The Beinart Notebook

A list of ways to help Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

This Friday’s Zoom call will be at 1 PM Eastern, our usual time. We’ll talk about the New York mayoral race’s ramifications for the Israel-Palestine debate nationally. Our guests will be Palestinian-American Georgia State Representative, and gubernatorial candidate, Ruwa Romman, who was denied the chance to speak at last year’s Democratic convention, and former Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes, co-host of the podcast, Pod Save the World.

Cited in Today’s Video

The Department of Justice alleged that Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed thirteen women.

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!), Rhys Machold questions the “Start Up Nation” myth.

Senator Rand Paul defends the Constitution against Donald Trump.

The funeral of Rabbi Arthur Waskow, z’’l.

Check out Arno Rosenfeld’s new Substack, Antisemitism Decoded.

The Halachic Left on Parshat Lech Lecha.

I discussed Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza on KALW public radio in the Bay Area.

I’ll be speaking on November 3 at the University of Chicago, November 6 at Columbia Journalism School, and November 10 at Cornell University and Congregation Tikkun v’Or in Ithaca, New York.

See you Friday,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So, when I started writing my book, I didn’t think it would be about idolatry. I mean, I knew it would be about Israel and the destruction of Gaza, but it ended up kind of being a book about idolatry because the more I wrote it, the more I began to feel that the organized American Jewish community was willing to sacrifice almost anything to preserve unconditional support for the state of Israel, that every other value, every other principle was subordinated to that.

And I’m seeing that so dramatically and, to me, in what is such a disgraceful way in the final days of this campaign against Zohran Mamdani. What are you willing to sacrifice in order to prevent a New York mayor who says that Israeli Jews and Palestinians should live equally under the same law? What are you willing to try to do to destroy such a candidate? The answer is: lie with almost anyone, do almost anything.

Let’s just look at the examples. We have now all of these rabbis who have either explicitly or implicitly endorsed Andrew Cuomo to be next mayor of New York. This is a man who the Department of Justice found had sexually harassed 13 women, sexually harassed 13 women according to the Department of Justice. And you have rabbis telling their congregants that they need to overlook this and support this man.

Do these rabbis ever think about what message that sends to the women in their own congregations who are being sexually harassed, who might look to a rabbi for pastoral care? Your message it sends to those women when your rabbi gets up and says, I want you to vote for the serial sexual harasser, what does it say about how much you care about women’s right to be free of sexual harassment?

It says it is much less important to you than the principle of ensuring that Israel never faces accountability for its crimes under international law, even when those crimes have been widely acknowledged by the world’s leading genocide scholars, including many Israeli-born genocide scholars, right? That maintaining Israeli impunity to commit genocide and ensuring that Israel doesn’t have to face pressure for equality with Palestinians, that that is more important than the principle that sexual harassment is wrong and that sexual harassers should not be in high public office.

What else are these Jewish leaders willing to sacrifice for the idolatry of unconditional support for the state of Israel? Well, complicity in a mass campaign of anti-Muslim bigotry. We’re daily deluged in the final days of this campaign by just the crudest, most vicious anti-Muslim bigotry against Zohran Mamdani. Now, I’m not saying that everyone who opposes Zohran Mamdani is an anti-Muslim bigot. Of course not.

But I wonder whether it should at least give some of these Jewish leaders a little bit of pause that they have thrown in their lot with a candidate, Andrew Cuomo, who laughed and suggested with a radio talk show host that Zohran Mamdani would have applauded 9/11. This is the people with whom you are throwing in your lot, a viciously anti-Muslim bigoted campaign, and you’re saying, well, you know, opposing anti-Muslim bigotry is less important to me than preserving unconditional support for the state of Israel to be able to perpetuate what the world’s leading human rights organizations have termed as apartheid and genocide.

And then there’s the question of American democracy, right? Because this mayoral election is not happening under ordinary circumstances, right? It’s happening amidst the potential authoritarian takeover and destruction of America’s system of liberal democracy by Donald Trump. And so, one thing you might really want to think about if you believe in liberal democracy is which candidate is more likely to stand up for the principle of liberal democracy: Andrew Cuomo, who has a history of kind of flirting with Donald Trump? Eric Adams, who was an ally of Donald Trump? Or Zohran Mamdani, who’s a very, very vehement, steadfast opponent of Donald Trump? That also turns out to be much less important to these Jewish leaders than opposing a candidate who was willing to try to hold Israel to the standards of international law.

And it is extraordinary to see these rabbis and Jewish leaders describe Zohran Mamdani as a greater threat to Jewish New Yorkers and to the city and the country they love than Donald Trump. I’ve watched these videos put out by rabbis calling on their congregants not to vote for Zohran Mamdani, and I thought to myself, have they done similar videos about Donald Trump?

If you act as I think the Jewish leadership of the institutional Jewish leadership of New York City and beyond has, as if Zohran Mamdani is a greater threat, more offensive, more of an emergency than Donald Trump, what does that say? It seems to me it’s pretty clear what it says. It says that you care more about preserving unconditional American support for Israel than you care about preserving America as a free country, a free country for you and your children.

And this is something that we saw when AIPAC made this very clear when AIPAC endorsed dozens, if not hundreds, of members of Congress who had supported the January 6th insurrection and refused to accept the legitimacy of the 2020 election. We saw this when the Anti-Defamation League in 2024 gave an award to Jared Kushner. That the American Jewish leadership, when faced with the question of what is really important to them, the preservation of America as a liberal democracy, even though it has been liberal democracy, which has been the foundation of American Jewish flourishing, it is the foundation of Jewish safety in the United States, that that is less important to them, less of a criteria for determining which candidates for public office they declare as emergencies and threats to the Jewish community than a candidate who is willing to say that he believes that his city, New York, should abide by the international courts’ indictment of Benjamin Netanyahu, and who abides by international legal scholars who say Israel’s committing genocide.

And God forbid, God forbid, supports the principle that states should be based on equality under the law, irrespective of race, religion, and sex—the principle that American Jewish leadership supposedly believes in the United States, but turns out actually not to believe in it very much because they’re willing to fight much harder to ensure a system that denies equality under the law in Israel and Palestine than they are to try to defend a system of equality under the law in the United States. And so, they end up aligning with white Christian nationalist bigots who are turning America into…

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Our guest is Jonathan Mahler, a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and author of the new book, Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990. With New York on the verge of electing a socialist, Muslim, anti-Zionist mayor, I ask Jonathan how the city has changed over the last three decades, and how those changes enabled the rise of Zohran Mamdani.

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Kat Abughazaleh, the 26-year-old Palestinian-American running for Congress in Illinois’s Ninth District, has been federally indicted after being arrested at an ICE protest. We talk about that and about her vision for a revitalized Democratic Party.

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A list of ways to help Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

This Friday’s Zoom call will be at 1 PM Eastern, our usual time. Our guest will be Jonathan Mahler, a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and author of the new book, Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990. With New York on the verge of electing a socialist, Muslim, anti-Zionist mayor, I want to ask Jonathan how the city has changed over the last three decades, and how those changes enabled the rise of Zohran Mamdani.

Ask Me Anything

Our next Ask Me Anything session, for premium subscribers, will be this Tuesday, October 28, from Noon-1 PM Eastern time.

Cited in Today’s Video

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, and Bret Stephens attack Zohran Mamdani.

According to CBS, Mamdani is winning 38 percent of the Jewish vote.

According to the Washington Post, 39 percent of American Jews think Israel is committing genocide.

Mamdani has called both Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin war criminals.

When apartheid South Africa’s prime minister complained about “double standards.”

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!), Suzanne Schneider analyzes the Trump administration’s grant to a neoconservative Jewish group.

Waleed Shahid on Mamdani’s lessons for Democrats.

Nathan Thrall on what Israelis and Palestinians have learned since October 7.

Rabbi David Polsky argues that starving Palestinians in Gaza violates Jewish law.

I’ll be speaking on November 2 at Tzedek Chicago, November 6 at Columbia Journalism School, and November 10 at Congregation Tikkun v’Or in Ithaca, New York.

See you on Tuesday and Friday,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So, as we get near the New York mayoral race, the attacks on Zohran Mamdani have been become more intense, and in particular from a number of rabbis and Jewish commentators. And it’s really interesting to look carefully at the nature of these attacks on Mamdani to see what they say and what they don’t say.

What you notice is the attacks on Mamdani do not actually engage in a substantive critique with any actual evidence against the positions that Mamdani has taken, for instance, that Israel’s committing genocide, or that the New York City should support the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes, or that Israel should be a state that treats all its citizens equally rather than one that gives Jews legal superiority. None of these arguments are actually made. What you see instead is a series of techniques that are all designed to suggest—although not always explicitly—that basically Mamdani is an antisemite. And I think there are two particular ways that are worth noting about the way in which these claims of antisemitism are created.

The first is that these critics—Jewish critics of Mamdani—posit that they speak for a Jewish consensus, a kind of Jewish pro-Israel consensus. And the fact that Mamdani is against that Jewish pro-Israel consensus is evidence that he has something against Jews, right? So, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsh did this video where he said that most Jews are deeply offended by Zohran Mamdani saying that Israel has committed genocide. Now, that itself is kind of interesting, right? Hirsch is not presenting any evidence that the claim is wrong. He’s simply saying that most Jews are offended. So, it’s a kind of like an identity claim argument, right, that there must be something problematic about this charge of genocide because most Jews are offended, i.e., this probably, you know, suggests some anti-Jewish animus on Mamdani’s part.

But it’s just factually wrong, actually. The Washington Post just recently came out with a poll showed that 39 percent of American Jews think Israel is committing genocide; fifty one percent don’t. So, it’s not a majority of American Jews who think Israel is committing genocide. But it’s a quite large minority of American Jews, right. So, by taking this position, Zohran Mamdani is essentially siding with the more progressive wing of the American Jewish community over the more conservative wing of the American Jewish community, which is hardly surprising given that he’s a political progressive, right, that he is in a way exposing a very deep and increasingly bitter divide among Jews in New York and other places. In fact, it’s probably not a coincidence that Zohran Mamdani is getting about in the polls around 40% of the Jewish vote, running close to Andrew Cuomo, which is roughly the same percentage of Jews nationally think Israel’s committing genocide, right?

But Ammi Hirsch can’t acknowledge that. He has to portray himself as kind of someone who speaks for Jews as a whole, right, even though nobody has elected him, right? Very few Jewish New Yorkers even know who he is. There’s no reason to believe that he would have the right to do that. But he has to do it in order to suggest that, by disagreeing with Ammiel Hirsch, that Mamdani disagrees with the vast majority of Jews and therefore has something against Jews.

Similarly, in his column in the New York Times, Bret Stephens acknowledges, to his credit, that a Fox News poll shows that Mamdani is winning 38% of the Jewish vote. But then he suggests that these voters must be setting aside whatever reservations they might have about the candidates’ views on Israel. So, the only way in which Bret Stephens can imagine that Jews would be supporting Mamdani is to think that they’re doing so in spite of views on Israel. But in fact, the evidence suggests that that’s probably a plus for most of them. Again, after all, the polls show that roughly 40% of American Jews hold the views about Israel that Mamdani does. But Bret Stephens can’t really acknowledge that because that would completely reframe the argument, right, in which he wants to suggest that Mamdani is in opposition to the vast majority of Jews on Israel and, therefore, that that suggests that Mamdani has some problem with Jews.

The second way in which you see this kind of argument of antisemitism being made, is that Mamdani is applying a set of double standards towards Israel, right? Again, it’s not an argument that what Mamdani is saying is wrong on the merits. It’s an argument that there must be some animus here because he’s so focused on Israel. So, Bret Stephens in his column writes, ‘one of the ways anti-Zionists tend to give themselves away as something darker,’ right—something darker is a pretty obvious euphemism for antisemite—’is that the only human rights abuses they seem to notice are Israel’s.’

Here’s a tip. Whenever you notice a writer use the phrase seem, it usually suggests that they don’t actually have evidence for what they’re going to say, but they actually just want to kind of assert it because it seems that way to them. In fact, Zohran Mamdani actually does criticize a lot of other countries for their human rights abuses. He said that Vladimir Putin should also be indicted, that New York should also help indict Vladimir Putin at the International Criminal Court, support the ICC’s warrant against Vladimir Putin. He’s called Narendra Modi, India’s leader, a war criminal, right.

And when he talks about Israel, Mamdani says again and again and again that his criticisms of Israel are based on his broad support for international law, and his belief in human rights, and his opposition to the idea of ethno-nationalist states. That’s the same reason that he doesn’t like Narendra Modi, because Narendra Modi is trying to turn India into a Hindu state. Mamdani doesn’t like the idea of states that are based on religious or ethnic or racial supremacy, which is why he opposes India being a Hindu state and Israel being a Jewish state, right?

It’s actually pretty consistent in his worldview. In fact, I think you’d probably find that Zohar Mamdani, if you looked at something like U.S. arms sales to foreign coun…

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Our guest is Gaza-born political analyst Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He’s been explaining why Trump’s ceasefire isn’t even a ceasefire, let alone a path to Palestinian freedom. And he’s been discussing the clashes inside Gaza between Hamas and Israeli-supported clans. We talked about the Trump plan, Gaza’s future, and the long-term consequences of this 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 public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

Cited in Today’s Video

Why Israeli doves like former Shin Bet head Ami Ayalon want Israel to release Marwan Barghouti but the Israeli government won’t, despite Hamas’ request.

Why Barghouti’s son fears for his father’s life.

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Our guest is Israeli-born historian Ilan Pappé, author of the new book, Israel on the Brink. We discuss why he chose a life of political rebellion against the state in which he was born and what he thinks the ceasefire in Gaza will bring. We also talk about his book, which suggests that in the coming decades, Israel may cease to exist as a Jewish state.

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

A list of ways to help Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

If you’re in the US, consider joining the nationwide No Kings protests on October 18.

This Friday’s Zoom call will be at 1 PM Eastern, our usual time. Our guest will be Israeli-born historian Ilan Pappe, author of the new book, Israel on the Brink. I’ll ask Pappe why he chose a life of political rebellion against the state in which he was born and what he thinks the ceasefire in Gaza will bring. We’ll also talk about his book, which suggests that in the coming decades, Israel may cease to exist as a Jewish state.

Cited in Today’s Video

Naftali Benett asks why Palestinians and their supporters aren’t happier about the Trump deal.

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!), Abdullah Hany Daher reflects on the two years since October 7, 2023.

James Talarico on why requiring Texas schools to post the Ten Commandments violates the Ten Commandments.

Libby Lenkinski on how reparations for the Holocaust helped her family build a new life, and why Jews must demand reparations for the genocide in Gaza.

Shaul Magid on being human after the destruction of Gaza.

See you on Friday,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

I’ve been struggling for days to try to find the words to express how I feel about the Trump deal because my feelings are so, like, profoundly conflicted. When this airs on Monday, it looks like the remaining Israeli hostages, and the bodies of the dead hostages will be returned. This is a kind of catharsis for Jews, for me, that is really one of the most profound and powerful things that I think I will have ever experienced in my life.

This entire experience of Jewish solidarity over the last two years has been extraordinary. I mean, it really has been one of the most powerful manifestations I’ve ever seen of this, you know, phrase that people use a lot, Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh Bazeh, that all Jews are responsible for one another. I am kind of in awe of the people in my synagogue, and that I see around New York, who I see have been wearing dog tags to remember the hostages every day. I hear stories about people, you know, who have had a place at their table for a particular hostage now for the last two years. You know, in my tiny way, I’ve had the names of the hostages on my refrigerator door. We pray for them every week.

I mean, this has been incredibly, incredibly powerful. It’s been one of the most powerful Jewish experiences of my life, and I want to think tomorrow, as those hostages are coming home, and think about the Trump deal only through that vein, only through this vein of Jewish solidarity: us as a small, often brutalized, persecuted people who have learned and in accordance with our traditions, to really care for one another, to care for one another. And there’s so many people who have manifested that stuff so powerfully.

And to see the joy of those families returning their loved ones, and to see the way that people rally around them in this moment, and rally around those who don’t have loved ones who are coming back, is… I wish I could just stop there. I really wish that that would be the end of my message. And I thought a lot about just saying that, just saying that. Because I know that there are a lot of people who think that people on the left, like me, who criticize Israel, we don’t feel those things. And I know for me, it’s not true. I feel them like they’re some of the most profound feelings I feel.

But we’re also being told that the Trump deal should be a cause of celebration for Palestinians, right? Again and again, I’m seeing on social media people taunting, you know, pro-Palestinian activists. Why aren’t you celebrating? You claim this is a genocide. Why aren’t you celebrating? You’re unhappy because all you want is for Israel to be blamed. Now that actually something is good is happening to Palestinians and Israel, you can’t recognize that.

But this isn’t a day of celebration for Palestinians because it’s not fair to ask Palestinians to celebrate simply for not being bombed, right? The standard should be higher than that. Yes, it is, of course, a terrific thing that the bombs hopefully will stop, at least for a while, that Palestinians will get more food in. But if we see Palestinians as full human beings, as full human beings, we have to understand that the bar is a little bit higher than that. How dehumanizing is it to suggest that Palestinians should leap for joy and celebration simply because a genocide may be ending, and they’re returning to a state of apartheid? A state that, you know, as even Israel’s own human rights organizations have stated, a situation of blockade.

I mean, look at what we know about the Trump deal. It offers no path, no path, for Palestinians to gain citizenship, the most basic fundamental right that all human beings deserve, the right to be a citizen of the country and you’re in. And beyond that, Israel is now, as in the first phase of the Trump plan, Israel sits on 53% of Gaza. And in the second phase, if this Arab stabilization force comes in, it’ll go to 40% of Gaza. I think, based on what I’m reading, it’s very unlikely that this deal will ever go to the third phase, in which Israel would control 15% of Gaza. It would still mean that Palestinians will have less access to Gaza than they had before, but I don’t think Palestinians are going to get 85% of Gaza because the third withdrawal requires Hamas to demilitarize, which even Israel’s own security forces don’t think will happen.

So, it seems the very likely outcome of this is that Palestinians are basically going to be on 60% of the Gaza Strip. This is already one of the most overcrowded places on Earth. It was declared unlivable by the United Nations before October 7th. My friend Mohammad Shehada said that everyone he knew growing up in Gaza before October 7th contemplated suicide because of what it was like to live every day in what Human Rights Watch called an open-air prison.

And now it’s been bombed to absolute rubble. The UN says there’s 17,000 unaccompanied children there. There is no prospect, really, of Gaza being made livable. Yes, more humanitarian aid may come in. There may be better quality tents. But Israel will control all access in and out, and there’s very little prospect, based on past Israeli behavior, that Israel is going to allow in the heavy-duty construction that would be allowed Gaza to truly rebuild because Israel will claim that those are dual-use items that could be used for weapons, as Israel has claimed for, you know, for a long time.

So, to tell Palestinians that they need to celebrate that, that their lives are worth so little that they should be jumping for joy simply because they may not be killed by a bomb tomorrow? That doesn’t recognize Palestinian humanity, doesn’t recognize that Palestinians are human beings created equal in the image of God, equal to everybody else. And that’s why, it seems to me, I can’t see this deal and what will happen tomorrow only as a celebration. As profoundly as it matters to me that we as a people, begin to heal as Jews, and that our hostages are returned, I simply do not believe in Judaism as a purely tribal creed, in which we think only for ourselves and demand and expect that other people deserve less. That’s not Judaism to me.

Judaism is based on this profound and remarkable tension between the idea that we have a special relationship with God, and the idea that God sees all human beings as being equal in the image of God. So, yes, I will be celebrating and perhaps crying tomorrow along with so many other people, when we see these hostages come out. But I’m not gonna get up here and say that Palestinians should be thrilled to live under permanent subjugation in a hellhole, without the basic necessities of life, and without freedom, which they deserve just as much as everybody else.

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