The Beinart Notebook

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Our guest is novelist and journalist, Omar El Akkad, author of the new book about Israel’s destruction of Gaza, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. He’ll talk about what it’s like to live as an Arab-American in a moment in which the US—and the West more generally— are destroying any pretense of believing in the moral principles they claim to hold dear.

I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for a few more weeks. 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.

Friday Zoom Call

This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern, our regular time. Our guest will be the novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad, author of the new book about Israel’s destruction of Gaza, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. He’ll talk about what it’s like to live as an Arab-American in a moment in which the US—and the West more generally— are destroying any pretense of believing in the moral principles they claim to hold dear.

Book Tour

(We’ll update this every week.)

On Monday, May 6, I’ll be speaking at Stanford University.

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.

Sources Cited in this Week’s Video

Tommy Lapid and Yeshayahu Leibowitz on “Judeo-Nazis.”

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!), Sheetal Chabria offers a leftist guide to tariffs.

In The New York Times, I wrote about how Trump and establishment Jewish organizations are redefining Jewishness to silence protest against Israel.

On Seven Minute expert, I talked (or tried to talk) with Columbia University Professor Shai Davidai about Israel and antisemitism.

Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor on how American politicians can support the horror in Gaza.

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza was reviewed in the magazine ARC and I discussed with Barnett Rubin.

Check out Ben Barber’s book, No Way But Forward: Life Stories of Three Families in the Gaza Strip.

See you on Friday,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So, the Antisemitism Awareness Act is currently being debated in the US Senate. It’s passed the House. And it’s now in committee in the Senate. And if it passes through the committee, it will go on to the Senate floor. And this would kind of be Congressional instruction to the Department of Education to use this particular definition when it evaluates alleged antisemitism on college campuses.

And so, it’s just worth, I think, saying something about one particular element of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, IHRA definition of antisemitism, to show how I think perverse it is and how in a certain kind of very strange way. It’s very dehumanizing of Jews, this definition of antisemitism. It’s dehumanizing of Jews because it suggests that it is antisemitic to imagine that Jews could act the way in which other human beings act, right?

And so, in particular, one of the examples of the IHRA definition of antisemitism is that it could be an example of antisemitism if you draw comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis. And now, obviously, there are many analogies between Israel and the Nazis that will be very, very stupid and incorrect, and potentially even offensive analogies, right? Benjamin Netanyahu, for all his sins, is not Adolf Hitler. Israel, despite the horrors that it’s committing in Gaza and the West Bank, has not established death camps in the West Bank. So, obviously, those would be very incorrect, and I think problematic analogies.

But the Nazis did many, many other things besides creating death camps, right? The Nazis took power in 1933. There was a whole system of kind of discourse and processes that the Nazis put in place—some of which was consistent with other fascist movements—that eroded liberal democracy, that ultimately eroded the rule of law and the rights of various different people. And we understand that implicitly, right, because the United States media is filled with comparisons of the Trump administration to the Nazis, right? And the vast majority of these comparisons are not suggesting that that Donald Trump has set up death camps in the United States, right, but they’re looking to this historical parallel to try to understand and analyze the dangers and also the rhetorical formulations, the relationship between a fascist movement and big corporations, the language of dehumanization, many, many, many things, which are kind of natural things for people to do when you’re looking at a system of oppression—and as Donald Trump is trying to create in the United States and authoritarianism and Israel has been doing as well, right? And remember, just to state the obvious, Israel is the country that controls millions and millions of people who live under the control of the Israeli state but cannot become citizens of that state. And now it is engaged in Gaza in a military assault that has been called genocide by Human Rights Watch and by people like Omer Bartov, right?

So, what does it mean to suggest that one can talk about Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the language of Nazis or talk about Marine Le Pen, or talk about the AFD, or talk about Viktor Orban, or Narendra Modi, or Jair Bolsonaro, or many, many, many kind of right-wing authoritarian movements around the world? But it is antisemitic to deploy any of these analogies when it comes to the state of Israel. What that in effect does is it suggests—this is what I mean by dehumanization—it suggests that in some strange way, if you’re in a Jewish state, you’re no longer fully human because you cannot have the full range of human capacities, right, some of which are very good, some of which are very terrible. And if people suggest you do, if people suggest that there’s anything you do that might have reminiscences of this horrible Nazi regime, that’s antisemitic because it is bigoted against Jews to suggest that Jews in a Jewish state could be acting in the way that we plainly recognize, that people all over the world and political movements all over the world have the capacity to act.

I think I may have mentioned before once this really extraordinary video of a conversation on Israeli television between Tommy Lapid, the father of Yair Lapid—Tommy Lapid was himself an Israeli politician, and also a Holocaust survivor—and, you know, one of my heroes, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the Orthodox Israeli social critic. And Tommy Lapid is enraged that Yeshayahu Leibowitz has used the term Judeo-Nazis to describe certain things that he’s seeing that are happening in the state of Israel, right? Yeshayahu Leibowitz in using that term could very well be found to be violating the IHRA definition of antisemitism, despite the fact that he was an eminent Jewish scholar and social critic, right?

But Tommy Lapid is enraged by the analogy, and he’s yelling at Leibowitz. Again and again, he’s saying, ‘have we put them in death camps? Have we put them in death camps? Have we put them in death camps?’ And there’s this long pause. And then Leibowitz says at the end, ‘that is your prophecy.’ That is your prophecy. And what I interpret Leibowitz is saying is of course not that Israel has put Palestinians in death camps. It hasn’t back then. It still hasn’t, even despite what it’s doing in Gaza. But to say, don’t foreclose the possibility that Jews could be capable of anythi…

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 is Joy Reid, former MSNBC host and author of the Joy’s House Substack. We talk about how the mainstream media covers Israel-Palestine, and how it covers America.

I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next couple of months. 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.

Friday Zoom Call

This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern, our regular time. Our guest will be Joy Reid, former MSNBC host and author of the Joy’s House Substack. We’ll talk about how the mainstream media covers Israel-Palestine, and how it covers America.

Book Tour

(We’ll update this every week.)

On Monday, April 28, I’ll be speaking at Princeton University.

On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: with Khaled Abu El Fadl at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.

On Wednesday, April 30, I’ll be speaking with Barnett Rubin via Zoom to the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library.

On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, California.

On Monday, May 6, I’ll be speaking at Stanford University.

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.

Book Reviews

I discussed Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza on Public Research with Daniel Schwartz. The book was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement and Moment Magazine.

Sources Cited in this Week’s Video

India’s denial of water to Pakistan.

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!), Alex Kane reports that the New York Police categorized keffiyehs as symbols of antisemitism.

Karen Attiah on why Columbia cancelled her class.

Jacobin interviews Omer Bartov about Gaza.

A conversation between the director of The Encampments and a pro-Israel influencer.

See you on Friday,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So, last week there was an armed attack by militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir. And India is accusing neighboring Pakistan of having a role in it. And in retaliation, it has now suspended a water treaty from 1960, in which rivers that pass through India provide Pakistan a very large percentage of its water. And for the first time since 1960 India is now saying it’s suspending this water treaty in retaliation, which really could devastate the Pakistani agriculture and the Pakistani population more generally. So, this would be an act of very, very serious collective punishment against the people of Pakistan. And this is really the kind of thing that I think people have been warning about since Israel’s assault on Gaza. Which was that the things that Israel was doing in Gaza would become templates for countries around the world.

And so, one of the things Israel has done in Gaza—starting before October 7th, but more dramatically since October 7th—is a policy of collective punishment of the entire population, right? So, Israel has now been denying all humanitarian into Gaza since the collapse of the last ceasefire agreement. And from the very beginning, Israel said very clearly that it would deny significant amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. And indeed, it did, which is one of the reasons that there’s been many, many reports of starvation in Gaza, of lack of medical care. One of the reasons that so many children have had their limbs amputated, according to my friend Ahmed Moore who wrote a long piece about this in The Guardian, is that Israel has denied the ability of people to Gaza to bring in the medical supplies and medicines that might have allowed doctors to be able to be able to save those limbs.

So, this policy of collective punishment that Israel has been pursuing in Gaza now is echoing in the policies that India is pursuing in Pakistan. I can’t prove that India is doing this because of what Israel is doing in Gaza. But I think if we look at the tire of the last 20-25 years of world history, you can see the way in which when a norm is eroded by one government, it becomes easier for other governments to also erode these norms. So, for instance, we know that Vladimir Putin in justifying his invasion of Ukraine, and his invasions of Georgia also has kind of cited America’s behaviors in Iraq, for instance, or in Libya, right? The idea is, well, if the United States doesn’t need United Nations approval to go and attack other countries, then why should I?

This is one of the reasons I think that the impunity that America has given Israel over the last year and a half is so disastrous, not only for Palestinians and for Palestinians in Gaza, but indeed for the whole world. People in Washington now like to say that it’s no longer a unipolar world, that America’s margin of power over other countries has diminished. One of the things that that means is that it is going to be more likely that other countries will be able to start to do the things that Israel and the United States have done because they will have more power to do so. And because the institutions and norms that might prevent them from doing so have been substantially weakened. Right after the United States, after all, in order to defend Israel has repeatedly now attacked the International Criminal Court. So, you’re going to think that the International Criminal Court is now going to turn to focusing on India, right? It’s been weakened by the way in which it’s been hamstrung by the United States in its response to Gaza.

So, I did a conversation with Jonathan Freeland of The Guardian last week for paid subscribers. And Jonathan and I—I have a lot of respect for him and we agree on a lot—but one thing we disagree with is that he basically believes in the idea of a state that gives legal privilege to Jews over Palestinians, even though he would want to minimize that privilege and he would want Israel to give back the West Bank and Gaza. I don’t believe in states that give legal privilege to people of one ethnic, religious, or racial group. I believe in the idea of states based on equality under the law. And one of the reasons that I believe that I have to apply that principle to Israel and Palestine is not only because Palestinians deserve to be treated equally wherever they live between the river and the sea, but because it’s just become clearer and clearer to me that when one makes exceptions to basic principles about human equality and international law in one context, you are contributing to opening the door to those exceptions being acted on in many other contexts. And that’s why Israel is part of a global rising network of ethno-nationalist regimes and movements across the world. That the exception for this in Israel doesn’t stay in Israel. And it’s also why we now see that Israel’s behavior in Gaza seems to be providing a very, very frightening template for what India is doing in Pakistan.

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 is Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland. I’ve known and liked Jonathan for years, and we agree on many things. But he also has criticisms of my book. He thinks that in my rejection of the very idea of a Jewish state, I’ve gone too far. We talk about that, and about the way being a British—as opposed to an American—Jew shapes his perspective. I’m grateful to him for joining us.

The Anti-Defamation League Now Opposes Trump’s Abductions. But It Helped Enable Them.

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 is NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, whose campaign to make the city more affordable for the working class is currently polling in second place. I ask Zohran about his vision for New York City during the second Trump presidency, and the challenges he anticipates, his perspectives on Israel/Palestine, and how they shape his work. This talk is co-sponsored by Jewish Currents.

The Inane Justification For Destroying America’s Universities

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Munther Isaac is a renowned Palestinian minister from Bethlehem. We discuss his new book, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible and the Genocide in Gaza. We also dig into why so many American evangelicals unconditionally support Israel, and what Christians should do to honor the dignity of everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next couple of months. 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, the latest work by the brilliant essayist, Raja Shehada, What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?

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.

Friday Zoom Call

This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. Our guest will be Munther Isaac, the renowned Palestinian minister from Bethlehem. We’ll discuss his new book, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible and the Genocide in Gaza. We’ll also discuss why so many American evangelicals unconditionally support Israel, and what Christians should do to honor the dignity of everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Friday’s zoom call is for paid subscribers.

Book Tour

(We’ll update this every week.)

On Monday, April 7, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Divinity School.

On Tuesday, April 8, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, and then later that night, at First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the Palestinian human rights activist, Issa Amro.

On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.

On Wednesday, April 16, I’ll be speaking via Zoom to Scientists for Palestine.

On Monday, April 21, I’ll be speaking with Sahar Aziz at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

On Tuesday, April 22, I’ll be speaking with Pankaj Mishra at New York University.

On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: with Khaled Abu El Fadl at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.

On Wednesday, April 30, I’ll be speaking with Barnett Rubin via Zoom to the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library.

On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, California.

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.

Book Reviews

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza was reviewed (along with ten other books!) by Omer Bartov in The New York Review of Books.

Things to Read

(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)

In Jewish Currents (subscribe!), I wrote about Chuck Schumer’s new book about antisemitism.

For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts Podcast, I interviewed Ahmed Moor about his Guardian article about child amputees in Gaza.

A video of last week’s Smol Emuni (Religious Left) Conference in New York.

The children of Columbia’s first Jewish president denounce its capitulation.

See you on Friday,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So, there’s been a lot of attention in the press to these protests against Hamas. I’d encourage people who are interested in the conversation to listen to the video I did on Friday, the interview I did with Mohamed Shahada, who I thought had really, really interesting insights into that whole dynamic. But, you know, it will reinforce the tendency of some supporters of Israel to say, this is a war of Israel against Hamas, not against the Palestinian people. After all, look, these Palestinians in Gaza are protesting against Hamas. They don’t like Hamas. And, as Mohammed pointed out to me when we talked, it’s certainly true. There have been protests that many Palestinians don’t like Hamas. There have been protests against Hamas for a bunch of years now. Hamas is authoritarian, you know, incompetent in various ways. Many people rightly don’t like their Islamist ideology, which they feel as considered to be illiberal and oppressive.

But I still think it’s just fundamentally wrong to say that the war that Israel is waging is against Hamas for a number of reasons. First of all, if you just look at the military tactics that Israel is using, they’re clearly—some of them—not only directed at Hamas. So, Israel has been for the last month now denying humanitarian aid into Gaza—to everyone in Gaza, not just to the Hamas people, to everyone in Gaza. Israel is always also actively advocating the idea of mass migration, mass expulsion out of Gaza for everybody, not just for members of Hamas. And Israel is also repressing pretty brutally the West Bank, where Hamas is not in charge. There have been tens of thousands, according to reports, of people expelled from their homes in the West Bank, where Hamas is not in charge, right.

So, all of that alone, I think, makes it pretty difficult to suggest that this is a war only against Hamas. In addition to that, if Israel really were interested in opposing merely Hamas, and let’s say even just getting rid of Hamas—if that was Israel’s primary objective—then one might think that Israel would support these protests against Hamas by telling Palestinians in Gaza that if they got rid of Hamas, then actually their lives could be better. Imagine if Israel said, well, if you get rid of Hamas, we will support a mass reconstruction for Gaza. We will not support expulsion. We will not maintain these buffer zones and blockade that make it impossible for Gaza to have any economic future, maybe we would even begin negotiations based on the idea of giving Palestinians eventually their state, or something like this, right.

You can imagine a whole series of things that Israel could do to basically say to Palestinians, Gaza, listen, we’re being really tough on you because of Hamas. But listen, if you manage to get rid of Hamas, then we’re going to have a completely different kind of future for you, right. Which would presumably strengthen the protest movement against Hamas. Israel said none of that, right. Israel still is openly advocating still mass expulsion of everybody from Gaza. Beyond that, if Israel really, really wanted to weaken Hamas in general, there are many things that Israel could have done over many years, right.

So, Israel for years has had the opportunity to release Marwan Barghouti from jail. I interviewed Arab Barghouti, his youngest son, a couple of weeks ago, right. We know from polling that Marwan Barghouti, who was not an Islamist, is more popular than Hamas. So, if you really wanted to weaken Hamas politically, you could let their most formidable rival out of jail. Israel also, for many, many years, could have supported the Palestinian Authority, which was pursuing a different strategy than Hamas. The Palestinian Authority had leaders—Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad—who had recognized Israel. They were working with Israel to prevent armed resistance from the West Bank. And yet, Fayyad in particular, who was prime minister from 2007 to 2013, who was really quite popular in Israel and American Jewish circles because he was so moderate. If you look at the interview he did with Roger Cohen of the New York Times, when he left Palestinian politics, he basically said, I was defeated by Israel. Even though I did everything they wanted, I couldn’t get them to stop settlement growth for a single day. And he literally says in that interview that Hamas will be strengthened.

So, you notice sometimes in the press, sometimes people call this war Israel vs. Hamas. And sometimes, they say it’s a war of Israel vs. Gaza. I really think it’s much more accurate to say it actually is a war of Israel vs. Gaza. It’s not to say that Israelis and …

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