things from below, that often animates the insights of Black writers in the US and long animated the insights of Jewish writers in Europe. That’s why I’m turning to Diana, a Palestinian in Israel, to help understand Jewish Israeli society in this awful moment. She’s someone I’ve been learning from for a long time. I’m grateful I had the chance to do so again.

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and political analyst based in Israel. Since this war began, I’ve struggled to understand why most Israeli Jews support it. I discussed this last week with the Iranian, Jewish, and Israeli writer and translator Orly Noy. But sometimes, the people who best understand a society are those who live within it as outsiders. It’s that experience of marginality, of seeing things from below, that often animates the insights of Black writers in the US and long animated the insights of Jewish writers in Europe. That’s why I’m turning to Diana, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, to help understand Jewish Israeli society in this awful moment. She’s someone I’ve been learning from for a long time. And I’m grateful to have the chance to do so again this Friday. Please join us.Things to Read(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Alex Kane explains AIPAC’s attack on liberal Zionist politicians.Greg Sargent on how the Iran War is hastening the end of the Trump coalition.An insightful discussion with Esfandyar Batmanghelidj on the American Prestige podcast about how this war might change the long term trajectory of the Gulf countries.Last week I spoke to Bob Wright (whose newsletter I strongly recommend) about Israel, antisemitism and this war.On March 26, Jason Stanley will speak with Nikole Hannah-Jones in Brooklyn about his book, Erasing History.AppearancesOn March 17, I’ll be speaking at George Washington University.On March 30, I’ll be speaking at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:I want to say two things about this terrible attack on a synagogue in Michigan. The first is that no matter what Israel does, no matter how immoral or brutal or horrifying, it doesn’t justify attacking a synagogue or justifying attacking American Jews in any way. There’s a basic principle here. The principle is that Americans are not responsible for the actions of foreign governments or foreign organizations just because they share a religion, an ethnic, national ancestry, a race, with that state or foreign organization.So, by that principle, it is just as wrong to target a synagogue because you’re upset at what Israel did, as it was when people attacked Chinese Americans because they were angry at the Chinese government during COVID, or when people attack Muslim Americans because they’re angry at Al-Qaeda, or ISIS, or Hamas, or Iran, or as when the United States government itself held Japanese Americans responsible and put them in internment camps because of what the Empire of Japan had done in Pearl Harbor. These things are all fundamentally wrong.And—not but, but and—Synagogues in the United States should take down the signs that many have on their lawn that say, ‘We stand with Israel.’ They should take them down, because those signs make the congregants less safe, and because they are immoral. Because they create a climate of… they make the Congress less safe, because they encourage exactly the same conflation between Israel and American Jews that we must resist, and because in this moment, doing so is immoral.Now, if it were morally correct for our synagogues to say in this moment, ‘We stand with Israel,’ then I think you could make an argument that even though those signs may make the congregants less safe, that it would be legitimate to do so. You could say that it’s even courageous for Jews in a synagogue to come together and say: we’re going to take a moral action that’s going to create some risk to our safety because it’s the right thing to do.But how could one possibly argue that this is the right thing to do in this moment? That it is morally right to put yourself at risk by conflating yourself with the Israeli government when the Israeli government is doing the things that it is doing now.Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s imagine that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that the Russian Orthodox churches in the United States, that they had signs saying ‘We stand with Russia.’ By putting those signs out there, they would be putting, to some degree, the people inside those churches at risk, because there would be people who were furious about what Russia had done in Ukraine, that might take out their anger against people in those churches. But beyond that, it would be immoral to say, given what Russia has done in Ukraine, for a church to say, ‘We stand with Russia.’And what Israel has done over the past few years, to Palestinians, and now, also, in Lebanon and Iran, is worse than what Russia has done in Ukraine. It’s worse. Let’s just look, for starters, at the numbers. The best numbers we have suggest that since the war that began in 2022 with Russia’s invasion—expanded invasion, because they first invaded in