Podcast
The Beinart Notebook
Hosted by Peter Beinart · EN
A conversation about American foreign policy, Palestinian freedom and the Jewish people.
peterbeinart.substack.com
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58episodes
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A Disagreement Among Old Friends
2d ago00:10:28Tap to summarizeThis 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
6d ago00:12:33Tap to summarizeThis 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”
1w ago00:11:00Tap to summarizeThis 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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May “Ask Me Anything”
2w ago00:07:22Tap to summarizeThis is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribeA monthly “Ask Me Anything” session is the one perk offered to Premium paid subscribers only. A sample question and answer is free for all. Topics include:* Israel bombing Lebanon* Cenk Uygur* The Brooklyn Food Co-Op Israel boycott* The BDS movement * Right of return negotiations in Oslo
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Israel’s Defenders Say Legal Equality Would Bring Repression and Bloodshed
2w ago00:06:50Tap to summarizeThis week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time: Friday at 1 PM. Our guests will be Aslı Bâli, professor international law at Yale, and Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. When I imagine the people I’d want to advise the next Democratic president, Asli and Trita are near the top of my list. They care deeply about the United States but they’re not American exceptionalists, which helps them see past the mythology that prevents so many in Washington from understanding American foreign policy’s actual impact on the rest of the world. In a perfect illustration of the insanity of contemporary Washington, Trita— whose predictions about this criminal and catastrophic war have been proven entirely correct—is being threatened with deportation. We’ll talk about why this war happened, how it has changed the Middle East and world, and whether Washington will ever learn. Please join us.Ask Me AnythingThis Thursday, June 25, at 4 PM Eastern, we will hold an Ask Me Anything session, for PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS ONLY.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!), Zachary Jablow writes about why the US media still pretends that America’s Mideast wars are about democracy.The Jewish candidate for New York City comptroller who wants to divest from Israel bonds.On the Spiritually Incorrect podcast, I talked about American Christians, American Jews and the US debate over Israel.See you on Thursday and Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:I’ve done a couple conversations recently with folks who argued that if there were equality under the law in Israel-Palestine—if Jews and Palestinians, were treated equally under the law wherever they lived, whether that was in one state or in two states where Jews and Palestinians both lived and were treated equally under the law, or in a confederation, you know, something in between—that liberal democracy would fail, that there would be some kind of dictatorship or authoritarianism, and also that there would be tremendous, tremendous violence, terrible bloodshed. This was really their primary rejoinder to my argument that, equality under the law would better serve the people who live in Israel-Palestine today than the system where you have now, where Jews enjoy legal rights, and Palestinians either hold no citizenship or a kind of second-class citizenship.And I think it’s just worth pausing on this argument that equality under the law would produce a dictatorship, you know, authoritarianism, and also tremendous bloodshed. What I find odd about the argument is that it’s imagining terrible things in the future that could happen if a true liberal democracy failed, without acknowledging that those same terrible things that folks are warning about exist now.It’s odd to say that an Israel-Palestine that treated everybody equally under the law might not succeed as a liberal democracy, without acknowledging that Israel is not a liberal democracy for Palestinians today. Most of the Palestinians who live under Israeli control, those in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, don’t hold Israeli citizenship—a very small number in East Jerusalem, but generally, vast majority in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem live under the control of the State of Israel. It has life and death power over them, but they can’t be citizens of the state in which they live. They can’t vote for the government that has life and death decision-making power over them. In the West Bank, they live under military law, under a completely different legal system than their Jewish neighbors, right?So, this is not by anyone’s definition, I think, could be considered a liberal democracy. This is the situation in which most Palestinians live. A minority of Palestinians, so-called Arab-Israelis, have a kind of second-class citizenship where they can vote, but the structure of the state is designed to prioritize, in many, many, many ways, prioritize the needs of Israeli Jews over them, right?But when people say that liberal democracy might not succeed, they seem to be ignoring the fact that Israel is not a liberal democracy for Palestinians now. And then when they say, well, this situation, a situation in which people were treated equally under the law, might be tremendously violent, I wonder, are they paying attention to how violent the current situation is?Israel has killed maybe 100,000 Palestinians, based on the best estimates we have in Gaza alone, right? That’s maybe roughly, you know, 5% of the population not even counting the injured. And the killing continues. Israel’s continuing to kill Palestinians despite this ceasefire, not to mention the many who are dying because there’s been no rebuilding of the medical infrastructure because there’s no sewage system, right? This is a recipe for continued death in Gaza on a pretty significant scale. And in the West Bank, you have attacks and killings of Palestinians virtually constantly, right?So, when you say Israel-Palestine might succumb, might be a very, very violent place, you have to measure that against how extraordinarily violent it is for Palestinians today. And I think part of this move of saying Israel-Palestine might be very dangerous, might be very violent, is that it actually simply kind of ignores what the reality is for Palestinians today, and in a way, suggests that the only real question that we should be concerned about is, would it be more or less dangerous for Israeli Jews?But even there Israel is a very dangerous place for Israeli Jews, too. Not nearly as dangerous as for Palestinians, but when you compare it to the life situations of Jews in virtually every other large Jewish community in the world, living as an Israeli Jew is much more dangerous. Twelve hundred Israeli Jews were killed on October 7th. Israelis have continued to die and be wounded in the wars in Israel’s assault on Gaza, in fighting against Hezbollah.So, again, when one says this could be a dangerous place, one has to ask, compared to what Israel is currently an extraordinarily dangerous place for Palestinians. Really, probably being a Palestinian under Israeli control is one of the most dangerous situations you could possibly be in in the world, certainly in Gaza, and even in the West Bank, and even for Jews, despite their legal supremacy and their relative safety, this situation of domination and oppression, structural violence against Palestinians, produces this counter-violence, and also creates incentives for other groups, whether, like, Hezbollah or Iran, to come in on the Palestinian side, and also use violence against Israeli Jews. Which means that Israeli Jews are going into bomb shelters, right, all the time in a way that Jews in the United States, in France, in Australia, in Britain, in Canada, no matter what you think of the dangers of antisemitism, those places are simply not doing at all, right?So, it just seems to me, if we’re going to have an honest conversation about the potential perils of trying to move towards equality under the law in Israel-Palestine, which is a very, very frightening prospect for many, many Jews—I think much less frightening prospect for Palestinians, but a frightening prospect for Israeli Jews—we have to compare that against the baseline of how authoritarian and how extraordinarily violent Israel-Palestine is today.And unless you’re facing that squarely, it seems to me, you can’t have a productive conversation about the potential risks and the potential opportunities in trying to move from a situation that is now classified as apartheid by the world’s leading human rights organizations towards a legal reality in which people are treated equally under the law, regardless of whether they’re Palestinian or Jewish. 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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Christian Anti-Zionism
3w ago00:10:59Tap to summarizeThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comOur guest is Munther Isaac, a Palestinian minister and theologian based in the West Bank who runs the Bethlehem Institute for Peace and Justice. He gained international attention for his Christmas 2023 sermon, Christ in the Rubble. We talk about Palestinian life in the West Bank, Munther’s critique of Christian Zionism, his views of Hamas and his interview with Tucker Carlson.Topics include:How Isaac’s understanding of scripture leads him to a very different worldview than American conservative Christians like Mike HuckabeeMaintaining faith in a just God in an unjust worldChristian-Islamic relations within PalestineResponding to the argument that a Muslim-dominated Palestine would oppress other religionsThe argument that resistance should be non-violentHow to think about Tucker Carlson
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Is a Jewish Democracy a Contradiction in Terms?
4w ago00:12:21Tap to summarizeThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comDan Shapiro served as ambassador to Israel under the Obama administration. He’s currently Distinguished Fellow at the Scrowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council. Shapiro and I hold very different views about what needs to happen in Israel-Palestine, so I invited him to discuss them.Topics include:Why there has been no two-state solutionShould the US have conditioned aid on an end to settlement growth?Does Israel practice apartheid?Why should a Palestinian state be demilitarized but not Israel?Why should Hamas be excluded from Palestinians elections but Ben Gvir be allowed to run in Israeli ones?How power affects what is considered realistic and fair
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A Reply to Sam Harris
4w ago00:17:57Tap to summarizeThis week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time: Friday at 1 PM. Our guest will be Munther Isaac, a Palestinian minister and theologian based in the West Bank. He gained international attention for his Christmas 2023 sermon, Christ in the Rubble. We’ll talk about Palestinian life in the West Bank, Munther’s critique of Christian Zionism, his views of Hamas and his interview with Tucker Carlson. Please join us.I also recorded a conversation with former US ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro, where we debated the reasons the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” didn’t produce a Palestinian state, and whether a Jewish democracy is a contradiction in terms. We’ll send that conversation to subscribers this week as well.Cited in Today’s VideoSam Harris on why he won’t debate critics of Israel.B’Tselem on Military Order 101.Salam Fayyad’s exit interview with the New York Times.Neve Gordon on “human shields.”Yoav Gallant’s statement on October 9, 2023.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!), Josh Nathan-Kazis writes about how the Israel Day Parade backfired.In the New York Times, I argued that America will keep launching disastrous wars until the people who champion them are held to account.Nikole Hannah-Jones on the end of the civil rights era.Israel’s new strategy for changing global opinion.See you on Friday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, there’s a guy named Sam Harris, been a pretty prominent political commentator in the U.S. for quite a few years. He really kind of specializes a lot in what he claims is the kind of thread of jihadism or Islamism to the West. And he’s also a supporter, a defender of the state of Israel.And he wrote a post a couple days ago that’s been getting a lot of attention—I’ve seen it sent around a lot—about why he won’t debate critics of Israel. His argument is that he won’t debate critics of Israel because the things that he believes are so self-evidently true that it would be a waste of time to subject them to interchange with someone who holds a different point of view. And, because Sam Harris is a pretty kind of highbrow defender of Israel, I just think it’s worth looking at the statements that he considers to be self-evident statements of fact. And you can ask yourself whether, in fact, you think they are the case or not.The first thing he claims is that you should understand the conflict in Israel-Palestine as a struggle between a free society, Israel, and jihadism. So, let’s take the first part of that equation: the idea that Israel is a free society. Sam Harris offers no evidence for this. He doesn’t quote any human rights organizations, he doesn’t quote any laws, anything, he just asserts it, ex cathedra: Israel is a free society.Okay, well, imagine you’re reading that, you’re sitting there in the West Bank. The West Bank has been under Israeli control since 1967. You’re a Palestinian. You’ve lived your entire life without citizenship in the state in which you live. A government that has life and death control over you does not give you the right to vote. You live under military law, with a 99% prosecution rate, even though your Jewish neighbors enjoy full due process as Israeli citizens. You need military permission to travel, even though they can travel freely, and you’re also subject to something called Military Order 101, which says that you need military permission if you want to congregate with 10 or more people for a political purpose, even in a private home. Even in a private home, you can’t congregate for a political purpose with 10 or more people without military permission. This is what Sam Harris says, without any evidence, he describes as a free society. I suspect for that West Bank Palestinian, it doesn’t feel all that free.The second part is the idea that you can understand Palestinians and Palestinian politics in the Israel-Palestinian conflict through the prism of jihadism. This is what Sam Harris writes. ‘The problem in the Middle East’—actually not just Israel-Palestine, the entire Middle East—’is not, and never has been the existence of the state of Israel. The problem is jihadism, Islamism, Islamic extremism, Islamofascism, militant Islam, or whatever words you want to describe the belligerence and triumphal lunacy of those who take the most pernicious doctrines of Islam too seriously.’So, for Sam Harris, Muslims and Palestinians are synonymous, and the problem is that too many of those Muslims are jihadis. There’s no evidence that Sam Harris has ever heard of a guy named George Habash, for instance. George Habash, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the most radical Palestinian organizations in the 1970s. It was responsible for some of the most spectacular and terrible acts of violence, of armed resistance, including against civilians.Why am I mentioning George Habash? Because he was a Greek Orthodox Christian who grew up singing in a choir, right? The head also of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another Palestinian group that was more radical than Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, that denounced Arafat for accepting Israel’s existence in 1988, also a Christian. Edward Said, perhaps the most prominent English-language Palestinian intellectual in the world, a Christian. Azmi Bishara, perhaps the most important Palestinian politician in Israel proper at a certain period of time, a Christian. Hanan Ashrawi, famous as one of the key figures in the First Intifada and the early Oslo years, also a Christian.Sam Harris shows no evidence of any understanding whatsoever that there are Palestinian Christians, that many of the people who have been the harshest critics and activists against Zionism in Israel, even violently, have been Christian. And, not to mention the fact that even many Palestinian Muslims, for instance, in a party like Fatah, are not actually Islamists. So, all of this is considered not mentioned at all by Sam Harris, and it’s just self-evident for him that you can understand Palestinians and Palestinian politics through the prism of jihadism. And this is a guy who’s considered to be kind of like an intellectual defender of the state of Israel.Then he says, you may have heard this one before, he says, if the Palestinians laid down their arms, there would be peace. Now, it’s first worth noting, right, that peace can mean a lot of different things, right? I mean, peace just means the absence of conflict. You might say that the Native Americans got peace from the United States government in the 19th and then through the 20th century, because actually, there’s really no open-armed warfare between Native Americans and the United States anymore, because the Native population was largely destroyed in the United States. So, this category of peace says nothing about things like freedom and justice that we might think are also important values.But even on the question of peace, this idea that Sam Harris has, that Palestinians have never put down their weapons, and if they did, everything would be fine. He evidently is not aware that for the last 20 years since the end of the Second Intifada, the Palestinian Authority has put away its weapons. Not only has it not done any significant amount of armed resistance itself, it’s actually worked with the Israeli Defense Force to prevent other Palestinians from committing armed resistance.This, by the way, is something that the African National Congress in South Africa, or the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland never did—never would have thought of doing—because it would have been considered so wildly collaborationist. This has actually been the strategy of the Palestinian Authority for the last 20 years. And for several of those years, the Palestinian Prime Minister was a guy named Salam Fayyad, who was considered the most moderate Palestinian politician, the one who was most popular in Washington, the one who was most popular in Israel, right? The person who went furthest in essentially doing the test that Sam Harris is sure that could get the Palestinians everything they want: putting down their arms—not just putting down arms—but preventing othe...
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“You Cease, We Fire”
Jun 500:12:48Tap to summarizeThis is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.comJames Zogby is a scholar on Middle East issues and a Visiting Professor at New York University Abu Dhabi. From 2001 to 2017, he was part of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee. He was appointed by Barack Obama to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. He is the founder of the Arab American Institute. Topics include:Why is Israel in constant conflict with Lebanon?What will become of Gaza and its people?The history of the fight for Palestinian rights within the Democratic PartyRight-wing opponents of Israel like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor-GreeneThe need for a new generation of presidential advisors
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A Glimpse into The Horror in Gaza
Jun 100:09:24Tap to summarizeThis week’s Zoom call will be at a special time: Thursday at 1 PM. Our guest will be Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and author of the new book, When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine. She has been sanctioned by the Trump administration, which has barred her from entering the United States and frozen her assets in the country. We’ll talk about her new book, her investigations into Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank, her views of US, European, and United Nations policy toward Israel, and about the criticisms of her. We’ll also talk about what it’s like to live under US sanctions.Cited in Today’s VideoMuhammad Shehada’s comments about life in Gaza, in conversation with Jehad Abusalim and Adam Shatz for the London Review of Books podcast.The Israeli human rights group Gisha on Israel’s restrictions on the import of toilets—and other essential civilian goods—into Gaza.The World Health Organization on the surge of “ectoparasite infections and rodent-borne illnesses” 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!), Will Alden profiles Curt Mills, one of the intellectual architects of the anti-Israel right.See you on Thursday,PeterVIDEO TRANSCRIPT:So, there are a lot of Jews—I know some of them well myself—who are kind of both bewildered and enraged by this turn in American public opinion and in American politics against Israel, as reflected in my own city, New York, for instance, and the fact that Mayor Zohran Mamdani is the first mayor in many years not to march in the Israel Day parade, or that there’s this effort to boycott Israeli goods at this Brooklyn co-op. And there’s this sense that, kind of, why is it, people ask, many Jews ask, that there’s this fury against Israel, this rage?And the answer that’s so frequently given is that this is just an eruption of age-old antisemitism, right? A kind of return to the ancient art of Jew-hating. And of course, there is antisemitism. There is Jew-hating. Antisemitism is rising, but I just wish that some of those folks who are enraged and bewildered by this turn in public opinion, in American politics against Israel, would just spend a little bit of time looking at what Israel does, looking at what life is like for Palestinians under Israeli control.Because if you start to look even just a little, if you’re willing to open your eyes even just a little, then this anger at Israel, even this rage at Israel, and this desire to fundamentally change the way America interacts with Israel, it stops looking so pathological. It stops looking so antisemitic, because you can start to understand why people would be so upset, right?But so frequently, the people in our community who most need to look, just never look. And I just want to give one little example of what it looks like to take even a tiny peek at what it’s like to be a Palestinian under Israeli control, in this case, in Gaza. This is an extended quote from my friend Muhammad Shehada, who is from Gaza, and he was interviewed for the London Review of Books podcast by Adam Shatz in a recent episode. And I’m going to quote what Muhammad says about life in Gaza now. Muhammad says:The biggest struggle at the moment is basic shelter. Almost everyone I know is on the street. Every single member of my family, every friend that I have, every colleague, every neighbor had their homes either bombed, burned to the ground, bulldozed, detonated from the inside, or heavily damaged to the point that it cannot house any human habitation. The luckiest of my friends is Anas. Anas lives in a bombed-out building on the first floor. The building was bombed from the very top, so the last two floors are gone. The staircase connecting the multiple floors in that condominium is cut in half. The bottom floor was bombed repeatedly, so it’s also burned completely. In the apartment where Anas lives, it doesn’t have any windows, doesn’t have any doors, there’s no door to even enter the apartment. There’s a giant hole in the living room from an unexploded 2,000-pound bomb that Israel dropped on that tower that went right through it, and it landed on the ground floor, so he literally lives above that unexploded bomb. His daily occupation during the day is finding water or food. It has become one of the most insane struggles. Or just a place to relieve yourself. A restroom is becoming a dream. Israel is literally banning toilets from entering Gaza up until this moment, so you have to improvise, and the nighttime struggle is Anas sleeping with one eye open to protect his only daughter from mice, rats, scorpions, spiders, snakes, cockroaches, mosquitoes, flies that have had this sort of unprecedented nesting ground in either infinite piles of garbage that Israel does not allow to be collected, or disposed of, or in destroyed sewage systems, or in the rubble of homes where those rodents and insects have been feasting on the decomposing bodies of thousands of Palestinians under the rubble.Now, if you think Muhammad is being hyperbolic, I’ll link to the Gisha report—Gisha, an Israeli Human Rights Organization—which notes that portable toilets, along with sleeping bags, tarps, non-electric wheelchairs, and flashlights, and other items like that, have all been deemed dual-use items by Israel, which means it’s very, very difficult to bring them in to Gaza. And another report by the World Health Organization, which has recorded that since the beginning of 2026, there have been more than 70,000 cases of ectoparasitic infections and rodent-borne illnesses in Gaza. And health workers, according to the World Health Organization, say that, ‘the collapse of sanitation systems, mountains of rubble, overflowing sewage, and overcrowded displacement camps have created fertile conditions for disease to spread.’So, the Israeli government will say, well, this is because Hamas has not disarmed. So, first of all, it’s fundamentally and profoundly immoral to deny people the basic necessities of life—toilets, toilets, basic sanitation systems—because you are upset that Hamas has not disarmed. Secondly, Hamas’ criteria for disarming is that they’re not willing to do so absent some horizon by which Israel’s control over Gaza and the Palestinian people will end, right? I have lots and lots of criticisms of Hamas, and I’ve registered them many, many, many times. But this basic idea that you don’t disarm absent any possibility that you are going to get your freedom is not a Hamas-only idea. Hamas didn’t invent this.Nelson Mandela vehemently refused to give up armed resistance in negotiations with the South African government when they tried to get him to foreswear armed resistance in the 1980s, and he said repeatedly, we will abandon armed resistance, we will turn over our guns when we have a date for a free election. The Irish Republican Army, similarly, was not willing to disarm until they knew that Catholics would get political equality.So, this demand that Hamas has to disarm, without any reason for Hamas whatsoever to believe that it would bring Palestinians closer to freedom, an end to the blockade, an end to occupation, is a very typical perspective of a group that’s representing a population that’s lacking basic rights. And Palestinians can also look at the West Bank and see the consequences of what happens when you do disarm without any guarantee that your occupation will end. They can look at the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority has been for 20 years, not only not turning to armed resistance, but collaborating with Israel to stop armed resistance, and they can see what’s happening. Palestinians losing more and more and more land, more and more violence against Palestinians who are completely defenseless as Israel takes their land and often takes their lives, right?This is just completely indefensible at the most basic, gut, human level. And the problem in the Jewish community, the problem with so many of these peoples, many of whom I know who are otherwise really good people, is they’re just not willing to look at these things. What they do is they look at the people who are enraged at Israel, or they look at Zohran Mamdani, or they look at people who are boycotting, and they don’t understand where this anger comes from. But if they would just pay attention to what Israel is actually doing, they would understand where this anger comes from. They could see it as something other than pathological and antisemitic, and they themselves might actually start to feel that kind of anger themselves.Because the right human response to what Israel is doing to Muhammad Shehada’s family and Muhammad Shehada’s friends is anger. It is anger. And it is a demand that the United States should not be supporting this kind of behavior. But you have to see that. You have to see that in order to understand the actual dynamics of what’s happening in the shifting debate about America and ...
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