The Beinart Notebook

A new way to donate to people in Gaza.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern, our usual time. Our guest will be Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian-American green card holder abducted by the Trump administration in retaliation for his activism at Columbia University— and later released. We’ll talk about his childhood in the West Bank, his experience at Columbia, his detention, and what he’s learned from the experience.Ask Me AnythingOur next Ask Me Anything session, for premium subscribers, will be this Monday, August 25, from 2-3 PM Eastern time.Cited in Today’s VideoJonathan Greenblatt’s recent appearance on CNBC.Marwan Barghouti on the Second Intifada.The polls about Zohran Mamdani’s support among New York Jews.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 and Erez Bleicher remember slain Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen.The Israeli military’s own data suggests that over 80% of the people it has killed in Gaza are civilians.How Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro influenced the University of Pennsylvania’s response to pro-Palestinian protest on campus.Omer Bartov predicts that the International Court of Justice will find Israel guilty of genocide.Eyal Press on Columbia’s disastrous decision to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.I talked to Harrison Berger about Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.“Home? A Palestinian Woman's Pursuit of Life, Liberty, & Happiness” is playing in San Francisco and New York this fall.See you on Monday and Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:I think when this horror in Gaza is over—this destruction, this slaughter, starvation, which so many human rights organizations and legal scholars now call genocide—when it’s over, there’s gonna have to be a reckoning in the United States. Not just in the U.S. government providing the weapons and diplomatic support, but a kind of broader cultural reckoning. Because there’s so many institutions that I think are culpable in this, that will need to look themselves in the mirror. And one of them is the U.S. mainstream media. Because even now, even after almost 2 years into this, it’s still so easy for people who support unconditional support of what Israel’s doing to go on the U.S. media and say things that are palpably, obviously untrue, and not be challenged on these things, right?And so, one example is from last week. The ADL, Anti-Defamation League, head, Jonathan Greenblatt, goes on a show called ‘Squawk Box’ on CNBC, and just says one thing after another that are just obviously untrue, right? First, he says that Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York ‘has visited churches and mosques, not a single synagogue. Not once has he gone to a Jewish neighborhood.’ Immediately, people started tweeting pictures of Zohran Mamdani in his mayoral campaign having gone to synagogues, because he went to multiple synagogues, he went to multiple Jewish neighborhoods, he had multiple meetings with New York Jews and different Jewish officials, right?And then Greenblatt kind of incredibly, lamely says, I just meant that he hasn’t done so since he won the primary, which is not what he said at all. But the striking thing is that he wasn’t challenged on the show when he said that, right? And then he goes on to say in reference to the Intifada, this is how Greenblatt defines the Intifada. He says, ‘the Intifada was a violent uprising in the Palestinian territories where they murdered over 1,000 people simply because they were Jewish.’ Again, obviously, factually incorrect, right? First of all, there were two Intifadas since 1967. Intifada is an Arabic word that means, kind of, uprising or shaking off. But if one’s talking about in the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, there’s a First Intifada in the late 1980s, and a second in the early 2000s, right? Greenblatt is only referring to the second, probably because the first one was actually much, much more non-violent. So first of all, that’s dishonest, right, to begin with.Secondly, he says that they murdered over a thousand people, Israeli Jews. Greenblatt never mentions that at least three times as many Palestinians were murdered, right? So, these are really, I think, blatant dishonesties by omission. But then the last part is that these people were murdered simply because they were Jewish. I don’t think there’s a single scholar who has genuine academic credentials, who studied the Second Intifada, including in Israel, who, you know, or in Jewish scholars in the United States, who believe that, right? The Second Intifada was a violent uprising against Israeli oppression. Yes, it was an uprising that committed war crimes, that violated international law by targeting civilians. There were clearly civilians targeted to a significant degree, and that’s a violation of international law. You can

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Abdul El-Sayed, a child of Egyptian immigrants to the US, a Rhodes Scholar, a graduate of Columbia University Medical School and currently a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Michigan. I’m not endorsing Abdul’s candidacy (or anyone else’s), but I was keen to talk to him about being an Arab and Muslim American politician in the age of Trump and about the political debate over Israel’s destruction of Gaza.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comLarry Summers, former US Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Emeritus, has been a strong defender of Israel and has been critical of what he sees as a lack of leadership from institutions like Harvard in condemning antisemitism on campus. We have some sharp disagreements on these issues, so I appreciate his willingness to hash them out with me.

A new way to donate to people in Gaza.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern, our usual time. Our guest will be Abdul El-Sayed, a child of Egyptian immigrants to the US, a Rhodes Scholar, a graduate of Columbia University Medical School and currently a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Michigan. I’m not endorsing Abdul’s candidacy (or anyone else’s), but I’m keen to talk to him about being an Arab and Muslim American politician in the age of Trump and about the political debate over Israel’s destruction of Gaza.Ask Me AnythingOur next Ask Me Anything session, for premium subscribers, will be a week from Monday, August 25, from 2-3 PM Eastern time.Cited in Today’s VideoHarvard’s decision to shut down programs that study Palestinians at the School of Public Health and Divinity School.The IHRA definition of antisemitism.Columbia historian Rashid Khalidi’s warning that enforcing the IHRA definition would make honest teaching and scholarship about Israel and Zionism impossible.Things to Read(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Alex Kane details the role of the Department of Health and Human Services in Trump’s assault on free speech on campus.Mosab Abu Toha on the kinds of planes you see in Gaza.Trita Parsi on why Israel and Iran may soon be at war again.Adam Sticklor on Gaza as a Jewish story.A new poll shows Zohran Mamdani with a huge lead among young Jewish voters.Gaza’s average life expectancy has fallen by 35 years since October 7.I talked about Being Jewish After the Destruction with Piers MorganSee you Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, there are reports that Harvard may soon settle with the Trump administration and reportedly pay $500 million and agree to some set of terms. This would follow, you know, deals by Colombia and Brown, and probably set in motion a whole series of additional kind of agreements by universities with the Trump administration. Harvard says that this agreement will not violate academic freedom.The harsh reality is that Harvard has already seriously infringed upon academic freedom. There’s already been a very serious imprint in violation of academic freedom, even before this agreement. It’s just that it doesn’t get noticed so much because it has to do with the rights of Palestinian scholars and Palestinian students, and people who want to study the fate of Palestinians. And there’s so little attention to the academic freedom and rights of Palestinian students and scholars, as opposed to Jewish students.And so, Harvard is already shut down two programs it had that worked on the question of the rights and livelihood of Palestinians: one at the School of Public Health, which was done in partnership with Birzeit University and the West Bank. The other at the Harvard Divinity School, which, led by Israeli and Palestinian scholars, used Israel and Palestine as a kind of case study in questions of religion, conflict, and oppression. Those have already both been shut down by Harvard, under pressure from Republican lawmakers, donors, establishment Jewish. Organizations. So, there’s already been a very serious infringement. There was no kind of real academic due process that led to the shutdown of this program. It was done nakedly in response to political pressure.But the deal would be much, much more dangerous because Harvard has already, to some degree, adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. But if it’s only adopted in name, the dangers are relatively limited. But if you make a deal with the Trump administration for some kind of enforcement mechanism in which the IHRE definition of antisemitism, which, by the way, has very little support from actual scholars of antisemitism. It’s been pushed for years, not by academics who study antisemitism, but by the Israeli government and pro-Israel organizations. If you enforce that definition, you make the teaching of Israel and Palestine basically an absurdity. You make genuine teaching and scholarship on the question of Israel-Palestine essentially impossible.Let me try to explain why. Two of the examples of antisemitism that are listed in the IHRA definition are first, denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor. And secondly, drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis. So, let’s look at both of these. First of all, the language denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination is itself profoundly dishonest, right? Because Israel is not simply an exercise in Jewish self-determination. Self-determination is determination of the self. What Israel is doing is that it is determining, it is controlling the lives of millions of Palestinians, another people who lack individual and collect

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comI was honored to speak with the Hungarian-Canadian physician Gabor Maté. We’ve never talked before, but I’ve long been struck by the psychological insight he brings to discussions of Israel-Palestine and the Jewish experience.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is children’s educator and entertainer Rachel Griffin-Accurso, better known as Ms. Rachel, who is often described as this generation’s Mr. Rogers. She has been outspoken on behalf of children in Gaza.

A new way to donate to people in Gaza.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern, our usual time. Our guest will be the children’s educator and entertainer Rachel Griffin-Accurso, better known as Ms. Rachel, who is often described as this generation’s Mr. Rogers. We’ll talk about her decision— despite outside pressure— to denounce the killing and starving of children in Gaza. This conversation will be cosponsored with Jewish Currents.Cited in Today’s VideoRichie Torres’ tweet about aid to Gaza.Some of the voices who were right after October 7.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!), Arielle Angel calls for new Jewish institutions in the wake of the genocide in Gaza.Rashid Khalidi on why he cancelled his class at Columbia.I talked to NPR’s The World about antisemitism, to B’Tselem’s Yuli Novak for the Foundation for Middle East Peace about their report accusing Israel of genocide and on CNN about US policy toward Gaza.What the data actually says about antisemitism at Columbia.Krystal Ball and Saager Engeti challenge Senator Elisa Slotkin on US policy toward Gaza.Rajan Menon on the genocide debate.David Polsky and Barnett Rubin on Tisha b’av in a time of genocide.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So last week, Richie Torres, who’s one of the most kind of well-known defenders of the Israeli government, tweeted something somewhat surprising. He tweeted, ‘the free world has a moral responsibility to Palestinians in distress. Flood Gaza with food.’ And I think it was just one illustration of this sense over the last week or so that a kind of dam has broken in American public discourse. It hasn’t yet changed U.S. policy, tragically, but that in mainstream media discourse and public discourse more generally, that people are much more willing to say things that they were reluctant to say in the past, that there is starvation in Gaza, that it is Israel’s fault, and that beyond that, that this slaughter and starvation, this assault on the people of Gaza, has to end, and that it’s immoral.And I think this kind of dam breaking raises some really interesting questions for people who care about ending the starvation and slaughter, and more generally, who care about Palestinian freedom. And I’m not saying that Richie Torres is about to become part of a Palestinian movement for freedom, but the broader issue of people who come to these things late I think is something that now is very much on the table.And I would say I have a few thoughts about the right way to respond to this. The first is that I think it’s worth being generous to people who come to realizations that one believes are morally correct, even if they come painfully late, and much, much later than one would like. And I take this vision partly because I feel like I have to, because I myself feel like I have been very painfully late to a lot of things that I now believe are true and didn’t just hold views that I now think are wrong and perhaps immoral, but actually championed them. And so, who am I basically to stand in judgment of someone who evolves slowly, more slowly than I would like, on a set of issues when I myself have done so and have needed the kind of forgiveness and understanding and grace of other people.The second point is that I think pragmatically, if you look at moral movements that try to change U.S. policy, that to succeed, to gain the power to change policy, they have to swell beyond the initial group of activists and bring in people who may not be as morally pure as those people. But you need those growing numbers. You need these kinds of concentric circles, right?If you think about the movement to end the war in Vietnam and the people who, by 1974, the Democrats in Congress who cut off military aid, I don’t think most of those people held that view a decade earlier in 1964 and 1965 when you started to see the first real protests against U.S. ground troops in Vietnam. They weren’t as morally pure. They weren’t as radical in their critique. But it was their entrance into this movement that ultimately gave it the political heft to make change. And so, I just think it’s counterproductive to say to people who come late to these things, sorry, basically, you know, you’re not welcome because you didn’t realize this earlier.And beyond that, I think when you’re talking about politicians in particular, most politicians respond to political incentives. And so, the role of activists, of people of conscience, is to act to try to change the political incentives. And then you can’t really blame politicians for responding and shifting in terms of political incentives. I mean, it would be great if they were truly morally driven, but most will not be. And if you can change the political incentive so a politician who’s fundamentally concerned about winning reele

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg. We talk about the Democratic Party, the media, and the politics of Israel-Palestine in the age of Gaza and Trump.

Please consider supporting Medical Aid for Palestinians, which is trying to help Palestinians in Gaza and beyond.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern, our usual time. Our guest will be New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg. We’ll talk about Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Party, and the politics of Israel-Palestine in the age of Gaza and Trump. Please join us.Cited in Today’s VideoUSAID, Cindy McCain of the World Food Program, and even Israel’s own officials refute the claim that Israel had to shut off aid to Gaza—and shut down the UN food distribution system— because Hamas was systematically stealing aid.Nir Hasson’s report in Haaretz on Israel’s starvation of Gaza.Gideon Shimoni’s Community and Conscience: The Jews in Apartheid South Africa.Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai’s blessing to his students in Tractate Berakhot of the Babylonian Talmud.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!), Elisheva Goldberg writes about the Knesset’s effort to impeach Israel’s most prominent Palestinian legislator, Ayman Odeh.I spoke to Public Radio’s “The World” about antisemitism and on CNN about the starvation in Gaza.For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s “Occupied Thoughts” podcast, I talked to University of California at Berkeley historian Ussama Makdisi about being targeted by Congressional Republicans.Alonso Gurmendi on the claim that Israel isn’t committing genocide because it could be killing more people.When American Jewish groups called out a genocide, in Myanmar.CorrectionIn last week’s video I said that Kishinev (now called Chishinau), site of the infamous 1903 pogrom, was in Ukraine. That was wrong. As my friend, the political scientist Rajan Menon explained to me: “In 1903, it was part of the Bessarabia Governorate of the Romanov Empire but not part of the Empire’s Ukrainian territories. From 1940 onward, having been part of Romania from the end of World War II, it became part of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic within the USSR.” It is now the capital of the Republic of Moldova. My apologies.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, this is the time of year when many rabbis begin to think about what they are going to say in their Divrei Torah, in their sermons on the yamim nora’im, the high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which come in the fall when they have their largest audiences, and what do they want to say about what Judaism calls us to do? And as I think about those rabbis thinking about what they’re gonna say in their most important words of the year. The question that occurs to me is: do our rabbis believe in God? Because it seems to me, if you believe in God, and you believe that human beings—all human beings, Palestinians included—are created equal, b’tzelem elohim, in the image of God, and you see what Israel is doing to Palestinians, you have no choice but to speak out as forcefully as you can against this.I would encourage the rabbis, any rabbi who’s thinking about what they’re going to say, to just spend a couple of minutes—it really only takes a couple of minutes—watching a video, or listening to a doctor who has worked in Gaza, or listening to some of the reporters who’ve been in Gaza. Within less than a minute, I think, when I do this, I’m just rendered utterly speechless by the horror that is now before us and is not hidden. This is not the Shoah. This is not a time when technology meant that we could not see these things. We can see them very easily if we want to.Just a couple of quotations from an essay in Haaretz by Nir Hasson. He talks about a doctor in Gaza who says that tens of thousands of people, mostly children, are what he calls moving skeletons, whose organs are collapsing, and have already entered the final stage of hunger. He quotes from a video of a man, a starving man, his pants held up by a rope, who is kneeling in the sand, trying to gather flour that was spilled in the sand. And the man is saying in the video, ‘I have 10 children, and they haven’t eaten anything for a week. I’m trying to sift the flour from the sand.’So, I think the question for our rabbis to ask in the face of this is whether they believe in God. If the rabbis genuinely want to claim that this is Hamas’s fault, then they’re simply lying. They’re lying. Because we now have claims from both USAID, and from the United Nations, and Cindy McCain of the World Food Program, and from Israel’s own officials that there certainly might have been incidents of Hamas or other people, you know, stealing aid. Because, after all, when people are starving, people will try to get that aid and take it for themselves. That in fact, the claim that Israel had to deny aid for 3 months, and had to shut down the UN system of distributing aid at 400 distribution centers, and move to this Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Aharon Dardik, a Columbia University undergraduate with a remarkable story. The son of an orthodox rabbi, he spent part of his childhood in a religious settlement in the West Bank. After studying in yeshiva in Israel, he went to prison rather than serve in the Israeli military, and then enrolled at Columbia, where after October 7 he founded Columbia Jews for Ceasefire. Earlier this year, he was among the Jewish students who chained themselves to a gate to protest the university’s complicity in the detention of Mahmoud Khalil.

Every week I link to the GoFundMe page for Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who live in Gaza with their four children and have been injured by Israeli bombs and displaced ten times since October 7, and are trying to leave. I know putting up a Go Fund Me for one family is totally inadequate given the scale of the horror in Gaza, and the millions of people there who need our help— and most of all, need an end to this monstrous slaughter. Still, it’s something.Please considering helping.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern, our usual time. Our guest will be Aharon Dardik, a Columbia University undergraduate with a remarkable story. The son of an orthodox rabbi, he spent part of his childhood in a religious settlement in the West Bank. After studying in yeshiva in Israel, he went to prison rather than serve in the Israeli military, and then enrolled at Columbia, where after October 7 he founded Columbia Jews for Ceasefire. Earlier this year, he was among the Jewish students who chained themselves to a gate to protest the university’s complicity in the detention of Mahmoud Khalil. How does someone so young challenge so much of what he has been taught and then endure the consequences of that rupture? We’ll talk about that this Friday.Ask Me AnythingLast week’s Ask Me Anything session, for premium subscribers, was rescheduled for technical reasons. We will meet this Wednesday, July 23, from 3-4 PM Eastern time.Cited in Today’s VideoHaaretz on Michael Spagat and Khalil Shikaki’s estimate that 100,000 people have been killed in Gaza.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!), Kim Phillips-Fein writes about Fiorello LaGuardia’s lessons for Zohran Mamdani.Omer Bartov on why he believes Israel is committing genocide.Adam Shatz on the 12 Day war.An interviewer challenges former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren about Israel’s plan for a “humanitarian city” in Gaza.Hannah Habtu on the assault on the people of Tigray.For The Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts podcast, I talked with Iyad El-Baghdadi about Israel’s vision of the Middle East.Imagine if every Democrat spoke this way about Israel and Palestine.Shaul Magid reflects on a “Nero moment” for Jews. See you on Wednesday and Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, one of the most difficult and depressing things about this moment is that the slaughter in Gaza goes on and on and on. And yet, it’s been relegated, you know, to the back pages of the newspaper. Americans are now more consumed by our own catastrophes. And so, there’s this way in which we’ve normalized, you know, in Western media discussion in the U.S, there’s been a kind of normalization of just that is kind of routine, that every day Palestinians are dying more and more and more. And it doesn’t even really provoke that much conversation anymore. And I’ve been thinking about how you can respond to that. And obviously the people who have tried the most are the Palestinians in Gaza themselves, journalists and others who are desperately kind of recording what’s happening to them and trying to speak to the outside world. And I think one of the things that people have done very powerfully is to highlight individual stories of individuals who’ve died. Um, uh, in order to kind of humanize the people and remind us of them.But I also think there perhaps is a value in just trying to step back and look at the scale of this, and think about how desensitized we’ve become compared to other moments and places in history. So, there’s a British academic named Michael Spagat—I actually quote him in my book—at the University of London, and he basically counts death in wars. That’s his academic specialty. He did this very, very large study with the Palestinian political scientist Khalil Shakaki where they surveyed 2,000 households in Gaza in order to try to get a more accurate count of the death toll. Because the irony is that although people were constantly, especially early on after October 7th, claiming that the quote-unquote ‘Hamas’ health ministry could not be trusted, it was massively inflating the numbers, that I think overwhelmingly, the scholarly consensus is that the numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry are way too low. And it’s not hard to understand why, because they’re basically counting bodies that come to hospital morgues. But anyone who just looks at a picture of Gaza can understand that many, many people will have died and not made it to hospital morgues.So, Spagat and Shikaki do this very, very large survey, and they come to the conclusion that as of January 2025, that the number of people who were directly killed in a violent death was about 75,000, the vast majority of them killed by Israeli arms. But then people who study deaths in wars also recognize that there are going to be another group of people who di

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He has recently called Israel’s assault on Gaza a “war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel” but denies that Israel is committing genocide and believes its actions were legitimate until the spring of 2024.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comI spoke with Avey Rips and Seph Mozes, two members of Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago, who recently participated in a hunger strike to protest the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.We talked about…Why they took this extreme stepThe responses they gotHow historic victimization of Jews leads some to compassion and others to tribalismAspects of Jewish tradition that informed their decisionWhat 18 days of hunger taught them about what Gazans are going throughWhat they feel was achieved

Every week I link to the GoFundMe page for Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who live in Gaza with their four children and have been injured by Israeli bombs and displaced ten times since October 7, and are trying to leave. I know putting up a Go Fund Me for one family is totally inadequate given the scale of the horror in Gaza, and the millions of people there who need our help— and most of all, need an end to this monstrous slaughter. Still, it’s something.Please considering helping.Friday Zoom Call: Special TimeThis Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at a special time: 11 AM Eastern. Our guest will be former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He has recently called Israel’s assault on Gaza a “war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel” but denies that Israel is committing genocide and believes its actions were legitimate until the spring of 2024. He’s also argued that Israel’s current operation is fundamentally different from prior ones. I’ll ask what he would have done differently after October 7 and how he understands the fundamental nature of Zionism and the Israeli state.Ask Me AnythingOur next Ask Me Anything session, for premium subscribers, will be this Wednesday, July 16, from 11-Noon Eastern time.Cited in Today’s VideoThe New York Times on Zohran Mamdani’s application to Columbia University.Despite being expelled, Zohran Mamdani’s grandparents never stopped longing for Uganda.Mahmoud Mamdani’s fight for a multi-racial Uganda.Thabo Mbeki’s speech “I am an African.”A letter by my father, Julian Beinart z’’ll, in the 1967 issue of Transition.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!), Emily Wilder reports on the group giving antisemitism trainings at Harvard.I spoke to Democracy Now about Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington.I talked on Bill Kalmenson’s podcast about a Jewish reckoning on Gaza.The Trump administration used Canary Mission to find students to detain.See you on Friday at 11 AM Eastern,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, I want to say something about this story that appeared in the New York Times based on hacked emails from Columbia University, that when Zoran Mamdani, who’s now the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, that when he applied to Columbia University, he listed himself as not only Asian, but also as Black or African American. And so, this has been depicted, you know, this has been discussed in a lot of political circles as, oh, this guy was trying to game the system to get advantage of affirmative action by pretending he’s Black when he’s not Black.I think it fundamentally misunderstands who Zoran Mamdani is, who his family is. And part of the reason for this misunderstanding is there’s just such a profound ignorance in American political and media discussion, including in elite media and political discussion, of anything having to do with Africa, and in this case, Uganda. To understand why Mamdani checked off Black or African American, and then wrote—critically, wrote under it—Ugandan, you have to understand his family and the belief system of his family. His family were, on his father’s side, were South Asians who moved to East Africa, like many did, particularly from a part of India called Gujarat. And in his father’s family’s case, they didn’t just happen to be Asians who ended up in Uganda, they very much believed in the nation of Uganda as their identity.What happened was that when the dictator Idi Amin took power, he expelled the South Asians from Uganda in a kind of racist action, because of a basically political-economic power play, in which he was aligned with a group of economic interests from the tribe of Baganda that saw an opportunity if they pushed out the South Asian economic interests that were in Uganda, and basically took their industry and their wealth. And they allied with Idi Amin to expel the South Asians from Uganda. Interestingly, another person whose family was also expelled, but from a radically different political perspective, is the family of Kash Patel, Trump’s FBI director.But what’s critical to understand about the way this action was experienced by Mamdani’s family is that they saw themselves as having been expelled from their country, from their continent, even though, of course, they were not Black. That Zohran Mamdani talks about how his grandparents, once they had been expelled from Uganda to Britain, used to go every Sunday to Gatwick Airport in London and watch the planes taking off to Uganda, because they missed this place so much. It was their home. His father, Mahmoud Mamdani, the political scientist at Columbia, is one of the world’s great students of African politics, named Zohran Mamdani Kwame, right? He gave him the middle name of Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of a decolonized independent African country in sub-Saharan Africa. This was part of Mahmoud Mamdani’

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guests are Gaza-born Palestinian writer Ahmed Moor, a regular contributor to The Guardian and a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and Mairav Zonszein, Israel analyst for the International Crisis Group, and a regular contributor to the New York Times. Topics discussed include…How what people are calling a “ceasefire” might realistically play outWhat Hamas’s current thinking might bethe visions for Gaza in the Israeli government, the military, and the Israeli publicHow things might change for Palestinians if Hamas is removed from powerNetanyahu’s domestic political prospectshow global pressure might be affecting Israelthe difficulty for Palestinians of imagining making peace with a people who have done them so much harm

Every week, I link to the GoFundMe page for Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who live in Gaza with their four children and have been injured by Israeli bombs and displaced ten times since October 7, and are trying to leave. I know putting up a Go Fund Me for one family is totally inadequate given the scale of the horror in Gaza, and the millions of people there who need our help—and most of all, need an end to this monstrous slaughter. Still, it’s something.Please considering helping.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at our regular time, 1 PM Eastern. Our guests will be the Gaza-born Palestinian writer Ahmed Moor, a regular contributor to The Guardian and a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace and Mairav Zonszein, Israel analyst for the International Crisis Group and a regular contributor to the New York Times. We’ll talk about what a ceasefire in Gaza might look like, what politics and society in Gaza will be like if and when the bombs stop falling, what the political repercussions will be in Israel, and about the broader legacy of this assault on an entire society.Cited in Today’s VideoThree pro-Israel podcasts now admit that Israel can’t defeat Hamas in Gaza.The (mostly Palestinian) analysts who predicted that—and were ignored—after October 7.Israel has killed roughly four percent of Gaza’s population since October 7.Things to Read(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), I wrote about what Democrats can learn from the way Zohran Mamdani talks about Israel and antisemitism.In The New York Times, I argued that Mamdani’s victory illustrates how rapidly Democratic public opinion is changing on Israel.I talked about Mamdani’s victory with Yousef Munayyer and Heba Gowayed for the Arab Center and on WCPT 820 in Chicago.I talked to Rudy Rochman about whether the world treats Israel unfairly.A reporter who covered the Palestinian intifadas reflects on what the term means.The (mostly Palestinian) analysts who predicted Israel’s defeat—and were ignored—after October 7.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, I spend a fair amount of time kind of listening to people I disagree with. I try to do it on our Friday Zoom calls for this newsletter. But I just do it a lot on my own time, too. I generally find, to be honest, that actually I learn more listening to people who I disagree with than those who I generally agree with. And so, on Israel and Palestine, I spend a fair amount of time kind of listening to pro-Israel podcasts and reading pro-Israel writers. First of all, I just find that there are sources of information they have that I wouldn’t have, or people who have views more like mine wouldn’t have. I don’t find those podcasts to be very useful at all in terms of understanding what’s happening to Palestinians, or really how Palestinians might react to things. But they are quite useful in kind of giving you a sense of the perspective of Israeli political insecurity establishment, the kind of Israeli political mainstream, and often the American Jewish kind of political mainstream as well.And so, it really, really struck me, kind of listening last week to several podcasts that there was this really, really frank acknowledgement that this destruction of Gaza has failed. The destruction of Gaza has failed on its own terms. Even if you didn’t give a s**t about the humanity and the lives of people in Gaza, which, of course, you should care about profoundly. That on its own terms, it has failed, right? What were the two goals of the war? Not as defined by me, but as defined by Benjamin Netanyahu, right? The first was the release of the return of the hostages. We know, it’s been clear for such a long time now, that the only way Israel has gotten significant number of hostages back has been by ending the war, through ceasefire deals, that military action has actually led to the death of more hostages than it has gotten them released, right?But the second goal, of course, was the destruction of Hamas. Total victory over Hamas, right? And what’s astonishing to me is how you find these very, very pro-war establishment Israeli Jewish voices, now saying, very frankly, ain’t gonna happen. It’s not going to happen. That has failed. And I want to quote a few of them. So, the first is Nadav Eyal, who’s a columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth. This is him on Dan Senor’s “Call Me Back” podcast. Nadav Eyal is a kind of, you know, very centrist establishment journalist, very close to the Israeli security establishment. This is what he says about the prospect of disarming Hamas at any point.He says, ‘disarming is really not going to happen for two reasons. First of all, Hamas isn’t going to agree to that in the way we think about disarmament. And secondly, even if they will, no one will be able to verify it.’ So, he’s saying, in any future deal with Hamas, Hamas wi

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Brad Lander, the Jewish City Comptroller of New York, and mayoral candidate, who cross-endorsed Zohran Mamdani and helped propel him to victory. In my opinion, Lander’s behavior modeled what a decent Jewish politics in America might look like. Topics discussed include…Andrew CuomoHow Lander’s relationship with Zohran Mamdani evolvedLander’s differences with Mamdani, on Israel and on local issuesCriticism from parts of the Jewish communityCriticism of Mamdani’s agenda for New York CityThe lack of support for Mamdani from prominent Democrats“Globalize the Intifada”Anti-Zionism versus liberal Zionism, one-state versus two-states

Every week I link to the GoFundMe page for Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who live in Gaza with their four children and have been injured by Israeli bombs and displaced ten times since October 7, and are trying to leave. I know putting up a Go Fund Me for one family is totally inadequate given the scale of the horror in Gaza, and the millions of people there who need our help— and most of all, need an end to this monstrous slaughter. Still, it’s something.On June 24, Hossam sent the following message:Today, I had the heart-wrenching experience of carrying my injured son, Mu’ayyad, through the rubble-strewn streets to the Ministry of Health headquarters. With the bombings intensifying around us, even reaching the building felt like a small miracle.At the Ministry, the head of the Overseas Treatment Department examined Mu’ayyad. His words shattered us: Mu’ayyad’s injuries are extensive and life-threatening. He urgently needs surgery and specialized care that are simply not available here in Gaza.While others in our family were also injured in the blast in 2024 and need medical attention, Mu’ayyad’s condition is far more severe. When the bomb hit, he was standing closest to the window—facing it—while the others had their backs turned. He absorbed the full force of the explosion, and his body bears the deepest wounds.Yet in the midst of despair, there is a glimmer of hope. The department has arranged for Mu’ayyad—and another child in serious condition—to meet with a specialist doctor. This appointment is critical. The doctor’s assessment will help determine whether we can complete Form No. 1, required to seek urgent treatment abroad.My wife, Miriam, our children, and I are holding on to this hope with all that we have. We are waiting to hear the appointment date, God willing. Each day, I reach out to everyone involved, praying for positive developments that could lead to a brighter future for Mu'ayyad. It aches to see him enduring these terrible injuries, and I pray that God grants him the strength and patience he needs during this incredibly tough time. Your support means a great deal to us; it fuels our determination to keep moving forward. Your presence inspires us as we strive to overcome this tragedy and seek the medical help that we urgently need.Please considering helping.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at our regular time, 1 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Brad Lander, the Jewish City Comptroller of New York, and mayoral candidate, who cross-endorsed Zohran Mamdani and helped propel him to victory. In my opinion, Lander’s behavior modeled what a decent Jewish politics in America might look like. We’ll talk about Mamdani, the responses of Jewish New Yorkers to his victory, and why Lander did what he did.Ask Me AnythingOur next Ask Me Anything session, for premium subscribers, will be this Monday, June 30, from 3-4 PM Eastern time.Cited in Today’s VideoDemocratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic members of Congress Eric Swallwell and Laura Gillen attack Zohran Mamdani.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!), Mari Cohen details how, across the US, support for Palestinian freedom became considered a hate crime.For the Jewish Currents podcast, I talked with Arielle Angel, Mari Cohen, and Alex Kane about how Zohran Mamdani defeated the pro-Israel machine.For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts podcast, I interviewed Iranian-American journalist Negar Mortazavi.Muhammad Shehada on the ISIS-related gangs Israel is backing in Gaza.See you on Monday and Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, what’s been really depressing to me about the response to Zohran Mamdani’s victory kind of in mainstream media discussion, particularly on TV, is not the response of Republicans. I mean, many Republicans have been kind of blatantly Islamophobic. But in the era of Donald Trump, why would anyone be surprised, you know, by that? It’s really the response by Democrats, and the kind of the conversations between Democrats in mainstream, not right-wing political anchors, on TV that I find really most dispiriting. Because the only thing that they’re interested in when it comes to the subject of Israel is Mamdani’s, you know, statements about globalize the intifada.Now, again, if you do an interview and you only talk to people about Mamdani’s, you know, record about New York, I think that’s legitimate. I mean, the guy ran on making New York affordable. But if you’re going to ask Democrats about things having to do with his views on Israel, right, how on earth is it justified to have the only thing that you ask about, his claim about globalizing the intifada? For the record, I don’t think his answer in that Bulwark interview on globalize the intifada was a good answer. The thing about intifad

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California who, along with Republican Thomas Massie, has introduced legislation invoking the War Powers Act to bar the US from attacking Iran absent congressional approval. Questions included…What lessons can Democrats take from Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory, both in general, and on the subject of Israel-Palestine?Why was the response of the Democratic leadership to Israel’s and America’s attacks on Iran so weak?What do you think about the prospects of American liberal democracy under Trump?How much do you and members of Congress fear for your physical safety?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comJonathan Chait recently wrote a piece for the Atlantic criticizing Zohran Mamdani for not condemning the phrase “Globalize the Intifada.” I called Chait to discuss it. Questions I raised include:* What is your problem with this particular use of the word uprising?* If someone explicitly said “globalize the intifada” to them meant peaceful resistance, like supporting sanctions, would you still object to its use?* Why should “globalize the intifada” be seen as more inherently violent than pro-Israel phrases like “Israel has the right to defend itself” or “We stand with the IDF”?* What about all the violence in the US from the pro-Israel camp?* You support Ukranian armed resistance against the Russsian occupation (soldiers, not civilians), so what’s the distinction when it comes to the 58-year occupation of Palestinians?* Have you ever been to the West Bank?JUNE “ASK ME ANYTHING”Our June AMA, for Premium paid subscribers, will be this Monday, June 30, at 3pm ET. We’ll send out a Zoom link Monday morning. If you want to upgrade your subscription to participate, just hit the button above.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comIn the wake of the US attack on Iran, I reached out to Iran expert, author and president of The Quincy Institute, Trita Parsi. Questions included…Why did Trump do this?Is regime change in Iran a goal of either Trump or Israel?How do you expect Iran to respond?How is the Iranian public reacting?Might the current regime fail, and what is likely to replace it if it does?

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comAndile Zulu is a political writer and researcher at the Alternative Information and Development Center based in Capetown, South Africa.Questions include…What is the current reality around violence in South Africa, and how does it intersect with race and class?Looking back at the fall of apartheid, was there an alternative path the ANC could have taken that would’ve led to a better present?Given that violence in South Africa is more likely to afflict black people and that white people have largely maintained their privilege, where is this discourse of white persecution coming from?Why does the issue of Palestinian freedom resonate for South Africans? Does South Africa’s path from apartheid offer lessons for Palestinian liberation?

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I spoke with my friend, political analyst, and president of The Agora Initiative, Khalil Sayegh. Questions included…How are you able to face this unending horror and maintain such gentleness and generosity?What do you think of the “perfect victim” critique?After all this time, what gives you confidence that persuasion is possible, and that changing minds can lead to real-world change?How do you maintain your faith in God in the midst of so much suffering?How do you find the right balance between criticizing Hamas and criticizing Israel, given their great power disparity?How do you respond to the argument that Hamas’s authoritarianism and violence shows Israel can’t afford to give Palestinians equal rights?Do you believe Hamas truly accepts of the idea of a two-state solution?What was your response to the assasinations in Washington, DC?What do you think of the phrase “Globalize the Intifada”? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University and author of several recent New York Times op-eds, including “Trump is Selling Jews a Dangerous Lie” and one subtitled “Higher Education Should be Tolerant but Never Neutral.” We talk about the Trump administration’s assault on independent universities, the claim of rampant campus antisemitism, and the argument that universities should be neutral on political issues.

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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comEarlier this year, Israeli writer and historian Fania Oz-Salzberger and the Palestinian peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah debated on X whether Israel targets Palestinian civilians and how to evaluate Israel’s behavior compared to the behavior of Hamas. I’m grateful they both agreed to meet and explore their different perspectives with us.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comKhaled Abou El Fadl is a professor of law at UCLA and one of America’s preeminent Islamic scholars. He’s also a passionate critic of authoritarianism in the Muslim world who has paid a significant price for challenging tyrannical regimes. I recently had the privilege of appearing alongside him in a discussion about Jewish and Muslim obligations in the wake of Israel’s destruction of Gaza. I felt I was in the presence of a profound religious voice.

For the next few weeks, most of my book events for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza are outside the US. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestine Lives and Culture, edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller with Juliette Touma and Jayyab Abusafia.I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.Here is a message from Hossam, sent by his sister Abir, last Wednesday:Yesterday, I received an invitation from the Palestinian Authority for Development for my children to attend recreational activities and psychological support sessions. My 9-year-old daughter, Malak, and her neighborhood friends were overjoyed—finally, a chance to play and feel like children again after days in shelters.Tragically, at 11:30 AM, the site was bombed by an F-16. The blast shook our neighborhood. Malak and the other children ran in terror to escape the shrapnel. In the chaos, Malak fell, injuring her arm. She now suffers from a deep bruise and severe joint pain.Hospitals are overwhelmed, and care is delayed as medical staff attend to the most critical cases. We wait with patience and faith, hoping Malak’s condition will improve soon.Please keep Malak—and all the wounded children—in your prayers. Your continued support means everything to my family. Even in fear, we hold on to hope. Together, we will survive this war and one day heal and rebuild.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at a special time: 12:30 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of law at UCLA and one of America’s preeminent Islamic scholars. He’s also a passionate critic of authoritarianism in the Muslim world who has paid a significant price for challenging tyrannical regimes. I recently had the privilege of appearing alongside him in a discussion about Jewish and Muslim obligations in the wake of Israel’s destruction of Gaza. I felt I was in the presence of a profound religious voice.After this Friday, we will take a break. There will be no newsletter on Monday, May 19 and no Zoom call on Friday, May 23, as I’ll be travelling in Australia. We will resume on Monday, May 26 and Friday, May 30.Book Tour(We’ll update this every week.)On Monday, May 12, I’ll be speaking at Parkdale Hall in Toronto.On Tuesday, May 13, I’ll be speaking at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation.On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.Things to Read(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), the Palestinian legal theorist Raef Zreik writes about the legacy of German-Jewish religious thinker, Martin Buber.I spoke about Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza at Harvard Divinity School and via Zoom with Barnett Rubin at the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library.Eric Alterman on the “Coming Jewish Civil War over Donald Trump.”A former West Bank settler on why he refused to serve in the IDF.See you on Friday,PeterSo, the kind of American part of my book tour is pretty much over. I’m actually recording this from Canada, and then I’m going to Australia and the UK and Ireland. And I don’t have many more book events in the United States. I’ve been traveling around the US for like more than three months now. And one of the really interesting things about doing that is I get a kind of a sense of the conversation about Israel-Palestine at maybe at a more grassroots level than I would otherwise. And it’s especially interesting because I can compare what I see now to what I saw when I wrote this book called The Crisis of Zionism 13 years ago, back in 2012, just to see how things look different when I go out and speak to lots of different folks than they I did back then.Reflecting on it, two things really struck me. Two differences have really struck me. The first is a kind of collapse of what you could call the kind of liberal pro-Israel position. In 2012, when my book came out—and that was a less radical book. I mean, I still supported two-state solution of a Jewish state next to a Palestinian state back then. But the book was still pretty harshly attacked by a bunch of people—journalists, commentators—who were kind of liberals in good standing, you know, and they thought I was being too harshly critical of Israel. And, you know, those were the most important cri

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is novelist and journalist, Omar El Akkad, author of the new book about Israel’s destruction of Gaza, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. He’ll talk about what it’s like to live as an Arab-American in a moment in which the US—and the West more generally— are destroying any pretense of believing in the moral principles they claim to hold dear.

I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for a few more weeks. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestine Lives and Culture, edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller with Juliette Touma and Jayyab Abusafia.I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern, our regular time. Our guest will be the novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad, author of the new book about Israel’s destruction of Gaza, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. He’ll talk about what it’s like to live as an Arab-American in a moment in which the US—and the West more generally— are destroying any pretense of believing in the moral principles they claim to hold dear.Book Tour(We’ll update this every week.)On Monday, May 6, I’ll be speaking at Stanford University.On Monday, May 12, I’ll be speaking at Parkdale Hall in Toronto.On Tuesday, May 13, I’ll be speaking at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation.On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.Sources Cited in this Week’s VideoTommy Lapid and Yeshayahu Leibowitz on “Judeo-Nazis.”Things to Read(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Sheetal Chabria offers a leftist guide to tariffs.In The New York Times, I wrote about how Trump and establishment Jewish organizations are redefining Jewishness to silence protest against Israel.On Seven Minute expert, I talked (or tried to talk) with Columbia University Professor Shai Davidai about Israel and antisemitism.Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor on how American politicians can support the horror in Gaza.Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza was reviewed in the magazine ARC and I discussed with Barnett Rubin.Check out Ben Barber’s book, No Way But Forward: Life Stories of Three Families in the Gaza Strip.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, the Antisemitism Awareness Act is currently being debated in the US Senate. It’s passed the House. And it’s now in committee in the Senate. And if it passes through the committee, it will go on to the Senate floor. And this would kind of be Congressional instruction to the Department of Education to use this particular definition when it evaluates alleged antisemitism on college campuses.And so, it’s just worth, I think, saying something about one particular element of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, IHRA definition of antisemitism, to show how I think perverse it is and how in a certain kind of very strange way. It’s very dehumanizing of Jews, this definition of antisemitism. It’s dehumanizing of Jews because it suggests that it is antisemitic to imagine that Jews could act the way in which other human beings act, right?And so, in particular, one of the examples of the IHRA definition of antisemitism is that it could be an example of antisemitism if you draw comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis. And now, obviously, there are many analogies between Israel and the Nazis that will be very, very stupid and incorrect, and potentially even offensive analogies, right? Benjamin Netanyahu, for all his sins, is not Adolf Hitler. Israel, despite the horrors that it’s committing in Gaza and the West Bank, has not established death camps in the West Bank. So, obviously, those would be very incorrect, and I think problematic analogies.But the Nazis did many, many other things besides creating death camps, right? The Nazis took power in 1933. There was a whole system of kind of discourse and processes that the Nazis put in place—some of which was consistent with other fascist movements—that eroded liberal democracy, that ultimately eroded the rule of law and the rights of various different people. And we understand that implicitly, right, because the United States media is filled with comparisons of the Trump administration to the Nazis, right? And the vast majority of these comparisons are not suggesting that that Donald Trump has set up death camps in the United States, right, but they’re looking to this historical parallel to try to understand and analyze the dangers and also the rhetorical formulations, the relationship between a fascist movement and big corporatio

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Joy Reid, former MSNBC host and author of the Joy’s House Substack. We talk about how the mainstream media covers Israel-Palestine, and how it covers America.

I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next couple of months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestine Lives and Culture, edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller with Juliette Touma and Jayyab Abusafia.I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern, our regular time. Our guest will be Joy Reid, former MSNBC host and author of the Joy’s House Substack. We’ll talk about how the mainstream media covers Israel-Palestine, and how it covers America.Book Tour(We’ll update this every week.)On Monday, April 28, I’ll be speaking at Princeton University.On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: with Khaled Abu El Fadl at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.On Wednesday, April 30, I’ll be speaking with Barnett Rubin via Zoom to the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library.On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, California.On Monday, May 6, I’ll be speaking at Stanford University.On Monday, May 12, I’ll be speaking at Parkdale Hall in Toronto.On Tuesday, May 13, I’ll be speaking at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation.On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.Book ReviewsI discussed Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza on Public Research with Daniel Schwartz. The book was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement and Moment Magazine.Sources Cited in this Week’s VideoIndia’s denial of water to Pakistan.Things to Read(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Alex Kane reports that the New York Police categorized keffiyehs as symbols of antisemitism.Karen Attiah on why Columbia cancelled her class.Jacobin interviews Omer Bartov about Gaza.A conversation between the director of The Encampments and a pro-Israel influencer.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, last week there was an armed attack by militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir. And India is accusing neighboring Pakistan of having a role in it. And in retaliation, it has now suspended a water treaty from 1960, in which rivers that pass through India provide Pakistan a very large percentage of its water. And for the first time since 1960 India is now saying it’s suspending this water treaty in retaliation, which really could devastate the Pakistani agriculture and the Pakistani population more generally. So, this would be an act of very, very serious collective punishment against the people of Pakistan. And this is really the kind of thing that I think people have been warning about since Israel’s assault on Gaza. Which was that the things that Israel was doing in Gaza would become templates for countries around the world.And so, one of the things Israel has done in Gaza—starting before October 7th, but more dramatically since October 7th—is a policy of collective punishment of the entire population, right? So, Israel has now been denying all humanitarian into Gaza since the collapse of the last ceasefire agreement. And from the very beginning, Israel said very clearly that it would deny significant amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. And indeed, it did, which is one of the reasons that there’s been many, many reports of starvation in Gaza, of lack of medical care. One of the reasons that so many children have had their limbs amputated, according to my friend Ahmed Moore who wrote a long piece about this in The Guardian, is that Israel has denied the ability of people to Gaza to bring in the medical supplies and medicines that might have allowed doctors to be able to be able to save those limbs.So, this policy of collective punishment that Israel has been pursuing in Gaza now is echoing in the policies that India is pursuing in Pakistan. I can’t prove that India is doing this because of what Israel is doing in Gaza. But I think if we look at the tire of the last 20-25 years of world history, you can see the way in which when a norm is eroded by one government, it becomes easier for other governments to also erode these norms. So, for instance, we know that Vladimir Putin in justifying his invasion of Ukraine, and his invasions of Georgia also has kind of

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland. I’ve known and liked Jonathan for years, and we agree on many things. But he also has criticisms of my book. He thinks that in my rejection of the very idea of a Jewish state, I’ve gone too far. We talk about that, and about the way being a British—as opposed to an American—Jew shapes his perspective. I’m grateful to him for joining us.

The Anti-Defamation League Now Opposes Trump’s Abductions. But It Helped Enable Them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, whose campaign to make the city more affordable for the working class is currently polling in second place. I ask Zohran about his vision for New York City during the second Trump presidency, and the challenges he anticipates, his perspectives on Israel/Palestine, and how they shape his work. This talk is co-sponsored by Jewish Currents.

The Inane Justification For Destroying America’s Universities This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comMunther Isaac is a renowned Palestinian minister from Bethlehem. We discuss his new book, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible and the Genocide in Gaza. We also dig into why so many American evangelicals unconditionally support Israel, and what Christians should do to honor the dignity of everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next couple of months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, the latest work by the brilliant essayist, Raja Shehada, What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. Our guest will be Munther Isaac, the renowned Palestinian minister from Bethlehem. We’ll discuss his new book, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible and the Genocide in Gaza. We’ll also discuss why so many American evangelicals unconditionally support Israel, and what Christians should do to honor the dignity of everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.Friday’s zoom call is for paid subscribers.Book Tour(We’ll update this every week.)On Monday, April 7, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School.On Tuesday, April 8, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, and then later that night, at First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the Palestinian human rights activist, Issa Amro.On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.On Wednesday, April 16, I’ll be speaking via Zoom to Scientists for Palestine.On Monday, April 21, I’ll be speaking with Sahar Aziz at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.On Tuesday, April 22, I’ll be speaking with Pankaj Mishra at New York University.On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: with Khaled Abu El Fadl at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.On Wednesday, April 30, I’ll be speaking with Barnett Rubin via Zoom to the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library.On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, California.On Monday, May 12, I’ll be speaking at Parkdale Hall in Toronto.On Tuesday, May 13, I’ll be speaking at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation.On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.Book ReviewsBeing Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza was reviewed (along with ten other books!) by Omer Bartov in The New York Review of Books.Things to Read(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), I wrote about Chuck Schumer’s new book about antisemitism.For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts Podcast, I interviewed Ahmed Moor about his Guardian article about child amputees in Gaza.A video of last week’s Smol Emuni (Religious Left) Conference in New York.The children of Columbia’s first Jewish president denounce its capitulation.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, there’s been a lot of attention in the press to these protests against Hamas. I’d encourage people who are interested in the conversation to listen to the video I did on Friday, the interview I did with Mohamed Shahada, who I thought had really, really interesting insights into that whole dynamic. But, you know, it will reinforce the tendency of some supporters of Israel to say, this is a war of Israel against Hamas, not against the Palestinian people. After all, look, these Palestinians in Gaza are protesting against Hamas. They don’t like Hamas. And, as Mohammed pointed out to me when we talked, it’s certainly true. There have been protests that many Palestinians don’t like Hamas. There have been protests against Hamas for a bunch of years now. Hamas is authoritarian, you know, incompetent in various ways. Many people rightly don’t like their Islamist ideology, which they feel as considered to be illiberal and oppressive.But I still think it’s just fundamentally wrong to say that the war that Israel is waging is against Hamas for a number of reasons. First of all, if you just look at the military tactics that Israel is using, they’re clearly—some of them—not only directed at Hamas. So, Israel has been for the last month now denying humanitarian aid into Gaza—to everyone in Gaza, not just to the Hamas people, to everyone in Gaza. Israel is always also actively advocating the idea of mass migration, mass expulsion out of Gaza for everybody, not just for members of Hamas. And Israel is also repressing pretty brutally the West Bank, where Hamas is not in charge. There have been tens of thousands, accordi

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is the Gaza-born political analyst Muhammad Shehada, who I’ve long admired for his ability to criticize Israel without exonerating Hamas and to criticize Hamas without exonerating Israel. We talk about the recent protests in Gaza against Hamas, and for an end to Israel’s slaughter.

I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next few months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, the latest work by the brilliant essayist, Raja Shehada, What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.Here’s an update from Hossam’s sister, Abir:I check on them at least six times a day. Every time they don’t answer, my heart drops, fearing the worst. Their hearts are heavy with grief, mourning the loss of loved ones and friends. My brother Hossam prays constantly—for an end to the war, for his family’s safety, and for all the innocent people suffering in Gaza. He told me they wake up and fall asleep to the sounds of bombs, ambulances, and the cries of women and children begging God for mercy. They are fasting for Ramadan, praying, and waiting—either for the war to end or for their lives to. It is heartbreaking to realize that this is their reality. That their lives feel as if they hold no value. That no one is standing up for them in the face of such injustice. Because of your generosity, Hossam was able to rent a small two-bedroom apartment, buy new clothing, mattresses, and some canned food—for his family and anyone in need after they leave. He had also begun the process of gathering the necessary medical and personal documents to leave. But now, everything is on hold. Please continue to support his campaign so that we can get them to safety as soon as the war ends. They need us now more than ever. Please keep them in your prayers.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. Our guest will be the Gaza-born political analyst Muhammad Shehada, who I’ve long admired for his ability to criticize Israel without exonerating Hamas and to criticize Hamas without exonerating Israel. We’ll talk about the recent protests in Gaza against Hamas, and for an end to Israel’s slaughter.Friday’s zoom call is for paid subscribers.Book Tour(We’ll update this every week.)On Tuesday, April 1, I’ll be speaking at Penn State.On Monday, April 7, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School.On Tuesday, April 8, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, and then later that night, at First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the Palestinian human rights activist, Issa Amro.On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, CaliforniaOn Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.Book Reviews and interviewsBeing Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza was reviewed (negatively) in Britain’s Fathom Journal. I also discussed it on Budd Mishkin’s podcast.Sources Cited in this Week’s VideoJenner Stands Firm.Things to Read(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Alex Kane details the shifting focus of the Anti-Defamation League.Rashid Khalidi and Adam Shatz on Columbia University’s surrender.Etan Nechin on how the right took over Israeli media.Hossam Shabat’s last article.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, I’ve spent the last couple of months since Trump returned to power, I guess you know, in a state of some shock and some despair, and also perhaps some shame, if I’m honest about it, because I don’t really feel like I have done enough in my own really small way to respond to with this really naked effort at establishing an authoritarian regime in the United States. I mean, I did speak at one protest. But I really haven’t been out kind of out in the streets and, you know, and again I can make excuses like everybody else about other things that I’m doing. But I really just have felt like I haven’t really in my own way, kind of risen to the occasion. And so, I feel a little bit like I’m throwing stones from a glass house when I condemn others.But I do think that, you know, one of the excuses I might make or one of the reasons I think in general we haven’t seen the kind of mass movement against Trump that we need is that I think a lot of people have been demoralized by seeing how many peop

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Arab Barghouti, the youngest son of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian political leader who has been in prison in Israel for the last 23 years. Arab is the head of international relations for the international campaign to release his father and all Palestinian political prisoners.

I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next few months. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, Fida Jiryis’ beautiful memoir, Stranger in My Own Land.I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.Friday Zoom CallThis Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. Our guest will be Arab Barghouti, the youngest son of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian political leader who has been in prison in Israel for the last 23 years. Arab is the head of international relations for the international campaign to release his father and all Palestinian political prisoners.Friday’s zoom call is for all paid subscribers.Book Tour(We’ll update this every week.)On Monday, March 24, I’ll be speaking at the University of Vermont.On Tuesday, March 25, I’ll be speaking at Middlebury College.On Monday, April 7, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School.On Tuesday, April 8, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, and then later that night, at First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the Palestinian human rights activist, Issa Amro.On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, California.On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.Book Reviews and interviewsBeing Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza was reviewed (positively) in South Africa’s Daily Maverick and (negatively) in Britain’s Jewish Chronicle. I also discussed the book with Nathan Robinson of Currents Affairs and with Brown University’s Glenn Loury.Sources Cited in this Week’s VideoA few years ago, I wrote about the absence in mainstream US discourse of the concept of “anti-Palestinianism.”ResponseIn response to my video last week suggesting that Trump and establishment Jewish organizations are redefining what it means to be a Jew, Barnett Rubin suggests that this constitutes a Jewish version of the Islamic notion of “takfir.”Things to Read(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)Jewish Currents (subscribe!) translates and republishes Tawfiq Da’adli’s story “On the Squeezing.”For the Foundation for Middle East Peace, I talked to Naji Abbas, Director of the Prisoners and Detainees Department for Physicians for Human Rights Israel, about Israel’s detention and torture of health care workers in Gaza.In The Atlantic, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber details the dangers of the Trump administration’s attack on Columbia.A Jewish student at Columbia writes about his friend, Mahmoud Khalil.Daniel Levy’s comments on Gaza at the United Nations.Muhammad Shehada on what would happen if Hamas left Gaza.See you Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, Columbia University has essentially capitulated to the Trump administration’s demands, and with implications for the future of Colombia and other American universities that would be very far reaching. We don’t know the full repercussions yet. But I think it’s just important to understand that—although Donald Trump is doing this because he wants to domesticate and cripple universities just because they could be centers of resistance and critical thought against his authoritarian rule in the same way that he wants to cripple and domesticate independent media, or law firms that might sue him, or the Justice Department that might be independent of his control, all these things, even though that’s clearly Trump’s motivation—his ability to use antisemitism effectively rests on the fact that there is a discourse about antisemitism that has existed long before October 7th, but then intensified since the October 7th massacre, that has been endorsed by many, many Democrats and therefore makes them kind of complicit in this.And I think the critical thing we have to understand about what’s wrong with this discourse of antisemitism, which has helped lead us to this place, is not that it’s wrong to be very concerned about antisemitism. Of course, we should be very concerned about antisemitism. The problem is that when you discuss antisemitism in the context of the Israel and Pales

We continue our discussion of the assault on academic freedom, especially for pro-Palestinian activists, with Columbia University’s Nadia Abu El-Haj. She is a Professor at Barnard College and Columbia University and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies. She just published an essay in The New York Review of Books entitled, “Mahmoud is Not Safe,” about the detention of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

In Their Attack on US Universities, Trump and the ADL are Trying to Redefine Jewishness Itself This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe