The Beinart Notebook

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Our guests are two of the most sophisticated and fearless internal critics of Israeli politics and society: Mairav Zonszein, senior analyst for Israel at the International Crisis Group and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, and Raef Zreik, a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem.

We discuss:

Israel’s attempt to ban Palestinian candidates in the upcoming election

The absence of a true left in Israel

The attempt to bring West Bank apartheid to all of Israel

How NAZA finally broke through the Israeli bubble

Living post-10/7 as a Palestinian citizen of Israel

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Our guests today are Meir Javedanfar, lecturer in Iranian Studies at Reichman University in Tel Aviv, and Nader Hashemi, professor of Middle East politics at Georgetown. Though both are from Iran, they offer two very divergent perspectives on Iran’s history and present. I’m grateful they were willing to let me moderate a discussion between them.

Topics include:

The origins of the Iran-Israel conflict

Whether Iran’s international policy is motivated more by politics or religion

Why America and Israel have gone to war with Iran now

Whether arming Iranian insurgents could have overthrown the regime

Whether the Iranian regime is stronger or weaker now than it was before Israel and the US attacked

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

The August AMA video is here for Premium members. A sample portion is free for all.

Topics include:

* The California proposal to make Judaism an ethnicity

* The dangers of purity politics

* Israel needs enemies

* Rahm Emanuel is stuck in his pro-Israel upbringing

* Navigating Jewish disagreement

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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com

Our guests are two of the most sophisticated and fearless internal critics of Israeli politics and society: Mairav Zonszein, senior analyst for Israel at the International Crisis Group and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, and Raef Zreik, a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem.

We discuss:

Israel’s attempt to ban Palestinian candidates in the upcoming election

The absence of a true left in Israel

The attempt to bring West Bank apartheid to all of Israel

How NAZA finally broke through the Israeli bubble

Living post-10/7 as a Palestinian citizen of Israel

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com

Our guest is Avner Gvaryahu, former executive director of Breaking the Silence, which takes testimony from former Israeli soldiers. He’s currently doing research at Oxford University on the use of AI in war. With all the debate around the new documentary, NAZA, I wanted to talk to Avner about the IDF and military culture and methods.

We discuss:

How the filmmakers kept its subjects anonymous

Why the Israeli military ran out of military targets two days into the assault on Gaza

How AI can turn soldiers into rubber stamps

How the Israeli right is using NAZA to attack the Israeli center-left

How Israeli “liberals” participated in the genocide

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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com

Our guest today is Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller. He was the longtime Hillel Director at UCLA. He’s a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and was ordained by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik at Yeshiva University. He has opposed Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza for close to half a century, first with Breira, and more recently, with A Land for All and Smol Emuni.

He has published two essays in the last year: A Zionism for the Future and ‘For the sins we have committed’: Reimagining Yom Kippur liturgy in a post-Oct. 7 world (with David N. Myers)

I had him on to discuss Jewish statehood, a topic on which we disagree. But mostly, we discussed the idea of repentance, both individual and collective, and how he answers Jews who believe that Judaism itself has been fundamentally stained by the crimes committed in our people’s name.

Topics include:

Does Jewish religious observance make Jews behave better or worse?

If there’s a non-chauvinistic way for Jews to see ourselves as “chosen”

When does Zionism become idolatry?

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