The Beinart Notebook

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I spoke with my friend, political analyst, and president of The Agora Initiative, Khalil Sayegh. Questions included…

How are you able to face this unending horror and maintain such gentleness and generosity?

What do you think of the “perfect victim” critique?

After all this time, what gives you confidence that persuasion is possible, and that changing minds can lead to real-world change?

How do you maintain your faith in God in the midst of so much suffering?

How do you find the right balance between criticizing Hamas and criticizing Israel, given their great power disparity?

How do you respond to the argument that Hamas’s authoritarianism and violence shows Israel can’t afford to give Palestinians equal rights?

Do you believe Hamas truly accepts of the idea of a two-state solution?

What was your response to the assasinations in Washington, DC?

What do you think of the phrase “Globalize the Intifada”?

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Our guest is Michael Roth, President of Wesleyan University and author of several recent New York Times op-eds, including “Trump is Selling Jews a Dangerous Lie” and one subtitled “Higher Education Should be Tolerant but Never Neutral.” We talk about the Trump administration’s assault on independent universities, the claim of rampant campus antisemitism, and the argument that universities should be neutral on political issues.

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Earlier this year, Israeli writer and historian Fania Oz-Salzberger and the Palestinian peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah debated on X whether Israel targets Palestinian civilians and how to evaluate Israel’s behavior compared to the behavior of Hamas. I’m grateful they both agreed to meet and explore their different perspectives with us.

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

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

Khaled Abou El Fadl is a professor of law at UCLA and one of America’s preeminent Islamic scholars. He’s also a passionate critic of authoritarianism in the Muslim world who has paid a significant price for challenging tyrannical regimes. I recently had the privilege of appearing alongside him in a discussion about Jewish and Muslim obligations in the wake of Israel’s destruction of Gaza. I felt I was in the presence of a profound religious voice.

For the next few weeks, most of my book events for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza are outside the US. You’ll find a list of book-related events below.

I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestine Lives and Culture, edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller with Juliette Touma and Jayyab Abusafia.

I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.

Here is a message from Hossam, sent by his sister Abir, last Wednesday:

Yesterday, I received an invitation from the Palestinian Authority for Development for my children to attend recreational activities and psychological support sessions. My 9-year-old daughter, Malak, and her neighborhood friends were overjoyed—finally, a chance to play and feel like children again after days in shelters.

Tragically, at 11:30 AM, the site was bombed by an F-16. The blast shook our neighborhood. Malak and the other children ran in terror to escape the shrapnel. In the chaos, Malak fell, injuring her arm. She now suffers from a deep bruise and severe joint pain.

Hospitals are overwhelmed, and care is delayed as medical staff attend to the most critical cases. We wait with patience and faith, hoping Malak’s condition will improve soon.

Please keep Malak—and all the wounded children—in your prayers. Your continued support means everything to my family. Even in fear, we hold on to hope. Together, we will survive this war and one day heal and rebuild.

Friday Zoom Call

This Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at a special time: 12:30 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of law at UCLA and one of America’s preeminent Islamic scholars. He’s also a passionate critic of authoritarianism in the Muslim world who has paid a significant price for challenging tyrannical regimes. I recently had the privilege of appearing alongside him in a discussion about Jewish and Muslim obligations in the wake of Israel’s destruction of Gaza. I felt I was in the presence of a profound religious voice.

After this Friday, we will take a break. There will be no newsletter on Monday, May 19 and no Zoom call on Friday, May 23, as I’ll be travelling in Australia. We will resume on Monday, May 26 and Friday, May 30.

Book Tour

(We’ll update this every week.)

On Monday, May 12, I’ll be speaking at Parkdale Hall in Toronto.

On Tuesday, May 13, I’ll be speaking at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation.

On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.

On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.

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!), the Palestinian legal theorist Raef Zreik writes about the legacy of German-Jewish religious thinker, Martin Buber.

I spoke about Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza at Harvard Divinity School and via Zoom with Barnett Rubin at the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library.

Eric Alterman on the “Coming Jewish Civil War over Donald Trump.”

A former West Bank settler on why he refused to serve in the IDF.

See you on Friday,

Peter

So, the kind of American part of my book tour is pretty much over. I’m actually recording this from Canada, and then I’m going to Australia and the UK and Ireland. And I don’t have many more book events in the United States. I’ve been traveling around the US for like more than three months now. And one of the really interesting things about doing that is I get a kind of a sense of the conversation about Israel-Palestine at maybe at a more grassroots level than I would otherwise. And it’s especially interesting because I can compare what I see now to what I saw when I wrote this book called The Crisis of Zionism 13 years ago, back in 2012, just to see how things look different when I go out and speak to lots of different folks than they I did back then.

Reflecting on it, two things really struck me. Two differences have really struck me. The first is a kind of collapse of what you could call the kind of liberal pro-Israel position. In 2012, when my book came out—and that was a less radical book. I mean, I still supported two-state solution of a Jewish state next to a Palestinian state back then. But the book was still pretty harshly attacked by a bunch of people—journalists, commentators—who were kind of liberals in good standing, you know, and they thought I was being too harshly critical of Israel. And, you know, those were the most important criticisms of the book. And they were tough for me because these were people who were arguing from within a kind of similar ideological or kind of moral position that I was, you know, about liberal democracy, about equality. But they were still very, quite staunch defenders of Israel.

And I think that today what I notice, what the book kind of response to the book has really made clear to me, is that those voices are much, much weaker than they are now. It’s partly generational, I think, because that position was stronger amongst older people, and more than a decade has passed now. I think it’s partly because the whole center of gravity in kind of liberal/progressive kind of circles has moved left. I mean, you know, 13 years ago is also a time where you would have found more people who are considered liberals in good standing in the sense that like they were influential commentators, you know, who had the ear of prominent people in the Democratic Party who would have been more hawkish in foreign policy, right, who were still defending the intervention in Afghanistan, if not Iraq and supporting military intervention in Syria or Libya. That position also, I think, is largely gone by the wayside.

There was also, I think, more legitimacy to a kind of more neoliberal economic policy in the Democratic Party. So, these activist movements, starting with Occupy in 2011 and Black Lives Matter and Me Too and others, I think, have pushed the center of gravity in general in kind of mainstream progressive and liberal debate. And so, I think you see that on Israel and Palestine as well. There are, of course, still a lot of politicians who kind of are in good standing in the Democratic Party, and are very pro-Israel—you know, Ritchie Torres or John Fetterman and all these people—but if you look at kind of in public commentary among journalists, writers, people in the public culture, I think you find that position is much, much weaker and much less prominent. Some people who used to defend Israel who are liberals, I noticed, just really don’t write much about the subject, or some of them write about antisemitism as a left-wing problem, but you notice they don’t really write actually much defending what Israel is actually doing.

And so, what I’ve noticed is that it’s meant that there’s been a lot of really harsh criticism of my book, but most of it is really now coming from people who are kind of firmly anchored on the ideological right. They’re not people who speak within a kind of liberal, let alone progressive, idiom. And so, even though I don’t, you know, the criticisms are still very harsh, I don’t feel like they’re coming from people who are speaking within the same kind of ideological perspective that I am. It feels just much, much more polarized. And I think that you see this in the Jewish community in particular, in which the energy in pro-Israel circles in the United States is not among self-described liberals. It’s among people who actually are anti-liberal …

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