The Biden Administration’s Backdoor Ethnonationalism
lundi 9 septembre 2024 • Durée 05:11
Shouldn’t the US Care as Much about Americans Killed by the IDF as it Cares about Americans Killed by Hamas?
Our call this week will be at our new regular time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest will be Simon Fitzgerald, a trauma surgeon in Brooklyn who has worked in telemedicine in Gaza, particularly at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis with Dr. Khaled Alser. According to colleagues, Dr. Alser has been abducted by Israeli forces and tortured at Ofer Prison and at the notorious Sde Teiman prison camp in the Negev Desert. Dr. Fitzgerald will talk about his experience doing telemedicine in Gaza and about the fate of Dr. Alser.
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 Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
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Sources Cited in this Video
The Americans injured or killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank.
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.)
On the Jewish Currents (subscribe!) podcast, Arielle Angel talks with Ben Lorber and Shane Burley, authors of Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism, about antisemitism and the left.
The Biden administration’s double standard on “river to the sea.”
On September 25, I’ll be speaking at Vanderbilt University.
Please consider supporting a scholarship fund for displaced students in Gaza who want to study in the US.
See you on Friday,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. So, last week, my video was about Hersh Goldberg-Polin and the other Israeli hostages that were killed by Hamas. And Hersh Goldberg-Polin got a particular a lot of attention in the United States because he was American. His parents spoke of the Democratic National Convention, and he became someone who many, many Americans knew. And many Americans mourned his murder by Hamas, which is as it should be. I mean, we should care about all human lives. And we have, as Americans, a particular right to be concerned about the fate of other Americans.
And now we found that an American has been shot and killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces. On Friday, an American activist named Aysenur Eygi was shot while she was protesting at an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. And this has been happening fairly frequently in recent years. Several weeks earlier, another American, Amado Sison, was struck by live ammunition in the back of the leg by Israeli forces. Earlier this year, two 17-year-old Palestinian Americans were killed in the West Bank: Tawfic Abdel Jabbar from Louisiana and Mohammad Khdour from Florida. In 2020, a 78-year-old Palestinian American, Omar Assad, was dragged from his car by Israeli forces bound and blindfolded, and then had a heart attack, while in Israeli custody after he’d been left under those conditions for like an hour so by Israeli forces. In 2021, a prominent Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed by an Israeli sniper while she was wearing a press vest, covering an Israeli Defense Forces raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
There is, I think, by any honest assessment, a tremendous difference between the way in the United States in public conversation, and indeed the American government, respond when American Jews are killed in Israel versus what happens when Palestinian Americans, or in the case of this young woman, Aysenur Eygi, a Turkish American, were killed in the West Bank. The US government does not respond in the same way. There’s not the same level of public outcry, and there’s not the same level of demand by the US government that the people who committed these killings be held responsible.
And what disturbs me about this so much, and I think makes this so important beyond the preciousness of the individual lives at stake, is that the Biden administration—and remember, all of these deaths have been happening, these killings by Israelis of Americans, have been happening under the Biden administration. The Biden administration is engaged in a fight against Donald Trump—Kamala Harris and Joe Biden—essentially about the idea of ethnonationalism, about the idea of whether America is a country in which all of its citizens are considered equal under the law, that their lives are equally valuable, irrespective of what their race, religion, and ethnicity is.
That, of course, is not the principle that governs Israel as a Jewish state, which elevates the rights and the lives of Jews over Palestinians. But what you see in the way that even a Democratic administration responds to the deaths of Americans in Israel is that they essentially adopt the ethnonationalist prism, in which certain lives are more valuable than others that exists in Israel, and they essentially therefore end up taking the position that the Trump campaign is arguing about what kind of country America should be, right. This is Donald Trump’s vision of America. An America in which there are hierarchies between different citizens based on religion, ethnicity, race, etc.
And the Democratic party is ostensibly fighting in a desperate fight to make sure we are not that kind of a country. And yet, when it comes to the Americans who are killed in Israel, either by Hamas or by the Israeli Defense Forces, we essentially adopt that very hierarchy, and the American lives matter more if they’re Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a American Jew, then they are if they are Shireen Abu Akleh, an American Palestinian, or Omar Assad, an American Palestinian, or indeed I center as Aysenur Eygi, a Turkish American. And so, it seems to me, as a fundamental matter of principle in terms of what the Biden Administration and what the Harris campaign says they want to stand for, that this represents a portrayal of their of the vision of America that they are fighting for. And on that basis alone, it seems to me, they should be that that there is every bit as much justice for the Palestinian and other Americans who are killed by Israel, as there are for the American Jews like Hersh Goldberg-Polin who were killed by Hamas.
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
Let Zionists Speak
lundi 26 août 2024 • Durée 05:57
Our call this week will be at a special time: Wednesday at 11 AM Eastern
Our guest will be Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute and one of the most thoughtful and best-informed observers in Washington about the relationship between Israel, Hezbollah and Iran. We’ll discuss Israel’s recent attack, US policy and the danger of a regional war.
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 Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Omar Barghouti, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
We’ve added a new membership category, Premium Member, which is $179 per year (or higher, if you want to give more). In addition to our weekly Zoom interviews, Premium Members will get access to a monthly “ask me anything” zoom call.
Our first “ask me anything” will be this Thursday, August 29 at 11 AM Eastern. Premium Subscribers will get a Tuesday email that includes links to both our Wednesday call with Trita and the “ask me anything” on Thursday. (If you have any questions, email me).
If you’re interested in becoming a premium or regular member, hit the button below.
We’re also slightly increasing the prices of regular paid subscriptions. It’s the first time I’ve done this since I launched the newsletter a few years ago. Starting September 1, regular subscriptions will be $79 per year (up from $72) and $7.99 per month (up from $7). This will apply to all new subscriptions and to everyone whose subscription renews. If this increase creates a hardship for you, email me and we’ll figure it out.
Sources Cited in this Video
The cancellation of Joshua Leifer’s book launch event.
A poster calls for “Zionists” to leave a London neighborhood.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
Raja Khouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson
jeudi 5 septembre 2024 • Durée 46:02
Raja Khouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson are co-authors of the book, The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Want to Know About Each Other. Since October 7, dialogue between Palestinians and Jews has become even more difficult, and there are those in both communities—and on the left and right—who question its value. I’m excited to ask Raja and Jeffrey to respond to those criticisms, and to explain how they believe that greater dialogue between Palestinians and Jews can contribute to the struggle for equality, freedom, and safety for everyone.
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
Why Are Democrats Afraid to Fight for Freedom?
lundi 1 juillet 2024 • Durée 11:59
Our call this week will be at our new regular time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest will be Rami Khouri, Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the American University of Beirut, Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, DC, and a regular columnist for Al Jazeera online. Rami lived in Beirut for 17 years and has for many years written about relations between Israel and Lebanon. We’ll talk about the terrifying reports that a full-scale war may break out between Israel and Hezbollah.
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 Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
Sources Cited in this Video
Ezra Klein, Ross Douthat, and Michelle Cottle on whether Biden can not only win, but govern.
(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)
In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Alex Kane explains why ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas are stuck.
Although overshadowed by the horror in Gaza, many Palestinians in the West Bank have grown desperate economically as Israel has further restricted their right to travel and work since October 7. Please consider supporting this crowdfunding campaign for two West Bank families in dire need.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
Jamaal Bowman’s Courage
mercredi 26 juin 2024 • Durée 10:24
I made a second video this week because I wanted to say something about Jamaal Bowman, who lost his primary race for Congress last night. He lost because he had the courage to visit the West Bank and speak about what he saw. He lost because he’s an unusual politician. He has moral courage.
Our guests this Friday at 11 AM will be Raja Khouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson, co-authors of the book, The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Want to Know About Each Other. Since October 7, dialogue between Palestinians and Jews has become even more difficult, and there are those in both communities—and on the left and right—who question its value. I’m excited to ask Raja and Jeffrey to respond to those criticisms, and to explain how they believe that greater dialogue between Palestinians and Jews can contribute to the struggle for equality, freedom, and safety for everyone.
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 Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
See you on Friday,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So, last night, Jamaal Bowman lost his race for re-election to Congress. And I wanted to say something about him and that race. Now, it’s important not to be willing to overlook the flaws of people just because you profoundly agree with them on really important policy issues. So, I don’t want to suggest that Jamaal Bowman didn’t make any mistakes in this race. I think it was unfortunate when he said that Jews in Westchester segregate themselves. If you look at the context, I think you can understand what he was trying to say, which was essentially that people would understand him better if people live together more, and that would actually break down antisemitism. But still, I think it was probably a territory that he shouldn’t have ventured into. But that said, again, even though we need to be willing to be critical of people we disagree with, it’s also important that we not be naive.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
What if Americans Saw Palestinian and Jewish Israeli Lives as Equal?
lundi 24 juin 2024 • Durée 09:30
Our call this week will be at our new regular time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guests will be Raja Khouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson, co-authors of the book, The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Want to Know About Each Other. Since October 7, dialogue between Palestinians and Jews has become even more difficult, and there are those in both communities—and on the left and right—who question its value. I’m excited to ask Raja and Jeffrey to respond to those criticisms, and to explain how they believe that greater dialogue between Palestinians and Jews can contribute to the struggle for equality, freedom, and safety for everyone.
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 Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
Sources Cited in this Video
Mehdi Hasan’s interview with Representative Dean Phillips.
The New York Times’ investigation of Israel’s Sde Teiman detention center. Hasan’s reference to a prisoner who reportedly died by rape comes from an UNRWA interview with a 41-year-old detainee who gave an account similar to the one that Younis al-Hamlawi gave The New York Times about being forced to sit on a hot metal stick. That prisoner claimed another detainee subjected to the procedure had died as a result.
Why the history of Israel’s restrictions on movement from Gaza dates back to 1991.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
Apocalyptic Thinking and Israel’s Looming War in Lebanon
lundi 17 juin 2024 • Durée 07:19
Our call this week will be at a special time: Thursday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest this week will be Geoffrey Levin, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University and author of the new book, Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978, which explores a largely unknown history of American Jewish criticism of Israel in the first decades of its existence, and how it was quashed. It’s a particularly relevant history today given the rise of Jewish organizing against the war in Gaza.
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 Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
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.)
The Jewish Currents (subscribe!) podcast discusses the challenges of being part of an American synagogue community during this war.
Like so many people with family in Gaza, the political analyst Khalil Sayegh has endured unthinkable agony since this war began. He’s seen his father and sister killed. He’s trying to bring his remaining family members to safety. If you can help, please do. Please also consider helping the Alshawa family, which is sheltering in central Gaza and hoping to evacuate to safety.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
Who is Israeli?
lundi 10 juin 2024 • Durée 06:10
For the foreseeable future, our Zoom calls will be held at a new time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest this week will be Raef Zreik, associate professor of Jurisprudence at Ono Academic College in Israel, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute, and a former member of the executive committee of Balad, one of Israel’s predominantly Palestinian parties. He’s one of the most brilliant theorists of Palestine and Israel, and I want to ask him to step back from the nightmarish events of the moment to talk about their long-term consequences for relations between Palestinians and Israeli Jews.
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 Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)
The Jewish Currents (subscribe!) podcast discusses secularism and the Jewish left.
Like so many people with family in Gaza, the political analyst Khalil Sayegh has endured unthinkable agony since this war began. He’s seen his . He’s trying to bring his remaining family members to safety. If you can help, . Please also consider helping the , which is sheltering in central Gaza and hoping to evacuate to safety.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
The Strangeness of US Policy Toward Israel
lundi 3 juin 2024 • Durée 05:31
For the foreseeable future, our Zoom calls will be held at a new time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest this week will be Congressman Ro Khanna, who represents the 17th district of California and is a leading progressive voice in Democratic foreign policy. He has called on Israel to immediately halt its attack on Rafah and also tried to convince protesters against the war to support Joe Biden’s reelection. We’ll talk about US policy toward the war, whether Biden can win back progressives who feel betrayed by it, and about the relationship between progressivism and Zionism more generally.
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 Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
Sources Cited in this Video
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.)
The Jewish Currents (subscribe!) podcast discusses the end of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Like so many people with family in Gaza, the political analyst Khalil Sayegh has endured unthinkable agony since this war began. He’s seen his father and sister killed. He’s trying to bring his remaining family members to safety. If you can help, please do. Please also consider helping the , which is sheltering in central Gaza and hoping to evacuate to safety.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
Why the Biden Administration Didn’t Foresee the Progressive Outrage at its Gaza Policy
lundi 27 mai 2024 • Durée 07:33
For the foreseeable future, our Zoom calls will be held at a new time: Friday at 11 AM Eastern.
Our guest this week will be Jamil Dakwar, a human rights lawyer, adjunct professor at New York University, and former senior attorney with Adalah, which advocates for the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel. He’ll be speaking in his personal capacity. We’ll talk about the case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and the case against Israeli and Hamas leaders at the International Criminal Court.
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 Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.
Sources Cited in this Video
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!), Raphael Magarik talks with Maya Wind about her book, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom.
Like so many people with family in Gaza, the political analyst Khalil Sayegh has endured unthinkable agony since this war began. He’s seen his father and sister killed. He’s trying to bring his remaining family members to safety. If you can help, please do. Please also consider helping the Alshawa family, which is sheltering in central Gaza and hoping to evacuate to safety.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
Apple Podcasts
🇨🇦 Canada - newsCommentary
31/07/2026
#85
🇨🇦 Canada - newsCommentary
18/06/2026
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🇬🇧 Grande Bretagne - newsCommentary
30/05/2026
#97
🇩🇪 Allemagne - newsCommentary
30/04/2026
#93
Mira Sucharov’s study of what American Jews mean by the word “Zionist.”
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 the Jewish Currents (subscribe!), Maya Rosen investigates the Israelis who want to settle southern Lebanon.
Please consider supporting a scholarship fund for displaced students in Gaza who want to study in the US.
See you on Wednesday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. There was a fair amount of attention last week to the experience of my friend, Josh Leifer, who’s launch event for his excellent new book, Tablets Shattered, was closed because the bookstore wouldn’t permit him to be speaking alongside a moderator who was a ‘Zionist’ rabbi. It produced a lot of commentary. And I do think this is something which is growing as a tendency, this tendency to say that if you are a Zionist, then you are kind of excluded from conversations. There was even a thing that happened in the UK where there was a march, which said that Zionists had to leave a certain neighborhood in London.
I wanna explain why I think this is self-defeating and unwise. The first reason is that Palestinians, and Jews who support Palestinian freedom, have been excluded from a very, very long time, and still are, sometimes even by force of law. And the argument against that is that these are restrictions on free speech, and that people should have the right to be heard, and to make their case. So, this is what many of us have argued about: the rights of, you know, Jews who don’t support a Jewish state to speak at Hillel, for instance, or the rights of Palestinians to express their point of view and not be called antisemites just because they don’t support a Jewish state.
And I do think you undermine the clarity of that argument when people on the Left turn around and then basically say, Zionists are not allowed to have a platform in our spaces, right? I think it undermines the effort, the really important effort to say that in other spaces, whether they’re establishment Jewish spaces or kind of more mainstream American political spaces, that Palestinians—the vast majority of whom, of course, don’t support the idea of a Jewish state, or other people who don’t support a Jewish state—should have the right to speak, right. That was something that tragically didn’t happen at the Democratic National Convention. But I think it makes it harder to make that case if you’re excluding people on your own turf.
Secondly, I of course understand the logic, which would say, well, Zionism is the ideology of the state. This state is classified as an apartheid state by a lot of human rights organizations. It’s therefore racist ideology, and we wouldn’t have, you know, white supremacists come and speak in our bookstores, or whatever. But I think there are some important differences, and some problems with that logic.
The first is that for many Jews, Zionism has an intimate, and often somewhat vague, meaning, which does not actually line up with supporting the actions of the state, and sometimes doesn’t even actually line up with supporting Jewish statehood at all. There is a tradition of cultural Zionism, which opposed the Jewish state. And, even among people who have never heard of cultural Zionism, what Mira Sucharov’s polling has found, which is really fascinating, is that American Jews define themselves as Zionists under certain definitions. But if you tell American Jews that Zionism means a state in which Palestinians are not treated equally to Jews, then they actually say they’re not Zionists.
So, the point is that the discourse in the Jewish community about what Zionism means can often be quite different than I think what it is on the Left. And I’m not saying that the Jewish one is right. It’s understandable that people on the Left would say, Zionism is what Israel does. But I think when you close down conversations with Jews for whom Zionism means essentially a kind of an affinity, a connection with that place, with those people, but who haven’t actually necessarily grappled that much with the contradictions of the principles of equality and liberal democracy, those are in some ways, I think, the very people that you want to be in conversation with if you’re trying to change the American debate, trying to change the American Jewish debate.
Because what Mira Sucharov’s polling shows is that when you confront people who call themselves Zionists with the reality that Israel is fundamentally unequal under law towards Palestinians, that actually many of them rethink their perspective and may even rethink the term Zionist and whether it applies to them. So, do you really want to not give the opportunity to have those conversations? I think that we are in a moment—it’s been true for quite a long time, but especially now—in which people who are making a critique of the idea of Jewish statehood based on the idea of equality under the law, based on the idea that ethnonationalism, tribal supremacy, is wrong in Israel-Palestine, and just like it’s wrong in the United States, like it’s wrong in France, like it’s wrong in Hungary, like it’s wrong in India, those people have a very powerful argument.
And the more they can get into those discussions with people who have been raised to believe in the idea of a Jewish state, but have not necessarily thought a lot about what a Jewish state means from—as Edward Said famously said—from the standpoint of its victims, those conversations, I actually think, can be extremely productive in terms of changing debate inside the American Jewish community and changing debate inside the United States as well. And when you basically say, no Zionists are allowed in that conversation, I actually think you’re forfeiting a chance to make change. And what you end up doing is basically just making people become very alienated and very angry. And that exclusion doesn’t, I think, actually move one towards a shift in the public conversation at all.
An extraordinary essay by Ayelet Waldman about her family’s history and the delusions of liberal Zionism.
A Pennsylvania voter pledges to vote Biden even if he’s dead.
A fascinating thread on the scholarship of Raz Segal, the Israeli-born genocide scholar whose appointment at the University of Minnesota is now in doubt.
Former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon says the occupation puts Israelis in danger.
Last week, I talked to MSNBC’s Joy Reid about Jamaal Bowman’s congressional primary.
For the Foundation for Middle East Peace, I interviewed Hebrew University Professor Yael Berda about Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s de facto annexation of the West Bank.
John Judis, one of the writers I admire most, has launched a Substack. Please check it out.
See you on Friday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. I’m beginning to fear that when we look back at this moment in history, people will look at Democrats, influential people in the Democratic Party, and ask the question of why it was that they lacked courage? Why it was indeed that their lack of courage was perhaps their essential defining characteristic, and it had disastrous and historic consequences? It’s interesting because, throughout the Trump era, so many of us have talked about the lack of courage of Republicans. That there was, you know, again and again reporters would say, you know, that privately Republican politicians would laugh about Trump, denounce Trump, that many of the same people who had even publicly earlier on when Trump wasn’t so formidable said that he was an autocrat, a dictator, then became these obsequious fawning supporters of him. So, we got used to—as people who were more progressive kind of denounced these people for their lack of courage.
But I actually think, at this point, Democrats are actually showing even less courage than Republicans. Because, in a way, the Republican Party has transformed itself, certainly among people in Congress. I think there are fewer actually of those people who snicker about Trump privately because this has become a Republican party, more a party of true believers. I think, actually among Republican voters, there is a genuine tremendous amount of support for Trump. Now that’s horrifying. It’s incredibly frightening, but it’s not actually cowardice. It’s a kind of psychosis to me. It’s an embrace of white Christian nationalism, authoritarianism. But it’s not exactly cowardice because I actually think that in the Republican Party today, compared to the Republican Party let’s say five years ago, there’s actually more a broader sense of true belief for Trump. Many of the members of Congress who really didn’t like Trump, most are no longer in Congress.
Whereas among Democrats, I think you actually have a situation where people genuinely don’t believe that Biden should be the nominee. But they’re too afraid to do anything about it. And it’s not just with Biden. I think there is a kind of parallel between the party’s response to Gaza and the party’s treatment of Trump. Which is, on Gaza too, I think if you put a lot of Democratic members of Congress to a lie detector test—and a lot of people in the Biden administration to a lie detector test—and they said, is American policy on this war in Gaza, is it ethical? Is it ethical? They would say: no! And yet, they shrug their shoulders and they go through their day because they want to preserve their political support. They don’t want to end up like Jamaal Bowman. They don’t want to end up without a job if they’ve spent their lives working their way up through the foreign policy establishment.
And now we see, basically, a version of the same thing when it comes to Biden’s re-election. I’m not going to rehearse all the arguments that everyone’s making, but just suffice to say, to remember, that Biden is behind in this race. He’s significantly behind. And remember, Trump has over-performed his polls both in 2016 and in 2020 when he was behind. Now, Trump is clearly ahead; not just in polls, but in the electoral college, which favors him even more. And Biden’s advisors themselves basically took the view that they needed an early bait to try to change the dynamic. They’ve made this dynamic worse. And it’s not clear that there would be a second debate. And there’s certainly no particular reason to believe that Biden would perform any better even if there was.
And yet, Democrats are too afraid—many of them—of taking the risk of trying something different. Yes, it is very risky for a whole bunch of reasons that people are talking about. But I don’t see how anyone in their right mind could not say that any potential replacement for Biden would not have been better on that stage than Joe Biden was against Donald Trump. It’s inconceivable to me that any of them, including Kamala Harris, could be worse. And yet, despite the fact that all of these people in the media, and ordinary voters, are saying they want somebody else, the Democratic politicians are not willing to say that. And when they do say it, they say it off the record.
I was talking to someone who’s on the Democratic National Committee about this. And he said, ‘Peter, it’s like the Bulgarian Communist Party in the 1950s. In the hallways, privately, they whisper to each other what a catastrophe this is. But when they actually get in a room and they have to act publicly or in some official capacity, they won’t do it because they’re too scared.’ Why is this generation of Democratic politicians and foreign policy people, why is it so fearful? Why is it not able to put the country’s interest, the moral interest, both in in terms of Biden and in terms of Gaza, ahead of their own personal interests? I don’t know. I think it’s something that we’re going to have to try to understand, and maybe we will be having to wrestle with for many, many years. It’s important also, I think, to remember that Biden’s failure is not only a failure to be able to beat Donald Trump. I think Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat have been making this point and they’re exactly right. It’s false to make a clear distinction between your ability to run effectively and your ability to govern because to govern as president has to do with your ability to communicate to the public, and also to communicate in private forcefully.
And I want to bring, again, bring this back to Gaza. Any president who wanted to try to do anything but supporting Israel unconditionally in this war would have faced enormous, enormous political challenges given how strong the pro-Israel lobby is in Washington, given how formidable an opponent Benjamin Netanyahu is, all of these reasons. Now, we don’t know that Joe Biden ever really even wanted to do that. But if he had wanted to do that—if he had wanted to say much earlier that America would not support this war because it’s catastrophic for the people of Gaza and it’s actually going to make Israel less safe—that would have been an enormous, enormous task of communication: going to the American people, going to members of Congress, to making the case, to pushing them, to convincing them, to inspire them to do something that’s very hard in America’s political system, which is to challenge Israel and to publicly care about the lives of Palestinians.
And even if Joe Biden had wanted to do that—I don’t know that he did—he does not have the capacity to do that. He does not have the capacity to go to the country, to go to Democratic members of Congress, to take on Benjamin Netanyahu, both privately and publicly. Bill Clinton could have done it. Barack Obama could have done it. Joe Biden can’t do it. So, in some ways I think his options in terms of taking a different path on Gaza were limited by his political infirmity.
And the question of why it is that Democrats facing the enormity of the threat to the existence of American liberal democracy, and the enormity of what’s happening in Gaza, where I saw a statistic that said that 5% of the population is either missing, injured, or killed—five percent, right—a level of destruction and horror that will haunt the entire world for generations and lay down a precedent for what other leaders will feel emboldened to do that is frankly terrifying, why is it in the face of these two enormous challenges that more people have not been able to actually rise to this challenge? And I do wonder whether we’re gonna have to go back and look at some of the writing that was done in the 1930s and 40s in the face of the rise of fascism and look at writers who questioned whether in fact people wanted freedom that much. Faced with the inability of people to fight for it, was there an unwillingness to actually want freedom, or at least want it enough?
This was the Parshah that Jews read over last Shabbat, which was Parashat Sh’lach, which has to do with the question of the spies and why they’re not willing to urge B’nai Israel to enter into the land. And there are a lot of debates about this question. And I recognize that it’s also in some ways problematic to make this idea of conquering Canaan into a test of moral courage, given of course that it meant that the destruction of those people. But still, if you kind of take it in a more metaphorical sense, not thinking about the conquering of the land itself, but just the larger question of what it takes to do something that’s really hard, right? What it takes to overcome your fears and take an action that’s risky, but if you know that the consequences of not action acting are really disastrous?
One of the points that the Lubavitcher Rebbe makes about this is that he suggests that perhaps B’nai Israel didn’t want to enter into the land, not because they feared defeat, but because they feared victory. Which is to say they feared the consequences of actually truly having freedom. And one of the points that Jonathan Sacks makes about this point is he relates it to the question of what happens, according to the Torah, if a Jewish servant, a Jewish slave, decides that they don’t want to be free, even after the requisite period of time when they are allowed to be free? And he notes that what happens is that there’s a ceremony in which their ear is pierced if they willingly give up their freedom. And then he quotes Rabbi Yochanan Ben Yochai in the Palestinian Talmud as saying, “the ear that heard God saying at Sinai, ‘the Israelites are my slaves. They are my slaves because I have brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your G-d.’ But, nevertheless, preferred subjection to men rather than to G-d deserves to be pierced.” The point they’re making is there is a stigma, a shame, in when you have the opportunity to fight for freedom, to voluntarily relinquish it.
And it seems to me that is what this class of Democratic leaders is doing. There is an opportunity to fight for freedom in the United States by taking the best possible shot at defeating Donald Trump. Yes, it’s uncertain. But at least it gives you a better shot—a real shot—at defeating Donald Trump in a way that you don’t have with Joe Biden. And there is a fight—again, uncertain—but a political fight to be waged for the principle of human rights, the principle of international law, the principle that Palestinians deserve to live and be free. And that would also be enormously difficult. But the question is: are you willing to actually take on that fight? And the answer we’re getting from leading Democrats is: no. And that there is a shame to that. There’s a deep shame to that and we’re going to be living with the consequences I fear for a very long time.
And that comment had nothing to do with the onslaught that Jamaal Bowman faced from AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups. That onslaught was fundamentally about one thing. It was about the fact that Jamaal Bowman was a passionate supporter of Palestinian freedom. When members of Congress are staunch supporters of Israel, they can say things that are far, far more problematic vis-à-vis Jews than anything that Jamaal Bowman ever said, and get a complete pass. The reason that Jamaal Bowman had a target on his back was really simple. It’s because he went to see what life was like for Palestinians in the West Bank. Now, that might not seem like a big deal, but it actually is because the vast majority of members of Congress avert their eyes. They make a conscious choice to go to Israel on AIPAC junkets that don’t show them the reality of what it’s like for Palestinians to live their entire lives without the most basic of human rights. I suspect perhaps they just don’t want to know because they know that if they did see, it would only cause problems for them. But Jamaal Bowman went to see. He even went to Hebron, which is perhaps the most brutal of all the places in the West Bank, a place where Palestinians can’t even walk on certain streets in their own city. And he had the courage to see. And he had the courage to talk about it. And that’s unusual for a member of Congress.
And the thing you always need to remember about these people, you know, who spent untold amounts of money, unprecedented amounts of money, on trying to defeat him—the people who gave all this money to AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups to defeat him—is that, overwhelmingly, they have not seen the things that Jamaal Bowman has seen. I have lived in proximity to those people my entire life. I’m telling you they may have been to Israel 40 times. But those kind of AIPAC donors, they don’t go to see what life is like for Palestinians who have lived their entire lives in the West Bank without the right to vote for the government that has life and death power over their lives under a different legal system, a military legal system, while they’re Jewish neighbors enjoy free movement, and due process, and the right to vote, and citizenship. If they had gone to see those things, I think many of them would not be AIPAC donors because it would shake them to their core. But one of the reasons I think they find the kind of things that Jamaal Bowman says so frightening is because they haven’t had the courage to go and actually face these realities for themselves. But Jamaal Bowman did go to face these realities and then he took it upon himself to talk about what he had seen. And he paid a political price.
The second thing I want to say about Jamaal Bowman and this race is that you can’t disentangle the attack that he came under because of his views about Israel from the opposition to him simply because he was a courageous and passionate progressive on a whole range of issues. The thing that’s important to remember about people who give a lot of money to AIPAC is it’s not just that they’re pro-Israel, or that they’re generally Jewish. They’re also extremely wealthy. And it’s often difficult to disentangle their pro-Israel politics from their class perspectives. But things fuse together, right? They don’t want supporters of Palestinian rights in Congress. But they also don’t want people who are going to raise their taxes or try to fundamentally change the American economic system.
And so, when you defeat Jamaal Bowman, it’s kind of a twofer because you get rid of a critic of Israel, but you also get rid of someone who potentially could threaten your own bottom line. And one of the dirty little secrets, I think, about kind of American Jewish organizational life is that people find it often easier to say that they oppose progressives because those progressives are anti-Israel or supposedly ‘antisemitic’ than to admit that partly they’re doing it for economic self-interest because they’re just really rich people who don’t want progressives like Jamaal Bowman because those people might threaten their bottom line. So, that’s another reason I think that progressives like Jamaal Bowman come under such fierce assault. It’s much nicer if you’re one of the very, very wealthy people who gave all this money to AIPAC to have a kind of milquetoast moderate like George Latimer who won’t rock the boat on Israel. And he won’t really rock the boat by challenging corporate interests on anything.
The third point I want to make about Jamaal Bowman has to do with race. Now, it’s not true that AIPAC opposes Black members of Congress simply because they’re Black. Which is to say if there’s a really, really pro-Israel Black member of congress, like Ritchie Torres, they’re thrilled about that, right. But it’s also not coincidental that so many of the people that AIPAC tries to destroy politically are Black or other people of color. And that’s because people who have a family history of oppression in the United States are more likely—not always, by any means—but, on average, are more likely to identify with the Palestinians because of their own experience. They’re more likely to feel, as Jamaal Bowman did, a kind of moral obligation to themselves and their own ancestors to go and see what’s actually going on to Palestinians who lack basic rights in the West Bank.
And so, when you go to politically destroy people who care about Palestinians, you’re going to end up destroying a disproportionate number of those people who will be Black or other people of color. And there’s a whole history to this. It didn’t start with Jamaal Bowman. You can think about Andrew Young, Jimmy Carter’s Ambassador to the United Nations, who, coming out of the Civil Rights movement, felt he had an obligation to have a concern for Palestinians, and met a PLO representative in the late 1970s, and there was a big pro-Israel outcry, and he was forced out of his job. Or Jesse Jackson, who came under assault in the 1980s when he ran for president, or a congressman like Walter Fauntroy or Barack Obama or Raphael Warnock. You may remember that Raphael Warnock went on a trip of Black pastors to see Palestinian life for himself, wrote a very passionate, eloquent letter talking about the parallels between the oppression of Palestinians and the oppression of Black Americans. And Raphael Warnock came under fierce assault and had to walk that back. And if he hadn’t walked that back, he probably wouldn’t be a senator right now.
Jamaal Bowman is a different kind of person. He’s a very unusual politician in that he is a man of genuine moral conviction, of genuine moral courage, and he was willing to put his political life at risk. And he did so perhaps partly because we are in this extraordinarily horrifying moment—a moment when people are being tested, when people are doing things that I think we will remember for a very long time. I saw yesterday that Save the Children was reporting that, by their estimates, as many as 20,000 children in Gaza are either detained, missing, lying in mass graves, or dead under the rubble. Twenty thousand. I think perhaps Jamaal Bowman knew that this was a moment on which he was willing to be judged and he was willing to risk his political career for that. And I really, really hope that I live long enough to live in an America in which Palestinian lives are considered equal to Jewish lives. And in that America, I believe, that people will look back with shame at what was done to Jamaal Bowman, and maybe even some of those AIPAC donors or their children or grandchildren will feel shame, and we will look back at Jamaal Bowman in this race as a hero.
It says in Pirkei Avot in the Mishnah—and forgive the gendered language, it was written a long time ago—it says, ‘in the place where there is no man, be a man.’ Or we might retranslate it as, ‘in the place where there is no humanity, bring humanity.’ Jamaal Bowman was in a place in Congress in Washington where there are very, very few people who are willing to risk anything politically for the cause of Palestinian lives, for the cause of Palestinian freedom. And he did. In a place where there was no man, he was a man. And for that reason, I believe we will one day look back on him as a hero.
(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!), Shane Burley and Jonah Ben Avraham explain the flawed methodology that the ADL uses to measure antisemitism.
Like so many people with family in Gaza, the political analyst Khalil Sayegh has endured unthinkable agony since this war began. He’s seen his father and sister killed. He’s trying to bring his remaining family members to safety. If you can help, please do. Please also consider helping the Alshawa family, which is sheltering in central Gaza and hoping to evacuate to safety.
Aziz Abu Sarah on the absurdity of pro-Palestinian demonstrators protesting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The deputy assistant secretary for Israeli-Palestinian affairs resigns after opposing Biden’s policies on the war.
Israel’s military spokesman says “anyone who thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong.”
See you on Friday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. I wanted to say something about an extraordinary interview that Mehdi Hassan did last week with Congressman Dean Phillips from Minnesota, who had been a candidate for president against Biden this year. This was for Mehdi’s new platform, Zeteo. What makes the interview so remarkable, I think, is that it kind of offers a glimpse of what American public and media discourse about this war, and about Israel and Palestine more generally, might be like if Palestinian lives were considered equal to Israeli lives.
So, Mehdi Hassan starts by asking Dean Phillips: was it okay in your view for Israel to kill all of these Palestinians, including many children in the military operation that freed for Israeli hostages? And Philip says, ‘it’s an unacceptable price, but I think it’s a price that has to be paid.’ So, he says, basically, it was really awful, but it was necessary. And then, Mehdi Hasan takes the question in a direction that I really don’t think Dean Phillips was expecting because it’s so rarely asked. And he says, ‘if you’re saying that to free people from the clutches of horrible captivity’—this is Mehdi Hasan speaking—‘hostages, people possibly being abused in captivity to free them, you have to pay a price, a horrible price. Does that ratio work the other way?’
And then, Medhi Hasan continues: ‘how many Israelis can Palestinians kill to free Palestinian detainees who are currently being tortured in Israeli captivity, some of them being raped to death according to the New York Times last week. Can they kill 200 Israelis to free four Palestinians who are being tortured in an Israeli prison?’ And Phillips’ response is kind of remarkable. And by the way, I don’t think Phillips is a dumb guy. I actually think if you listen to the interview, he’s probably more thoughtful on these issues than your average member of Congress, although that may be a low bar. And to give him credit, he’s also appearing on an interview with Mehdi Hasan, which he probably knew was going to be a really challenging interview.
But so, here’s what Dean Phillips says. He’s quite startled. You can listen in the interview. He’s clearly surprised by the allegation. He says—Philips says—‘you said Palestinian prisoners are being raped to death by Israeli soldiers? I don’t believe that to be true,’ right. Hasan has just quoted The New York Times, which is about as respectable a media outlet as you can have. And then Philips said, ‘I don’t believe that to be true.’ And then Mehdi Hasan goes into detail about the allegations that he’s talking about. And if you read The New York Times report that they did on this military base called Sde Teiman, where Israel has been holding a lot of Palestinian prisoners, first there was an UNRWA report that was done where they interviewed Palestinians who had been released from Sde Teiman.
I know people will say, oh, you can’t believe anything UNRWA says. But then actually The New York Times kind of went and did a lot of these interviews itself. It found, for instance, that eight former detainees had said they had been punched, kicked, and beaten with batons, rifle bats, and a hand metal detector while in custody. One said his ribs were broken when he was kneed in the chest. A second detainee said his ribs were broken after he was kicked and beaten with a rifle. Seven said they been forced to wear only a diaper while being interrogated. Three said they had received electric shocks during interrogations. Three said they had lost more than 40 pounds during their interrogation. The IDF denied abuse, but an Israeli soldier who the Times talked to said that he and several fellow soldiers had regularly boasted of beating detainees. And a general named Younis al-Hamlawi, who was a nurse who was arrested when Israel was raiding the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, said that a female officer had ordered two soldiers to lift him up and press his rectum against a metal stick that was fixed to the ground. Mr. al-Hamlawi said the stick penetrated his rectum for roughly five seconds, causing it to bleed and leaving him with unbearable pain. He also recalled being forced to sit in a chair wired with electricity. He said he was shocked so often that after initially urinating uncontrollably, he then stopped urinating for several days.
And, by the way, I know some people’s immediate response to this is: how on earth could you compare these people to the Israeli hostages? These were Hamas fighters. The people that The New York Times was interviewing were the people who were released from Sde Teimon. They were about 1,200 people. They had about 4,000 people there, according to the Times. They released 1,200 because the Israeli military didn’t think they were Hamas fighters. If the Israeli military thought they were Hamas fighters, they would still be there. The Times was only talking to people who the IDF had basically said, sorry, we picked you up, but actually we don’t think you did anything, right? So, those are the people who were making these allegations.
Now again, there are obviously lots of differences between Israeli prisons in general and the hostage situation. And I don’t, by any means, am not saying this to undermine in any way the severity of what Israeli hostages have been through, which is horrifying. But the point is that, according to The New York Times, which is a pretty credible source, right, that Dean Phillips would probably believe The New York Times if The New York Times did a report about the abuse of Israelis by Hamas, right? They’re saying the terrible things are happening to these people who the Israeli military ultimately admits basically didn’t do anything, right?
And so, Mehdi Hasan turns the question around and says: would it be okay for Hamas or some of the Palestinian faction to go and free such people if it led to a lot of Israelis being killed? And Dean Philips doesn’t answer the question. And I think the reason he can’t answer the question is because if you genuinely believe, speaking as an American—I’m not speaking about an Israeli who might have a natural sense of affinity for Israeli lives, or even let’s say a Jewish person or a Palestinian person who might have a particular loyalty, you’re talking about as an American here, right, whose stated view is that, as Phillips actually said in another part of the interview, he believes that Israeli Jewish and Palestinian are equal—that can you actually apply that framework to American policy? Can you actually follow it through to its conclusion as Mehdi Hasan asked him to do? And he can’t. He can’t answer the question, right? Because he can’t say ‘yes’ because he doesn’t actually operate within a framework in which Palestinian lives are considered equal to Jewish Israeli lives. That almost nobody, very few people in American public discourse, actually operate within that framework. It’s completely baked into American public discourse that they are not, right?
So, to give another example, right, we are a very frequently asked to imagine what it would be like for Israelis—what it was like for Israelis—when they were attacked brutally on October 7th, and how we would feel as Americans, and what we would do if that happened to us, right? That’s almost a cliche at this point, right? But when was the last time you heard a prominent person in the American media, or an American politician asked how you would feel as a Palestinian, right, if your family had been forcibly expelled from their homes in 1948 into this very, very overcrowded territory called Gaza, which has been—long before actually Hamas took over, even going back to the early 1990s— where movement in and out of Gaza has been very, very severely restricted by Israel, again, going back even long before Hamas took over. And since 2006, the legislative elections that Hamas won, you know, have a place which is called ‘unlivable’ by the United Nations, called an ‘open air prison’ by Human Rights Watch, which has been repeatedly bombed and not been able to rebuild its infrastructure, right?
So, nobody says, well, what would you do if you were a Palestinian under those circumstances, right? Because there is a natural kind of tendency to think that Israel’s Jews are fully human, and therefore like us, and therefore we should ask how we would respond in their position, which is a very legitimate question, right. But if you believe that Jewish and Palestinian lives are equal, you should also be asking the other question, which is: how would you react as a Palestinian given those things, and ask people to imagine how Americans would react were we in the situation the Palestinians are in? And yet, that doesn’t happen. And you see that when Mehdi Hasan does do that, does something extraordinary in American public discourse, which shouldn’t be extraordinary but is, you see how Dean Phillips—who’s not a stupid guy, right—simply can’t answer that question. He can’t respond to it, right, because there is such a huge gap between the stated belief, at least among Democrats, that human lives are equal, and the actual guiding assumptions that guide how they make policy on this question. And I think the more that is exposed in interviews like this, the more people can start to see that the basic fundamental principles that many Americans espouse are not being put into practice by our government, and that that represents a problem.
A beautiful statement by the Deputy Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, Majed Bamya, about Noa Argamani’s release from captivity.
Is the global outcry over Israel’s actions starting to hit its high-tech sector?
Hi. As I’ve been following the news of the increased escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, which is really terrifying, my mind has kept going back to a conversation I had with an Israeli friend soon after October 7th. And my friend said, ‘you don’t understand, Peter. If we don’t destroy Hamas, people will never feel safe living in the south of Israel again. And we will have lost that part of our country.’ And what he was saying made a huge amount of sense, it seems to me, in terms of Israeli political culture, Israeli political psychology given the trauma of what had happened after October 7th. And so, he was saying because that is non-negotiable, we have to defeat Hamas. And what I was thinking was: but I don’t think you can defeat Hamas. I think that’s non-negotiable. So, we were essentially at loggerheads because he was saying that, for a political reason, Israel had to do something militarily that I didn’t think could be done. And now, more than eight months later, I think it seems clear to me that it cannot be done.
And so, now I feel like there’s a version of this playing out in terms of Israel’s debate in its north vis-a-vis Hezbollah, but in some ways with even more frightening stakes. Which the argument is: Israelis cannot return to the north because all of these people have been displaced from their homes unless we push Hezbollah away from that border. And that beyond that, Israel can no longer accept the kind of situation that it accepted before October 7th, which is to say the precariousness, the uncertainty, the unsatisfactory nature of the fact that Hezbollah was always there with this huge arsenal. That was acceptable before October 7th. We can no longer accept these things now because we have a greater sense of threat and also perhaps because we have lost our deterrent, and it needs to be re-established.
This reminds me a lot of the debate in the United States around Iraq after September 11th where people were saying maybe we could muddle through with Saddam Hussein, who we thought was kind of rearming and, you know, eluding the sanctions regime. Maybe that was okay before September 11th. But now, given that we’ve seen the potential peril—and given that we look weak—we need a decisive answer. Again, but like my friend in Israel, it all assumes that a decisive answer is possible, right? It’s as if to say, militarily, this has to become possible because politically we need it to be possible.
And yet, I have not heard—just as I did not hear as Israel was going into Gaza—anyone offering a convincing explanation of how Israel was going to defeat and destroy Hamas. I haven’t heard anyone say that about how Israel is going to destroy Hezbollah, force Hezbollah off of Israel’s borders. Again, it seems to me more like this situation of kind of you start from a political necessity, and then you assume that there’s a military solution. And to me, what this suggests is that the way in which Israeli Jewish leaders, and Israeli Jewish political discourse—and much Jewish discourse in the diaspora because it tends to often kind of follow along—has a sense of the political terms of discussion that can’t imagine political solutions that don’t require these military solutions.
Again, military solutions seem to me fantastical, which are not actually possible. That in reality, Israel going to war against Hezbollah, Israel might be able to destroy a lot of southern Lebanon and a lot of Lebanon period, and destroy a lot of Hezbollah’s weaponry, but at a massive cost to Israel. I mean, right now, it’s just the North is unlivable. I mean, Hezbollah could kind of make Tel Aviv unlivable, at least for a while, right? And in terms of what this would do in terms of Israel’s international isolation given what’s already happened, it just seems to me strategically really, really disastrous for Israel. If you want to kind of move Israel closer to a point where people can really imagine the country no longer being able to exist, it seems to me going to war in Lebanon would be a really good way of doing that in terms of ramping up even more international isolation, just making larger sections of the country unlivable. And yet, to be able to avoid that you have to imagine political responses, again, just like you would have vis-à-vis Gaza, which would have been political responses, which are not really within the Jewish Israeli terms of mainstream debate. Which would involve substantial compromise and kind of reimagining of the whole question of what brings security fundamentally from a political lens, not from a military lens. Which in the Palestinian Gaza case would mean that basically there is no solution problem that Hamas represents unless you offer Palestinians a clear pathway towards basic human rights and freedom. That’s the central problem you have to answer if you want to deal with the military problem that Hamas faces.
And similarly with Hezbollah, there is no answer vis-a-vis Hezbollah unless you change the dynamic with Palestinians since Hezbollah is fundamentally doing this as a kind of an ally, almost as kind of an adjunct to the Palestinian case. And beyond that, that you need a different relationship with Iran, that you need some kind of thaw and detente in this cold war with Iran given the influence that Iran has over Hezbollah. And it seems to me, what frightens me so much is that those political ways of thinking—that it seems to me could be an alternative to the military answer and could offer a vision of Israelis returning to the north as returning to the south that did not involve a second, even more potentially catastrophic war—are just not really on the table in terms of the debate.
And I don’t feel like when I look at American discourse, American political discourse, American Jewish discourse, I don’t see an effort to really or push Israelis, to challenge Jewish Israelis, to ask them to think outside of their own political terms—again, in an Israel right now where basically the terms of political debate run from the very far right to essentially the center right, right, in which people who genuinely see Palestinian freedom as the essence of trying to provide Israeli security, those voices among Jewish Israelis are basically off the table. And that’s part of what frightens me so much about this moment.
Hi. I’d encourage you to do an experiment. Go on Google or some other search engine, and type in the phrase, ‘Israelis feel’ or ‘Israelis believe.’ I suspect that what you’ll find is that many of the things that you turn up about how Israelis feel, or Israelis believe, are not actually statements about how all of Israel’s citizens feel, or what they believe, but are using essentially Israelis as a synonym for Jewish Israeli.
So, for instance, here’s one example in Foreign Affairs in April, Elliott Abrams, the former Bush and Trump administration official, wrote, ‘Israelis across the ideological spectrum agree that Hamas must be crushed.’ Now, he’s clearly using Israelis here as a synonym for Jewish Israelis. And it’s true that for Jewish Israelis that statement is probably true. A Pew research center poll in May found that only 4% of Jewish Israelis think that Israel’s war in Gaza has gone too far. But if you use Israelis to mean all of Israel’s citizens, then his statement is completely wrong because according to Pew, 74% of Israel’s Palestinian citizens or Arab Israelis, as they’re sometimes called, think that Israel’s war has gone too far.
So, what’s happening here is it that Americans in our public discourse are very often embracing the kind of ethno-nationalist language that comes from Israel. So, because Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, indeed the word Israeli itself, right, Israel is another name for the Jewish people. It’s the name that Jacob is given when he wrestles with the angel and becomes a name for the Jewish people. So, because the very name of Israel, and Israeli, is essentially a synonym for Jew, what happens is the fact that 20% of the Israeli citizens who are not Jewish gets erased from our public discourse, and we essentially adopt the terms of the ethno-nationalist terms of debate. And so, what we end up doing is we basically use Jewish Israeli as a synonym for Israeli, even though I think in the United States where Black Americans are only 10% of the population—significantly less than Palestinian citizens are of the Israeli citizenry—we would really object if someone used American and white American as synonyms. But essentially, we do a version of that when we talk about Israelis all the time.
And it’s an even bigger problem, right, when you realize that Israel controls millions and millions of Palestinians who don’t have any citizenship at all. That 70% of the Palestinians under Israeli control, those in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, have lived under Israeli control, in many cases their entire lives, but can’t become citizens. So, we would never call them Israelis. And the problem here, I think, is that when we talk about other groups of people—let’s say Americans, right—we’d mean citizens, but we also mean perhaps a little more vaguely, just kind of long-term residents, people who are spending their lives here, people who are not tourists, right, even if they don’t have citizenship.
But in the United States, there’s more of a close alignment between those two categories. It’s true we have long-term undocumented people, but for the most part most of the people who are going to be here their entire lives are citizens. And so, we essentially talk as if the same thing is true in Israel. But in Israel, it’s really not true at all because Israel has controlled since 1967 these very large populations of Palestinians that can’t become citizens, and therefore would never be described as Israelis, right? And yet, in a certain sense, one should describe them as Israeli, again because they have lived their entire lives under the control of this state.
So, we would never say something like, you know, 50% of the Israelis oppose a Jewish state or oppose Zionism. But if we were to actually refer to all the people under Israeli control, 50% of whom were Palestinian, that would be a reasonably accurate statement. Again, it’s just that we would never think to call them Israelis, but the reason we wouldn’t call them Israelis is because Israel doesn’t extend them citizenship, and more deeply, because the very term Israeli itself has an ethno-nationalist connotation, which essentially erases Palestinians, the non-citizens, and even the citizens, right?
And I think the reason this is important is that one of the points that George Orwell makes in his famous essay, ‘Politics and the English language,’ is that if you want to critique the actions of a state, or the actions of people in power, you have to challenge the language that people in power create. That if you essentially replicate that language in your own usage, then even if you think you were in opposition to those policies, you were actually complicit with that power structure because you are using its language and accepting its terms of debate. And that’s why I think if we want to question the idea of an ethno-nationalist project, the idea of Jewish supremacy, the idea of a state that has a different legal regime for Jews and Palestinians—most blatantly among those Palestinians who don’t have citizenship, but even in significant ways for that minority of Palestinians who do have citizenship because they are not equal citizens in a state that has a special set of responsibilities to members of one ethno-national group—we have to be explicit in the language we use and not simply erase Palestinians from our discourse when we use the term Israeli.
And so, I think this is something for us to think about as we go forward, and we try to have a better American public debate about what genuine liberal democracy and equality under the law might mean for people in Palestine and Israel.
For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts podcast, I talked to Shraddha Joshi and Asmer Safi, Harvard students whose degrees are being withheld because of their activism for Palestinian rights.
After my last video, David Lelyveld questioned my suggestion that the war would dog Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan after they leave government. He wrote, “McGeorge Bundy went from the Johnson administration to the presidency of the Ford Foundation for some 15 years. Walt Rostow had a comfortable, well-endowed chair at the University of Texas for 30. As we say in New York, not chopped liver. I wouldn't weep for Biden's subordinates.”
See you on Friday at 11 AM,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
America’s relationship with Israel is a little bit like imagine there’s a person in a house, two groups of people in a house, but one is vastly more powerful. And they’re fighting with one another. And the vastly more powerful side, as you might imagine, is doing a tremendous amount of violence to the weaker side. The weaker side is doing some violence as well, but it’s very disproportionate. And this being Israel and the Palestinians. And the United States is giving weapons to the side that’s stronger and allowing it to kind of pummel the weaker side more and more. And the United States is continuing to do that, and then kind of making suggestions from the side.
So, a while back, Chuck Schumer said that it would be good if Benjamin Netanyahu were not Israel’s prime minister anymore. So, it’s kind of the equivalent of saying to that stronger side in the house, you know, we think that you should have someone else from your group actually be in charge of this conflict. Or now, we have Joe Biden basically laying out this plan for a ceasefire over multiple stages, again basically giving his advice to both sides about how maybe this conflict could end, but all the while continuing to give the weapons that continue to fuel the conflict and allow the stronger side to continue to inflict all this violence on the weaker side.
And it’s just really bizarre. Because America’s primary responsibility is not actually to choose Israel’s leaders. And America’s primary responsibility is not even actually to end this war. America’s primary responsibility is to figure out what it does with its money and its weapons. That’s what America has direct control over. America doesn’t have actual direct control over how this war in Gaza ends. From a moral perspective, its primary responsibility is its own role. And there’s this weird way in which, in establishment American discourse, we essentially ignore our own role in this and suggest that we are some kind of neutral arbiter, and then throw out various proposals for how the situation may be solved as if we are not an active participant in it, right? And then we seem disappointed when Israel, or sometimes the Palestinians, basically reject these proposals—but often Israel—because they know that we’re not a neutral observer, that we are a participant, but we are on their side, and that that participation will continue irrespective of what they say about our proposal. So, there’s not very much cost for them in rejecting the proposal.
It seems to me this is exactly the wrong way to think about it. It’s a cliché. But it’s true that in the long run, ultimately, this war and this conflict in this situation will have to be solved by Israelis and Palestinians, not by America. So, America’s fundamental moral responsibility is not to solve to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, not even to end the Gaza war. It’s to act ethically with the power that we have. And the power that we have is our power to give weapons and other forms of diplomatic support to one side that continues this.
So, what Joe Biden should be saying is not, ‘here’s our 11-point plan for ending the war.’ It should be, simply: ‘it’s not ethical for the United States to continue to arm and diplomatically protect Israel as it inflicts this horrible violence against Palestinians. I’m the American president. I’m in charge of how we spend our money and who we send our weapons to, and I’m not going to do that.’ Now that might have—or could have—a real impact on Israeli politics, on whether Netanyahu stays prime minister, on how Israel prosecutes this war, or even whether it does. We don’t know what the consequences of that would be.
But in some ways, the consequences are not America’s primary responsibility. America’s primary responsibility is our involvement in the conflict. And yet so often it’s that question, which essentially recedes. And because the Biden administration doesn’t want to have to deal with that central question, with the political fallout of actually addressing America’s role, it tries to sidestep that by suggesting America continue to be this active participant, but also be this supposedly neutral umpire that can basically come out with a way of solving the conflict. And that doesn’t work. It’s not America’s fundamental job.
The president’s job is to be able to say to the American people: ‘I am ethically and wisely using your money in the way we interact with other countries.’ That’s the question that Joe Biden should have addressed when he spoke to the nation a few days ago. Instead, he continues to evade that question and ends up in these kinds of cul-de-sacs that make him look weak, make him look impotent, and ultimately don’t respond to his fundamental moral responsibility as the president of the United States.
For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts podcast, I talked to Sapir Sluzker Amran about being a queer, feminist, Mizrachi activist in Israel—and about her decision to go to the border with Gaza to challenge people preventing the delivery of aid.
Muhammad Shehada on the danger of selective empathy.
Michael Sfard on the failure of the Israeli media.
Mehdi Hasan vs Jonathan Schanzer on the ICC’s warrants against Israeli leaders.
Former Israeli combat soldier Ariel Bernstein on how Israel is fighting in Gaza.
Imagine if US leaders talked like Irish leaders about Gaza.
Hi. So, I’ve been thinking about why the Biden administration has made the decisions that it’s made on this war. Decisions that seem to me to have been disastrous and catastrophic, not just for the people in Gaza though that’s obviously the most important thing—all the people who’ve died and been injured and who’ve been forced from their homes—but also has been politically disastrous, and I think actually potentially disastrous also for the careers of top Biden administration officials themselves. Politically disastrous because Joe Biden now is in a situation, as we enter into the kind of the meat of the presidential campaign, in which he literally can’t go speak to his own party’s base. He can’t go speak at a university. He can’t go speak at a Black church. He can’t even go speak at a union event without the very real prospect of his speech being protested, even interrupted, because there’s so much anger at his policy on Gaza.
It’s one thing not to have a hugely enthusiastic voter base, as Biden, you know, never really had a hugely enthusiastic support from his party’s base. But to have people be so angry at you in your own party’s base that you can’t go to the institutions of your own party’s base without literally having people protest you, that’s a huge warning sign for a presidential campaign. Yes, it would have been very challenging for Biden to take a different line on the Gaza War as well. But it doesn’t seem to me that they recognized early on how bad, politically, how dangerous this path they were on was.
And secondly, I don’t get the sense that people in the Biden administration, the foreign policy team, understand the potential ramifications for their careers over this. I mean, there has been a pattern that, if you leave an administration, you can go to work on Wall Street, you can be a consultant. But often times, people also go to universities. They become deans of colleges, universities. They teach at universities. This is a kind of an enjoyable thing for folks to do in the few years while they wait for their party to regain power. This is what people did after the Clinton administration, after the Obama administration.
I think we’re in a very different world now. I think if you are a top Biden foreign policy official, and think that you can go for a couple of pleasant years to some leafy university campus, and teach a couple classes, and hang out for a while, I think you’re sorely mistaken. I think the experience of a Biden official who was involved in this war going to a university in the coming years would be not that different than the experience of people like McGeorge Bundy and and Walt Rostow experienced when they tried to go back to the universities that they had been in before the Vietnam War. These people are gonna be treated with a lot of anger for what they’ve done.
And so, I think about why was it that the administration took this path. And this is my theory. My theory is that if you work in Washington foreign policy for a long period of time, you become more and more divorced from how ordinary progressive minded people think about the world, especially on Israel-Palestine. And the reason you become divorced from them is that when people in Washington talk and work in Washington foreign policy, they always have to think in terms of constraints of what’s politically possible.
I used to work at Washington think tanks. I used to spend a lot of time with people who came in and out of Democratic foreign policy jobs. And one of the things that always struck me was that, even in relatively private settings, when people would talk about policy, they would always adopt the framework of what is politically possible; what was politically salable, could be sold in their view, politically. And they just were not generally interested in thinking outside of those terms. Because if you talk in terms of policy ideas or moral perspectives that are outside of the bounds of what’s considered politically possible, you kind of make yourself irrelevant. I think that’s the kind of the idea in Washington. You become someone who’s not really useful, who’s actually a kind of pain in the neck to have around, right? Because the last thing that a policymaker or politician wants is to be told to do something that basically, politically, they don’t feel like they can do. So, people adopt these really narrowing constraints in terms of how they talk about policy in general, but especially on Israel-Palestine, because that’s the foreign policy issue on which the political pressures are the greatest.
And so, what I noticed was that even to make moral arguments about what Israel was doing to the Palestinians, and to suggest that there should be consequences for those moral decisions, was often essentially to speak outside of the political constraints that people were interested in talking about. That essentially people almost like shut off that entire conversation, almost like shut off that entire part of their brain. I think these were people who, had they gone in a different course in life, would have understood that what America was helping Israel do towards Palestinians was deeply immoral. But they recognize that if they were to adopt that perspective, let alone vocalize it within Washington, it would be very injurious to their careers.
I mean, imagine you are a junior or mid-level foreign policy official in a Democratic administration, and you go on record, or you’re heard to say that, you know, five years ago that you think America should condition military aid, or there should be international legal consequences for what Israel is doing. That would be a good way of basically ending your career in government. And so, I think what happens is that people, essentially over time, they shut that part of their brain off—the part of their brain that might have a kind of a moral revulsion at what Israel is doing to Palestinians, and what America is helping Israel do to Palestinians.
And if you do that long enough, I think you can come to forget the ordinary people out there in the country, ordinary progressive minded people, who are seeing these horrifying images day after day of what’s happening to people in Gaza, that they don’t do that. They don’t kind of sublimate these instincts. They just respond in a much more kind of natural, intuitive way, like, why are we doing this? This is completely contrary to my values. Why are my taxpayer dollars being used to fund this? I think what’s happened in Washington is that Democrats, over time—Democrats in the foreign policy kind of establishment—basically turn off that part of their brain in order to succeed and make their way up the ranks in foreign policy in Washington.
And if you do that long enough, I think it makes it harder for you to predict that that’s how ordinary progressive Americans would respond to the war in Gaza. So, I think that may be why people in the Biden administration were slow to recognize that this issue of Gaza was becoming really, really important to progressives in America—that progressive people in America would be revolted by what they were seeing. Because I think the people in the Biden administration themselves had, over time, undergone a process in which they didn’t allow themselves to have those same human responses because they were within a political environment in which it would have been very counterproductive for them to do that. And that helps to explain this disconnect between the Biden administration and the progressive base of the Democratic Party that I think now represents a threat to Biden’s re-election campaign. And I also think it is something that will dog people in the Biden administration for years to come.
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