The Beinart Notebook

Our Zoom call this week will be at the usual time: Friday at Noon EST.Our guest will be Omer Bartov, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown. Omer is one of the world’s most prominent scholars of the Holocaust. He’s also an Israeli who has warned about the genocidal rhetoric of some Israeli leaders since October 7. Now that South Africa has brought a case to the International Court of Justice charging Israel with genocide for its actions since October 7, I want to ask Omer what he thinks of that legal argument. In the wake of the controversy over Masha Gessen’s declaration that in Gaza, “the ghetto is being liquidated,” I also want to ask him when, if ever, it’s appropriate to compare Israel’s actions to that of the Nazis. Paid subscribers will get the link this Wednesday and the video the following week. They’ll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.Sources Cited in this VideoMahmoud Mamdani’s book, Neither Settler nor Native.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 analyzes the public health catastrophe that Israel’s war is causing in Gaza.In the London Review of Books, Mahmoud Muna writes about selling books in Jerusalem after October 7.In the Boston Review, Barnett Rubin probes the relationship between Zionism and colonialism.Mairav Zonszein on why Israel faces the “most unstable and precarious situation it has ever been in, certainly in a generation.”A Beinart Notebook subscriber, David Mandel, is running for Congress on a platform that includes a ceasefire in Gaza.In The New York Times, I wrote about the Israeli government’s growing threats to expel people in Gaza.I’ll be speaking about Israel, Gaza, and the US debate about the war at the Center for Jewish Studies at Duke on January 16 and at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School on January 25.See you on Friday at Noon,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:I want to say something about the firing of Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, not because I’m so particularly interested in Harvard or Claudine Gay, but because I think it’s a window into a question that I think is really important. And the question is: why does pro-Palestine activism produce such a ferocious response in the United States? So, the straw that broke the camel’s back was these allegations of plagiarism. But really, what got this whole thing going was her response to October 7th, and the claim that she hadn’t responded aggressively enough to students who blamed the October 7th massacre on Israel, and then that she hadn’t condemned the phrase ‘intifada’ in her congressional testimony, which was claimed to represent a genocidal threat towards Jews. So, there were people who clearly didn’t like her to begin with because they identified her with diversity, equity, inclusion as the first Black president of Harvard. And they were hostile to her, but they didn’t have the political juice really to get rid of her until there was this added element of the debate over Israel, ‘antisemitism,’ and especially her response to pro-Palestine activism.So, the question is: what makes that pro-Palestine activism so scary that it produces such a ferocious reaction? We’ve seen this for quite a few years now, right? Why is it that in many states in the United States you can’t work for state government unless you promise not to boycott Israel? Why is it that Students for Justice in Palestine chapters are now being banned on college campuses? I mean, they’re not banning the anti-abortion groups or the young Republicans groups even in the age of Trump. Why is it that they’re banning, or suspending, the Students for Justice in Palestine? Why is it that Rashida Tlaib gets censured? All of the different members of Congress with serious problems. Why is it that social media is banning pro-Palestine activists? My suggestion is there’s something particular about the nature of pro-Palestine activism that produces this really ferocious response in the United States.Now, some might say, well, this is just because, you know, there are a lot of pro-Israel Jewish organizations out there that mobilize because they feel like this activism represents a threat to Israel. I don’t think that’s a sufficient answer. It is true, of course, that AIPAC and other kinds of American pro-Israel Jewish groups, you know, wield their influence. But especially when you’re talking about conservative white Americans, like a lot of those members of Congress, for instance, who were berating Claudine Gay and the other presidents, they don’t have a lot of Jewish constituents. And frankly, if AIPAC goes to them, and tells them that they should be against pro-Palestinian activism, I think AIPAC is walking into an open door. Ideological

Our Zoom call this week, for paid subscribers, will be at the usual time: Friday at Noon EST.Our guest will be Mikhael Manekin. For me, some of the most unsettling scenes from Gaza have been the images of Jewish worship— a soldier using a knife as his yad (pointer) as he reads Torah, a soldier reciting the Shema from the balcony of a mosque, soldiers singing to welcome Shabbat at the Islamic University of Gaza. It’s not the liturgy itself that unnerves me. It’s the images of religious conquest, which make me fear this war’s consequences not just for Palestinians and Israelis, but for Judaism. Mikhael is the perfect person to ask about this. He’s one of the leaders of Faithful Left, a new movement of religious Israelis fighting Occupation and ethnic superiority. He’s a former director of Breaking the Silence, the organization of former Israeli soldiers that works to expose the reality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And he’s the author of a new book about violence, morality and Judaism entitled, End of Days: Ethics, Tradition and Power in Israel.Paid subscribers will get the link this Wednesday and the video the following week. They’ll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.Sources Cited in this VideoBenjamin Netanyahu demands that Palestinians in Gaza be “deradicalized.”The UN estimates that 85 percent of people in Gaza have been displaced their homes.The Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza estimates that 40 percent of the Strip’s people risk starvation.According to The Wall Street Journal, almost 70 percent of Gaza’s homes are destroyed or damaged.Prof. Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, warns that in the coming year, 500,000 Palestinians in Gaza could die of disease.Mairav Zonszein on the absence of Palestinians in Israeli media.In a December poll, 83 percent of Israeli Jews said they support encouraging “voluntary migration” from Gaza.Nikki Haley says Palestinians in Gaza should leave.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 how Harvard’s new antisemitism task force is ignoring its own antisemitism scholars.For Jewish Currents’ podcast, On the Nose, I interviewed Muhammad Shehada and Khalil Sayegh about growing up in Gaza under Hamas. In The New York Times, I wrote about how Israel might have responded differently to October 7Bernie Steinberg, former executive director of Harvard Hillel, condemns the “McCarthyist tactic of manufacturing an antisemitism scare, which, in effect, turns the very real issue of Jewish safety into a pawn in a cynical political game to cover for Israel’s deeply unpopular policies with regard to Palestine.”Sara Roy on Israel’s long war on Gaza.The New York Times on Hamas’ use of sexual violence on October 7.Abdalhadi Alijla, Rajan Menon, and Daniel Byman on why Israel can’t destroy Hamas.Mosab Abu Toha’s exit from Gaza.I talked about Israel’s war in Gaza and the debate about it in the US on Democracy Now, the Majority Report with Sam Seder, Briahna Joy Gray’s Bad Faith podcast and with Aaron Miller on WBUR.See you on Friday at Noon,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:Hi. A few days ago, Benjamin Netanyahu published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, laying out Israel’s war aims in Gaza. And among them was that Gaza’s population would have to be ‘deradicalized.’ And what Netanyahu meant by that was that they could no longer support violence against Israeli civilians, essentially. It’s really important that Palestinians don’t support violence against Israeli civilians. I just happen to think that this is exactly the wrong way to go about it since the right way to convince Palestinians not to support violence against Israeli civilians is to show that ethical resistance actually works, not to hold Palestinians under permanent occupation and cause massive catastrophe in Gaza, as Israel has done.But putting that aside, it made me start to think about this idea of radicalization. Because if we take Netanyahu’s definition, essentially, that radicalization means support of violence against civilians, then it seems to me that we should be reckoning with the radicalization of many Jews both in Israel, and the United States, and around the world—and indeed, the radicalization of many Americans. Just look, after all, at the scale of the violence against civilians that most Israeli Jews, and almost all establishment American Jewish organizations, support. The United Nations now estimates that 85% of Gaza’s people have been displaced from their homes. The UN estimates that 40% risk starvation, that 70% of the homes in Gaza have been damaged or totally destroyed. And I’m going to read a quote from Professor Devi Sridhar, who’s the c

Our Zoom call this week will be at a special time: Thursday at 1 PM EST. There will be no zoom call on the week of Friday, December 22 or 29.Our guest will be Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute and the author of three highly acclaimed books on the relationship between the United States, Iran, and Israel. We’ll talk about the response by Iran and its allies to October 7 and the risks that Israel’s Gaza war could convulse the entire Middle East.As usual, paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. They’ll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.Sources Cited in this VideoCSPAN video of the Congressional hearings on campus antisemitism.Uprisings against Arab governments are called intifadas too.Elise Stefanik’s flirtation with Great Replacement Theory.Marwan Barghouti on the motivations for the second intifada.How pro-Israel pundits and organizations use allegations of antisemitism to avoid talking about what Israel does to Palestinians.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 examines the way liberal Zionist groups have responded to Israel’s war in Gaza.John Judis on the value and limits of calling Israel a “settler-colonial” state.Mouin Rabbani on Israel’s role in boosting Hamas.Robert Pape and Tony Karon and Daniel Levy on why Israel is losing the war.Most American scholars of Middle East studies censor themselves when talking about Israel-Palestine.Last week, I spoke at a Chanukah-themed ceasefire rally in New York.I also talked to Joy Reid on MSNBC about why Israel’s war won’t make Israelis safe.See you on Thursday at 1 PM,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:I want to say something about the series of events that have now led to the resignation of the president of University of Pennsylvania and could perhaps lead to the resignation of other university presidents for allegedly not opposing calls for genocide of Jews on college campuses. And the key thing to understand about what’s happened here is this. This I think is the key context. If you look at the way establishment American Jewish organizations operate, going back a whole bunch of years, they continually make this particular move. They try to turn conversations away from what’s happening on the ground to Palestinians to questions about the alleged motivations and actions of Israel’s critics in the United States or in other places. This is the reason I think in recent years there’s been this entire kind of obsessive focus on equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism because it’s a way of focusing attention on the motivations of critics of Israel in a condition which has become harder and harder for people to defend what’s happening on the ground.So, you’ve had over the past few years—as you’ve had Israeli governments really going back to Benjamin Netanyahu taking power in 2009 that have been essentially explicitly opposed to a Palestinian state and working hard to make one impossible—it’s become harder for people whose job it is to defend Israel to actually claim as they used to that Israel really wants to create a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians won’t take one. It’s been harder to deal with the fact that now you have human rights organizations calling Israel’s behavior apartheid. So, what do you do? You turn the conversation towards the alleged antisemitism of people who were calling for one equal state, i.e., anti-Zionists. And the more difficult it becomes to defend Israel’s actions on the ground, the harder one needs to work to again create a new conversation about what’s happening among Israel’s critics. And, certainly since October 7th, after the horrifying massacre of Israelis, what’s been happening in Gaza has been pretty terrible to Palestinians.And so, from the point of view of establishment American Jewish organizations, any conversation about what’s happening in Gaza, essentially, or even the West Bank for that matter, you’re already losing if you’re engaged in that conversation. Much better to have a completely different conversation, not about what’s happening to Palestinians there, but about the actions of Israel’s critics here. Now, I don’t want to suggest this is like just some big conspiracy theory. I don’t think it’s that. I think there are organizations that have this mission. But I also just think frankly it’s a natural desire by a lot of people who support Israel to not focus on something which is really, really difficult and unpleasant, which is what’s happening in Gaza, and doesn’t allow Jews to be in the role of the victims, right? Whereas turning the conversation to discussions of antisemitism in the United States is a much more familiar position for American Jews to be in given that estab

Our Zoom call this week will be at the regular time: Friday at Noon EST. (I’ve decided to stop mentioning Friday’s guests at the beginning of these Monday videos.)Our guests this week will be Diana Buttu and Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man. Diana is a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Emily is a Jewish Israeli human rights lawyer. They’ll talk about the challenges and opportunities that this terrible war poses for Palestinians and Jews who want to work together on behalf of Palestinian freedom and mutual coexistence.As usual, paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. They’ll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.Sources Cited in this VideoEighty percent of Gaza’s people have been forced from their homes.The Director-General of the World Health Organization calls conditions in Gaza’s hospitals “unimaginable.”Biden officials warn Israel about its actions in Gaza.Joe Biden’s longstanding opposition to conditioning military aid to Israel.Congressional Democrats debate conditioning aid.When Benjamin Netanyahu said “America can be easily moved.”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!), Dan Berger examines the call from families of some Israeli hostages for an “all for all” swap of Israeli captives and Palestinian prisoners.+972 Magazine’s blockbuster report on how the Israeli military loosened its rules to allow more killing of civilians in Gaza.A Jewish Israeli teacher recounts being jailed for criticizing the Gaza war.Iyad Baghdadi on how to think (and not think) about decolonization in Israel-Palestine.Rabbi Shai Held on Jews and the left after October 7.From Maha Nasser, the best discussion I’ve heard of the historical roots of the phrase, “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.”Fadi Quran shares a personal story about Palestinian children in prison.Haya Alyan on what it’s like to have to audition for people’s empathy.I talked on Slate’s “What’s Next” podcast about the exchange of hostages and prisoners.This Thursday, December 7, in Brooklyn I’ll be talking to Shaul Magid about his new book, The Necessity of Exile.See you on Friday at Noon,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:Hi. I’m recording this on Sunday, December 3rd, and it seems like we’re at a kind of critical turning point or juncture. The pause and release of hostages and prisoners has ended for the time being. And Israel, having cleared out the northern Gaza Strip, is now going into the southern Gaza Strip. And what that means is that the level of dislocation and death, which has already been extraordinary, will even grow higher. Remember, Israel has already forced everyone from the northern Gaza Strip out of the northern Gaza Strip, and largely reduced much of it to rubble. Eighty percent of the people of Gaza are displaced, which is just a staggering number. When you think about how shocked the world has been that 25% of the people in Ukraine were displaced from their homes, it’s now already at 80%. And now, Israel is telling people in parts of the southern Gaza Strip that they have to leave their homes. Many of them are people who only moved there because they were forced out of the northern Gaza Strip. It’s provided some kind of map of supposedly safe places. But since October 7th, the evidence has been that there really is no safe place for Palestinians in Gaza, and certainly there’s no infrastructure to really support human life in the places that they might go where they have no homes. There’s no infrastructure for food. The hospitals are in a circumstance that the head of the WHO said on Sunday that the condition was ‘unimaginable.’So, we are witnessing, we are right in the middle of one of the—certainly present proportion—one of the largest acts of slaughter and dislocation as a percentage of the population that we’ve seen in the 21st century. And the Biden administration has responded to this by changing its rhetoric. So, right after Hamas’ massacre on October 7th, the Biden administration gave Israel full complete rhetorical support. Now what we’re seeing is that the rhetoric has changed, and the Biden administration is offering a series of kind of warnings. They’re saying: don’t kill so many civilians; leave open the possibility of a Palestinian state; be willing to bring back the Palestinian Authority; don’t expel Palestinians out of Gaza into Egypt. They’re saying all these things, and they’re clearly showing that there’s a difference of opinion between the United States and certainly elements of the Israeli government, if not the entire Israeli government.But there’s something, I have to say, somewhat farcical and Kabuki-like about this, right? Because the Biden administra