The Beinart Notebook

“People’s Feet Need to be Held to the Fire.”

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guests are Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security advisor to Barack Obama, co-host of Pod Save the World, and author of All We Say: A History of the United States in 15 Speeches, and Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel program at the Arab Center, Washington DC. We discuss the Democratic Party’s rapid transformation on Israel-Palestine.

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The Costs of Being Prematurely Correct

1w ago00:09:04Tap to summarize

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time: Friday at 1 PM. Our guests will be Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security advisor to Barack Obama, contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, co-host of Pod Save the World and author, more recently, of All We Say: A History of the United States in 15 Speeches, and Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel program at the Arab Center, Washington DC. We’ll discuss the Democratic Party’s rapid transformation on Israel-Palestine: What explains it, what are the new terms of debate, how will this shift shape the midterms and the 2028 presidential election. And will Republican politicians follow suit? Please join us.Cited in Today’s VideoCongressman Jake Auchincloss’s previous statements about military aid to Israel.B’Tselem declared Isarel an apartheid state in 2021.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 on whether the left can continue its winning streak in the Senate race in Michigan.Ben Linder describes what he saw while traveling with Representative Ro Khanna in the West Bank.For the Foundation for Middle East Peace, I talked to Abed Abou Shehada, a community organizer from Jaffa, about the tension between power and purity in Palestinian politics.I talked about Israel-Palestine on the Comedy Cellar’s podcast, Live from the Table.On August 23, I’ll be speaking in Sydney, Australia.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:The shift in the Democratic Party on Israel is so rapid that I think we really haven’t encountered anything like this in my lifetime in terms of the rapidity of a shift in what is considered mainstream political opinion within a party since the debate about gay marriage, you know. That’s the last debate that I think shifted as rapidly as this one. You’ll remember that Barack Obama was elected publicly opposing gay marriage, which was the position of virtually everyone in the Democratic Party. And virtually by the end of the Obama administration, an overwhelming number of Democrats are supporting it, and even the Republicans are throwing in the towel.And now we’re seeing a kind of version of this on Israel-Palestine, where the condition of ending U.S. military aid, which even a year or two ago was a very marginal position among elected Democrats, really only the furthest left fringe of elected Democrats held this position. Now you see that it’s become the mainstream Democratic position, that roughly half the Democrats in the House voted for this amendment by Thomas Massey that would have ended all U.S. security assistance to Israel. And the Massey amendment was so broad that probably if you had a somewhat more narrowly tailored, carefully written amendment, it would have gotten more than even half of these votes. And again, this was a position that probably would have just had a handful of Democratic votes just a year or two ago.I think part of the reason this shift is happening so rapidly is that, like the issue of gay marriage, this is an issue on which there was already a very large gap between what many Democratic politicians believe privately and what they would say publicly. And so, in a way, people could switch so fast because you didn’t really need to convince them of the position. They just needed to be convinced that they could publicly articulate views that they probably had already privately held. And once they realized that actually you could be against AIPAC and still win politically, that it might even be advantageous to be on that position, I think that helps to explain this stampede.And this is the way politics is supposed to work, right? Most politicians are not conviction politicians in the sense that they take positions that put their political careers at risk because they believe it’s the right thing to do. They follow the wind politically, and that’s why activists focus on shifting their incentives and recognizing that politicians are usually going to come last after there’s been a shift in public opinion and at the grassroots.So, on the one hand, this is normal. This is the way it’s supposed to work. And certainly, there should be a recognition that, it’s great when people get to moving in the right direction morally, even if they come late to this position. On the other hand, I think there is something frustrating about the fact that you now have all of these people getting all of this attention, not just politicians, by the way, but also foreign policy officials and even public commentators because lots and lots of people, not just politicians, respond when they see that there is a kind of shift in the public mood.And so, you see people getting a lot of attention, and often a lot of applause, for taking positions that they didn’t hold a little while ago. And the people who actually did hold those positions a few years ago, when they were marginal positions, who were kind of prematurely correct, right, those people were marginalized, often slandered, sometimes even lost their jobs or even criminalized for holding positions that now other people are jumping on board and getting a lot of credit for. And oftentimes the people who were right early on when it was much harder to take that position are often ignored, and sometimes they were even slandered by the very people who now take the positions that they used to hold.So, Rahm Emanuel is getting all of this attention, right, for saying now that there should be US pressure on Israel. But how about taking a look at Rashida Tlaib, who was trashed by her own party again and again and again, or Ilhan Omar, trashed by her own party again and again and again for taking some of the same positions now that Rahm Emanuel has gotten to later on.I’m not saying that Rahm Emanuel and Rashida Tlaib agree on everything. They don’t. But the basic idea that the U.S. should seriously curtail military aid to Israel. Stop being complicit in Israel’s destruction of Palestinian life. This was at the core of the argument that’s been made for years by groups like Jewish Wars for Peace, right? And many of these people in the Gaza encampment, the same people who were basically, who were trashed as not just out of the mainstream, but in the case of the pro-Palestinian protesters, often described as radicals, as zealots, as even antisemitic.And I just think it would be really, really wonderful if some of these people who have now adopted these newfound positions were willing to take a moment and turn and look at some of the people who held those views earlier, and say, you know what? You deserve credit for that, right? And maybe even, I’m sorry that it took me so long to take this view, right? I want to make clear: I’m not suggesting that I am one of those people who was right right at the beginning. I wasn’t. I myself am someone who came to a lot of the views that I currently hold really, really late.And I remember years ago doing a debate with Yousef Munayyar, the Palestinian public intellectual and writer Yousef Munayyar, who’s a friend. And at that point, I was arguing directly opposing Yousef’s argument for equality under the law. I was still a believer in a Jewish state. And now I’ve come to the view that Yusuf had. And Yusuf has been gracious enough to respond to the fact that it took me quite a long time to get to the position that he already held.But I think what’s important for us to remember is that while it’s great when people come to views later on, people who came to those views early, that we should take a moment to recognize people who were prematurely, quote-unquote, prematurely correct, and think about why it is that their voices still remain so marginal. Why is it that it would still be so hard for a Democrat to come along and say, you know what, I think Rashida Tlaib should be considered for a very prominent position in foreign policy in the next Democratic administration, right? Secretary of State. National Security Advisor. People would think that’s a crazy idea. Why is it a crazy idea? Rashida Tlaib was saying these things years before Rahm Emanuel and many of the other Democrats. Maybe that suggests that she has some insight, some wisdom that these people only came too much later, and that we should listen more carefully to her on a range of issues.There’s one particular member of Congress who caught my eye because I’ve followed his career a little bit. He’s a congressman from Massachusetts, a young congressman named Jake Auchinloss. And Jake Auchinloss voted...

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“There Are Lots of Members of Our Caucus Who Refuse to Recognize the Truth.”

1w ago00:10:52Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Chris Van Hollen, Democratic Senator from Maryland. He’s been among the senators most vocal about changing US policy towards Israel. In May, he wrote a New York Times column calling for conditioning US arms sales to the Jewish state and suggested that “Democrats should pursue a last-gasp effort to salvage a two-state solution. If that effort fails, the United States will have to consider other options to secure equal political and legal rights for all.” We talk about his efforts to stop further US-Israeli military integration and defend Palestinian human rights.Topics include:The dramatic shift on Israel in US politics What he expects with respect to Israel of the next Democratic presidential nominee Whether the Iron Dome contributes to Israeli aggressionWhat level of divestment and sanctions he supportsDoes international law give Palestinians the right to violent resistance against Israeli troops?Should the US join the ICC?

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The Pro-Israel Establishment’s Five Stages of Grief

2w ago00:06:56Tap to summarize

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time: Friday at 1 PM. Our guest will be Chris Van Hollen, Democratic Senator from Maryland. He’s been among the senators most vocal about changing US policy toward Israel. In May, he wrote a New York Times column calling for conditioning US arms sales to the Jewish state and suggested that “Democrats should pursue a last-gasp effort to salvage a two-state solution. If that effort fails, the United States will have to consider other options to secure equal political and legal rights for all.” We’ll talk about how the Democratic Party is changing and about what it will take to transform US policy toward Israel-Palestine. Please join us.Cited in Today’s VideoThe five stages of grief.Rahm Emanuel’s speech in Tel Aviv.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!), Charlotte Ritz-Jack reports on how Israel’s withholding of tax revenues is undermining education in the West Bank.Ro Khanna gets a taste of Palestinian life in the West Bank.John Judis on what Democrats should learn from the Graham Platner fiasco.On August 23, I’ll be speaking in Sydney, Australia.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:I’ve been thinking about the speech that Rahm Emanuel gave in Tel Aviv last week, and I think it could be understood as a form of bargaining. I’m taking that term from these famous five stages of grief from the psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. She says the five stages—I’m sure many of you have heard this before—are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And I think if you look at the way that supporters of Israel have responded to this huge shift that we’re seeing in the United States, I think you can see it move through these stages.So, it wasn’t that long ago that the standard line from people who wanted to maintain unconditional U.S. support for Israel was denial that the public opinion had changed, that the United States was no longer an overwhelmingly pro-Israel country in the sense that it wanted America to give Israel unconditional military and diplomatic support. And I think more recently, you’ve seen the second stage, which is anger, which is kind of like, you know, fury that there’s this kind of new anti-Israel, even anti-Zionist politics, and of course, generally defined from within the pro-Israel space as a kind of a tsunami of antisemitism.But Rahm Emanuel’s speech, I think, is a third phase, which is bargaining. Now, Rahm Emanuel had always been, you know, a supporter of unconditional U.S. support for Israel, kind of on the liberal side, but certainly he had never supported the kind of sanctions that he’s talking about before. And I think Rahm Emanuel is now trying to essentially bargain with this new politics, which is emerging in the Democratic Party, and also among young Republicans, and trying to say, okay, the US is going to now pressure Israel more than it has, and especially put sanctions on the West Bank, and there can be a new bargain.I think the problem—and I think, by the way, that the fourth stage, depression, is something we may start to see evidence of in the years to come as well. By depression, I mean people kind of bemoaning the fact that they’ve lost the American public, maybe doing a version, a pro-Israel Jewish version, even of what was called the Benedictine option, which was something we saw among Christian conservatives during the Obama years, where they said, we’ve lost the country. It’s becoming irredeemably progressive and woke. We need to retreat from it into our own kind of enclaves where we can maintain our own virtues. But in this case, being pro-Israel, you know, create your own institutions, this kind of thing.But to go back to the nature of the bargain that Rahm Emanuel is suggesting. It is a significant step forward in that it is an end to unconditional U.S. support for Israel. It would be some form of pressure, although the devil is in the details, if you listen to the speech, that the United States would push Israel to be willing to negotiate towards the idea of a Palestinian state.The problem with the bargain is, I think, in the way that Rahm Emanuel thinks about Palestinians, or you could say doesn’t think that much about Palestinians. So, the first thing that Emanuel says in his speech is he repeats this old kind of chestnut that basically Israel has again and again offered Palestinians everything they should have wanted, and then they said no. This is just really historically inaccurate. I mean, it’s repeated so frequently. It’s like mother’s milk for those of us who kind of grew up in pro-Israel Jewish environments. But really, there are very few, if any, historians who actually believe that as a rendition of what actually happened.And it’s just also important to remember, you know, that Rahm Emanuel is saying that three times Israel offered Palestinian sovereignty. It’s really not true. Israel didn’t offer Palestinian sovereignty at all. When you say that Israel has to have, for instance, that the Palestinian state can’t have a military, and that Israel is going to have some control over its air flight, the airspace, the telecommunication spectrum, troops on part of Palestinian territory in the Jordan Valley, that is not actual sovereignty. There’s something inaccurate about Rahm Emanuel’s kind of precondition for this bargain that he’s suggesting.But then, if you notice the way he goes on to talk about Palestinian leadership in the speech, he has this line where he says the Arab world must assume ‘its rightful place as the adult in the room with the Palestinian leadership.’ So, the clear implication is that the Arabs, as the proxies—by probably means the Saudis and the Emiratis, and maybe the Qataris—as the proxies of the United States, are going to force the Palestinians into accepting things that maybe they weren’t willing to accept in the past. What’s totally missing is the idea that Palestinians should be able to choose their own leaders, and that Palestinians should have the space to actually define for themselves their vision of what they want their freedom to look like. Now, again, that doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be a negotiation process with the Israelis.But what Rahm Emanuel skips is taking seriously Palestinian politics and the right of Palestinians to actually choose a legitimate leadership for themselves. The implication is that essentially America and the Arabs will tell the Palestinians what to do, and then the US will move Israel aways, and then force the Palestinians to accept what Israel is now willing to offer.That actually is part of the reason, actually, I think that the Oslo process failed, right? And it’s especially problematic today when Palestinians have not for many, many years had the opportunity to have a legitimate democratic process to choose legitimate leaders who can offer a vision of Palestinian freedom. And the whole notion of the idea that Palestinian freedom is central to this conversation as opposed to simply, you know, saving Israel from itself is really missing from the bargain that Rahm Emanuel is offering.So, that’s why I think that, again, this represents a kind of progress, but the nature of the bargain that Rahm Emanuel is offering, I still think fundamentally doesn’t take seriously the notion that Palestinians have an inalienable right to freedom, and that they have the right to choose their own leaders, not have them chosen for themselves for them. That’s the part of the bargain that Rahm Emanuel, I think, is getting wrong, and it’s why we’re going to need people to come along who are going to revise that, and I think offer a new kind of formulation which centers the fact that this U.S. policy is not only about saving Israel from itself, that U.S. policy has to have at its center the belief that Palestinians deserve to be free. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

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Darializa Avila Chevalier on Zionism, October 8, and Her Experience in the West Bank

2w ago00:09:29Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Darializa Avila Chevalier, who just won the Democratic nomination for Congress in New York’s 13th district. Avila Chevalier has attracted controversy for her views on Israel-Palestine, among other issues. But the interviews with her that I’ve seen haven’t probed those views in depth. I want to better understand her beliefs about October 7, about Zionism, and about what would constitute a just future in Israel-Palestine. This conversation was co-sponsored by Jewish Currents.Topics include:What she saw in the West BankWhy she went to a rally on October 8Working with Zionists in the Democratic PartyHow she wants Columbia University to changeBecoming Muslim in this anti-Muslim political environment

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We Still Haven’t Said “Never Again”

3w ago00:05:39Tap to summarize

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time: Friday at 1 PM. Our guest will be Darializa Avila Chevalier, who last month won the Democratic nomination for Congress in New York’s 13th district. Avila Chevalier has attracted controversy for her views on Israel-Palestine, among other issues. But the interviews with her that I’ve seen haven’t probed those views in depth. I want to ask what she saw while living in the West Bank and as an activist at Columbia University’s Gaza encampment. I want to better understand her views about October 7, about Zionism and Zionists, and about what she believes would constitute a just future in Israel-Palestine. This conversation will be 45 minutes long, not the usual one hour. Please join us.I’ll also be recording a conversation this week with California State Senator and congressional candidate Scott Wiener about the harassment he recently experienced at San Francisco’s Trans march, and about his views about Gaza and US policy towards Israel-Palestine. That conversation won’t include a live audience, but subscribers will receive it in the coming days.Cited in Today’s VideoBryan Stevenson’s conversation with Ezra Klein.Donald Trump says the Smithsonian museums focus too much on slavery.Israel’s law penalizing municipalities that acknowledge the Nakba.Israel’s defense minister says his government wants Palestinians to leave 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!), I argued that Zohran Mamdani’s influence could help Democrats win back the presidency.In the London Review of Books, Muhammad Shehada wrote about Marwan Barghouti and the Palestinian future.In Politico, Steve Bannon says a democratic socialist could win the White House.On July 9, I’ll be speaking in New York to the Halachic Left, a group of anti-occupation observant Jews.On August 23, I’ll be speaking in Sydney, Australia.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:There’s been a ton of political commentary recently about the 250th anniversary of the United States, which was celebrated this weekend. And one of the things that I found most powerful was a conversation that Ezra Klein did for the New York Times with Bryan Stevenson. And Bryan Stevenson leads something called the Equal Justice Initiative. It’s an initiative that defends Black Americans and others who are discriminated against in the criminal justice system. And also, Stevenson created this extraordinary monument and memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, that, among other things, lists the names of 4,000 Black Americans who were lynched in the United States.And Stevenson said something to Klein that really struck me. Stevenson said that he went to Holocaust museums, and that by the end of a Holocaust museum, the moral imperative is very clear: never again. But Stevenson said that there wasn’t the equivalent in the United States of these kind of museums that had the clear moral imperative—never again—which is why he created this monument and museum in Montgomery.And I think he’s right, you know, it’s quite astonishing when you just step back and realize that there is no monument on the National Mall in Washington, DC to either slavery or to the genocide of Native Americans. It is true there are these museums, fairly recently constructed, one for the American Indian and one for African American history and culture. But even those are now under attack in the Trump administration for, as Trump said in the fall of 2025, for focusing too much on slavery.So, even the very kind of modest degree of memorialization that we have—which is nothing like what you see in Germany and in other countries where the Holocaust was perpetrated—was considered too much for the current President of the United States. And I think there is a direct line between this refusal to look America’s history in the face, America’s history of genocide and white supremacy, and the fact that we now have this blatantly white supremacist politics that’s returned.And you can see something similar in Jewish discourse as well. Which is to say, if America has not had its kind of never-again moment, if the United States doesn’t have a public culture that asks people to say never again as it regards white supremacy and the genocide of Native Americans, that Israel and the broader Jewish world doesn’t have that never-again culture as well.That might sound very strange, of course, because Jews, most of us are raised to always think in terms of never again, as it relates to the Nazi Holocaust. So, we are accustomed to thinking, when we are the victims, of thinking about the importance of this idea of never again. But to even to suggest that Israeli Jews and Jews around the rest of the world might need to start having a public culture of saying never again about the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 is in and of itself an extremely subversive and provocative claim.In fact, though, it is precisely the unwillingness to have this public expression of never again, that just as in the United States, makes the continuing expulsion of Palestinians possible. So, there’s a direct line between the fact that Israel literally penalizes municipalities that commemorate the Nakba of 1948, and the fact that Israel’s stated policy today in Gaza, as recently expressed by Israel’s defense minister, is ‘voluntary migration of Palestinians.’ You know, voluntary, right? I mean, you, you make the place catastrophically unlivable. You prevent any rebuilding that might allow people to have anything resembling a decent life in Gaza. And then you say, you know, our policy is that we think you’d be better off somewhere else, and we’re really willing to help facilitate you. You know, we’ll buy you a plane ride, a plane trip to Somaliland or Rwanda or something, and get you out of here.I think Stevenson’s point is this is the consequence of not having a culture of never again. In the United States, the consequence of not having this culture of never again is Donald Trump. In Israel and in the Jewish world, the consequence of not having a culture of never again, of the fact that whole entire generation after generation of Israeli Jews—but also American Jews, Jews in other parts of the world—grow up within institutions, synagogues, Jewish schools, camps, youth movements, et cetera, where there is no honest reckoning with the Nakba. There’s a direct line between that refusal to say never again when it comes to what a Jewish state did to Palestinians, and the fact that the Jewish state is continuing to do exactly that, to continue this process of mass expulsion.And if we’re ever going to have a fundamental change, both in the United States and in Israel, and more broadly in the Jewish world, it starts with looking hard in the eye these historical crimes and committing to then not allowing them to happen again. I think that the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States is a good moment to remember that. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

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“This Realignment is Happening.”

3w ago00:10:08Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Brad Lander, who last week won the Democratic nomination for Congress in New York’s 10th district. Brad’s victory is a milestone: A Jewish politician, running on his support for Palestinian rights, winning in one of the most Jewish districts in the country. Even a few years ago, it would have been unimaginable. We’ll talk about what Brad learned in his campaign, about where he agrees and disagrees with the other insurgents who won last week in New York City, about how he’ll deal with the AIPAC-aligned Jewish members of Congress he’ll meet in Washington, and about the 1920 congressional race in the Lower East Side, which he believes presaged the race he just won.This conversation was co-sponsored by Jewish Currents.Topics include:What Lander’s victory says about shifting values in the Jewish communityShould Ben Gvir be arrested for war crimes?Distinguishing antisemitism from legitimate protest about Israel Why Lander, who believes Israel is guilty of apartheid and genocide, is still a ZionistWhy Lander does not participate in BDS

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A Disagreement Among Old Friends

4w ago00:10:28Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Rachel Timoner, Senior Rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn. I’ve known her since college. Our political and religious trajectories have taken us in unexpected directions, and left us with different views about Israel-Palestine. I’m grateful she took the time to discuss them with me.Topics include:Is the BDS movement eliminationist?Can a Jewish state be democratic?Is Israel a settler-colonial project?Does the left in the US help the left in Israel-Palestine?Is it okay to call AIPAC “monstrous”?

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Reckoning with Anti-Israel Rage

Jun 2900:12:33Tap to summarize

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time: Friday at 1 PM. Our guest will be Brad Lander, who last week won the Democratic nomination for Congress in New York’s 10th district. Brad’s victory is a milestone: A Jewish congressman, running on his support for Palestinian rights, winning in one of the most Jewish districts in the country. Even a few years ago, it would have been unimaginable. We’ll talk about what Brad learned in his campaign, about where he agrees and disagrees with the other insurgents who won last week in New York City, about how he’ll deal with the AIPAC-aligned Jewish members of Congress he’ll meet in Washington, and about the 1920 congressional race in the Lower East Side, which he believes presaged the race he just won. This conversation will be co-sponsored by Jewish Currents. Please join us.Cited in Today’s VideoScott Wiener is forced to leave the San Francisco Trans march.The UN report on Israel’s targeting of Palestinian children.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 radically the Democratic debate over Israel has changed.In 972mag, Abed Abu Shehada wrote about power, purity and BDS.In her Substack, Jill Jacobs argued that one can oppose AIPAC without viewing it as uniquely malevolent.I spoke in Vienna about Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, there’s a video that’s been going around a lot of a Democratic state senator from San Francisco named Scott Wiener. He’s also running to succeed Nancy Pelosi in the House of Representatives, and he was at this trans march in San Francisco, and basically was kind of forced to leave the trans march by folks who really got in his face, and were really screaming at him, and are really, pretty nasty way about his policies on Gaza.Now, they didn’t physically attack him, but it’s a pretty uncomfortable video to watch. Clearly, it was pretty intimidating behavior. And there’s another video of someone also screaming in a really nasty way, really getting in Wiener’s face at a bar where Wiener was watching a World Cup game.And something about this video of Wiener, I think, has really triggered something in a lot of pro-Israel Jews in particular, and maybe Jews just more generally, because he looks really beleaguered and kind of haggard as he just silently takes all of this abuse. And I think it captured this sense that exists in some elements of the American Jewish community that this is kind of like torrent of hatred at Jews, and there’s kind of, like, nothing you can do about it.And I think it’s worth saying a couple of things about this video. The first is that the people who, in these videos, who are captured in these videos, are kind of behaving like a******s. You know, they’re not physically attacking, but they’re really, really acting in a very intimidating and really kind of nasty way, and I think it’s just worth saying that I think the people that we admire, most people would admire, that certainly I admire, are people who have deep moral conviction and moral passion and fervor and are unyielding in it about what they believe is right, but still, in their interpersonal relations, in the way they treat people, act with a certain level of dignity, a certain level of decency. And I think these folks just didn’t. And I don’t think there’s a justification for just treating people that way. I don’t think you should be an a*****e.Secondly, being an a*****e is not, I think, good politics. You know, Wiener is a classic liberal Zionist guy. He was far too late to recognize that what Israel is doing in Gaza is a genocide, far too late to support cutting off military aid to Israel. But now he actually has come to take those positions. He’s moving in his views in response to public opinion, in response to all the work that pro-Palestine activists have done.And it’s not effective in moving people even further—and I would like him to go further than he is now—by treating people this way. In fact, what you do, I think, is you just allow people to turn the attention in a different direction, and you just make it a lot easier for those people who want to claim that the pro-Palestinian activist movement is motivated by hatred and by, you know, that it’s a kind of mob of hooligans, whatever, that it’s antisemitic. You just make all that a lot easier with these kind of videos. So, I also think it’s counterproductive.And—I won’t say, not but—because I think what those folks did and the way they treated him was wrong. And, it’s really important that people who support Israel in the Jewish community try to understand where this rage is coming from because what’s so frustrating to me is that you have all of these people in my community who spend so much time looking at videos like this one with Wiener, in which people seem to be getting kind of accosted and victimized in some way because they support Israel. And those folks, in my experience, spend so little time trying to understand where this rage might actually be coming from by looking at what Israel is actually doing. And because they spend almost no time looking at what Israel is doing in a way that might help them understand why so many people are enraged, that allows them to then just chalk all of this up to, kind of, to Jew hatred, right?But imagine that these people who are watching this Scott Wiener video were also reading the new UN report that just came out about what Israel has done to Palestinian children. I’m just gonna quote a couple of things from this UN report, because I just think it reminds us, again, as if we need reminding, of the utter horror of what Israel has done, horror that normal people will understandably respond to with grave anger. Again, doesn’t mean they should be a******s about it, but anger is an understandable reaction to the kinds of things that this UN report finds.This UN report is based on a huge amount of evidence, of documentary evidence, of interviews with medical workers, with Palestinians themselves, with journalists, with lawyers, huge amount of documentation. By the way, it also does mention violence against Israeli children on October 7th. It also, the writers of this report gave Israel, I think 13 times they asked Israel to respond to some of the claims in this report, but Israel didn’t respond to any of them because Israel never responds to these things. It never actually engages with the evidence that the UN or human rights groups create. It basically just ignores them and then denounces these reports as kind of antisemitic blood libels, right?The report finds that Israel has killed at least 20,000 children in Gaza since October 7th, injured at least 44,000. Of the children it’s killed, at least 5,000 were under the age of 5. It’s killed more than 5,000 children under the age of 5, and more than 1,000 children under the age of 1. The report quotes an NGO, Save the Children, as suggesting that there may be even more than 5,000 children in Gaza who were buried under the rubble, whose bodies could not even be found by their families.It mentions that Israel dropped so many bombs in Gaza, and a percentage of these bombs don’t go off until, you know, at the time, right? So that 5-10% of them don’t go off, so that within the 61 million tons of debris that exist in Gaza, you have thousands and thousands of, maybe tens of thousands of unexploded ordinances that children in Gaza will be encountering for years and decades to come, especially because Israel isn’t allowing no reconstruction in Gaza, because it’s not allowing any heavy machinery in that would allow people to actually go through this debris and maybe make it a little bit less dangerous.They mention in this report that at least 10,000 children in Gaza have lost their hearing as a result of Israel’s attacks, that more than 1,000 children have had their limbs amputated. Many of those amputations were done without anesthesia because Israel so destroyed the medical system. That there’s more child amputees in Gaza per capita than any other place on the face of the earth.And this killing has not stopped. It’s continuing even after the so-called ceasefire, in part because Israel has established this yellow line and basically shoots people who cross onto the wrong side of the yellow line. But the report notes that the yellow line is not clearly demarcated. It’s often shifting. And so, you have a situation in which at least 100 children since just this January have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.And they also find real evidence of targeted killing of children. The commission interviews 17 medical practitioners in different hospitals, and...

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“An Imperial Decline Story”

Jun 2800:11:00Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guests are Aslı Bâli, professor international law at Yale, and Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. These two are near the top of the list of people I’d want to advise the next Democratic president. They care deeply about the United States, but see past the exceptionalism that prevents so many in Washington from understanding American foreign policy’s actual impact on the world.In a perfect illustration of the insanity of contemporary Washington, Trita—whose predictions about this criminal and catastrophic war in Iran have been proven entirely correct—is being threatened with deportation. We talk about why this war happened, how it has changed the Middle East, and whether Washington will ever learn.Topics include:How Trump, and America, got to this point How the far right and far left have intersected on IsraelStopping Israel’s aggression in Lebanon and the region generallyTrump’s repression of his criticsTrita’s appearance on Tucker Carlson

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All episodes

“People’s Feet Need to be Held to the Fire.”

The Costs of Being Prematurely Correct

“There Are Lots of Members of Our Caucus Who Refuse to Recognize the Truth.”

The Pro-Israel Establishment’s Five Stages of Grief

Darializa Avila Chevalier on Zionism, October 8, and Her Experience in the West Bank

We Still Haven’t Said “Never Again”

“This Realignment is Happening.”

A Disagreement Among Old Friends

Reckoning with Anti-Israel Rage

“An Imperial Decline Story”