The Beinart Notebook

Peter Beinart
  • 0.0 (0)
  • NEWS COMMENTARY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

A conversation about American foreign policy, Palestinian freedom and the Jewish people. peterbeinart.substack.com

  1. Speaking Across Divides

    4 HR AGO

    Speaking Across Divides

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Ethan Katz is Associate Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley. He’s the faculty director of the Center for Jewish Studies and co-founder of both the Antisemitism Education Initiative and the Bridging Fellowship Dialogue program. His most recent co-edited book is When Jews Argue: Between the University and the Beit Midrash. He recently wrote an essay for Sources entitled When Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitic? Getting Beyond the Polemics and, while I didn’t agree with all of it, I found it an interesting good faith exploration of these issues, so I invited him to discuss it.

    11 min
  2. Trump is Not a Patriot

    4 DAYS AGO

    Trump is Not a Patriot

    In this age of unfathomable cruelty and suffering, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But I want to highlight one individual, and one campaign, for you to consider supporting. The individual is Abdullah Awwad, a surgeon in the Gaza Strip I interviewed last year. He’s been working for years in horrifying conditions. He’s been accepted to multiple overseas medical programs but needs the money to leave Gaza with his family. The campaign is by Shir Tikvah, the synagogue whose rabbi, Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg, I interviewed last week. It’s to raise money for people harmed by ICE’s assault on the Twin Cities. Please consider supporting both of these efforts. This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Sari Bashi, founder of Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, the leading Israeli human rights group offering legal assistance to Palestinians. She’s also author of the new memoir, Upside-Down Love, about her love affair with a Palestinian professor confined by Israel to the West Bank city of Ramallah. We’ll talk about her story of love in the face of institutional oppression, and about Israel’s restrictions on Palestinian movement, particularly in Gaza, where despite a so-called “cease-fire,” Palestinians remain largely unable to enter or leave the Strip. Reader Survey We created a super-short, four question, survey to see how subscribers feel about the Beinart Notebook. If you have 5 minutes, please fill it out. It will help us figure what topics to cover, and what guests to interview, in the coming year. Cited in Today’s Video I wrote about patriotism and nationalism for The Atlantic in 2018. How the UAE bribed Trump to give it America’s most sensitive technology. 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.) For Jewish Currents (subscribe!), I wrote about Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace.” For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s “Occupied Thoughts” podcast, I interviewed Jaser Abu Mousa, a 2025 Yale Peace Fellow and past program officer working for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Gaza, about life and death in the Gaza Strip. For one day, The Nation magazine devoted its entire website to writing about Gaza, by writers from Gaza. After years of disputing the Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll numbers, Israel now accepts them. Eve Fairbanks writes about the American right’s nostalgia for apartheid South Africa. Appearances On February 9, I’ll be virtually speaking to Our Common Beliefs. On February 12, I’ll speaking at the Conference on the Jewish Left at Boston University. On Feb 24, I’ll be speaking via Zoom to the Britain Palestine Project. On March 9, I’ll be speaking to Carolina Jews for Justice in Asheville, North Carolina. On March 10, I’ll be attending a fundraiser for Gaza in Asheville. Reader Comment Occasionally, I publish readers’ responses to my videos. Here’s one from Deborah Seligsohn, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Villanova University, about my criticism of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum for its criticism of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s suggestion that a child in Minnesota may one day write a book like Anne Frank’s. “I went to the US Holocaust Museum with my Dad (whose father had died in a concentration camp), an incredibly moving experience. I can’t remember exactly when we went, except that I was carrying my baby in a front pack, and that I think for both of us being able to hold on to precious new life was emotionally what got us through. But what I also remember, which is why I want to mention it to you, is that there was an exhibit about the abuses in Bosnia (and this had to be before Srebrenica - it was probably November 1994 that we went, and Srebrenica was July 1995). The Museum was making a direct analogy to the holocaust. So, if they are now saying that analogies are always impermissible, that is a new point of view or more likely a rather selective one. My recollection of the museum was that you started at the top with the 1930s and worked down through 3 levels that end with the death camps, and then there is another level below that is about other genocides - or at least it was when I went - and that area was about Bosnia. When I look at their website, they have a huge section on other genocides in their genocide prevention section. What is striking there is that genocide is pretty broadly construed, except with the glaring missing discussion of the Palestinians.” See you on Friday, Peter VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: So, this was a somewhat difficult evening, for me on Sunday evening as my hometown New England Patriots lost in the Super Bowl. But, actually, the word patriots got me thinking earlier in the week because I was looking for some merchandise about the New England Patriots and, when I was searching online, what I noticed was that if you search up, kind of, hats or t-shirts with the word ‘patriots,’ you get a lot of MAGA stuff—that this word ‘patriot’ is actually a very MAGA-coded word. On the national Sirius radio network, for instance, the conservative channel with people like Sean Hannity and all these other guys is called the Patriot Radio Network. And I was thinking there’s something very strange about the fact that the term patriot is so coded as a right-wing MAGA word because Donald Trump is so obviously not a patriot. He’s the least patriotic president probably we’ve ever had. And, you know, if patriot means that you put your country above yourself, right, Donald Trump clearly does the opposite in these really blatant ways. So, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that a sheikh connected to the royal family of the United Arab Emirates had put a huge amount of money into Trump’s cryptocurrency business, and then as president Trump turned around and gave the UAE these very advanced microchips that the United States had never been willing to give the UAE before, right? So, basically, a bribe where you put money in Trump’s pocket, and he does something that at least his predecessors didn’t think was in the national interest. Or this insane story where, basically, Trump is saying the federal government won’t pay for the continual building of this rail network between New York and New Jersey unless they rename Penn Station after Donald Trump. So, Donald Trump has claimed very clearly his ego is more important than whether people in New York and New Jersey basically have good rail service. So, this is the antithesis of patriotism. And so, it’s an interesting question why is it that this term, ‘patriot,’ is so coded as a MAGA right-wing word when the embodiment of MAGA is so clearly not a patriot? And I think one reason perhaps is it’s based on a kind of confusion between the idea of patriotism and nationalism. One way of thinking about that difference, although there are others, is that nationalism means putting your country above other countries. And so, Donald Trump is, in a certain sense, a nationalist, right? I mean, he’s very hostile to global cooperation. His general view is that international affairs are zero-sum, and he wants to make weaker countries knuckle under to the United States. But that patriotism is different than nationalism. Patriotism is not about the relationship of your country to other countries. It’s about the relationship of the individual to the country, right? And about the question of whether the individual will sacrifice their own self-interest for the collective good. One way of thinking about this difference, actually, is to compare the slogan that Trump had—‘America First’—to the slogan that John McCain had when he ran in 2008, which was ‘Country First,’ right? So, you know, Trump’s slogan, ‘America First,’ is based on the idea that supposedly these other politicians haven’t put America first because they’ve cared too much about other countries. God forbid they, you know, they were concerned about people dying of treatable diseases in Africa or something like that, right? And Donald Trump will have no moral obligation whatsoever to any country other than the United States. But what McCain was saying by ‘Country First’ was something very different. It wasn’t about America’s relationship with other countries. It was about the relationship of the individual to the country, and he was kind of holding himself up as an exemplar of the idea that people should make sacrifices for the country. And even though I disagreed with a lot of John McCain’s political views, he clearly had made tremendous sacrifices for the country. He’d been tortured in a, you know, North Vietnamese prison when he served in the U.S. military during Vietnam. And Trump mocked him for that, right, because Trump really has no ability to understand, to imagine why anyone would actually put the collective good—the national good in this case—above their own self-interest. For him, that just makes you a sucker and an idiot, right? But John McCain was actually talking about patriotism when Donald Trump is talking about nationalism. And so, my hope is that people will better understand the difference of these terms, and that we may come to a day in the future in which I can celebrate the success of my hometown New England Patriots, and that progressives actually can celebrate the reclaiming of this term, patriot, because I think it’s clear today that progressives, in their willingness to sacrifice for the collective good—we see it, you know, in most extraordinary terms in Minnesota, but all over the place—are showing much, much deeper degree of patriotism than Trump and his cronies, who are basically willing to sell out the interests of the country in order to flatter their own egos and put money in their pockets. This is a public episode. I

    5 min
  3. Being a Neighbor Amidst Atrocities

    5 DAYS AGO

    Being a Neighbor Amidst Atrocities

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guest is Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg, lead rabbi of Shir Tikvah, a “justice-seeking, song-filled” congregation in South Minneapolis. With a background in organizing for migrant rights, she has bridged faith and activist communities locally and nationally to confront the Trump administration’s ongoing siege of Minneapolis, including by co-convening a recent gathering of over 650 clergy in the city.

    10 min
  4. There’s Nothing Offensive About Invoking the Holocaust to Defend Human Rights

    2 FEB

    There’s Nothing Offensive About Invoking the Holocaust to Defend Human Rights

    A list of ways to help Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg, lead rabbi of Shir Tikvah, a “justice-seeking, song-filled” congregation in South Minneapolis. With a background in organizing for migrant rights, she has bridged faith and activist communities locally and nationally to confront the Trump administration’s ongoing siege of Minneapolis, including by co-convening a recent gathering of over 650 clergy in the city. We’ll talk about the role of religious leaders in general— and the Jewish community in particular— in the struggle to defend human rights and the rule of law in Minneapolis. Cited in Today’s Video Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s comparison of undocumented children in Minnesota to Anne Frank. The attacks on Walz’s comparison by the head of the Anti-Defamation League, the Holocaust Museum in Washington and Donald Trump’s antisemitism envoy. Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe “Boogie” Yaalon’s claim that “the ideology of ‘Jewish supremacy,’ which has become dominant in the Israeli government, reminds one of the Nazi racial theory.” Zach Foster on the long history of Israelis comparing other Israelis to the 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.) On the Jewish Currents (subscribe!) podcast, Arielle Angel talks to three organizers from Minnesota. On February 3, I’ll be speaking at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. On February 9, I’ll be virtually speaking to Our Common Beliefs. On February 12, I’ll speaking at the Conference on the Jewish Left at Boston University. On Feb 24, I’ll be speaking via Zoom to the Britain Palestine Project. On March 9, I’ll be speaking to Carolina Jews for Justice in Asheville, North Carolina. On March 10, I’ll be attending a fundraiser for Gaza in Asheville. On March 8, Smol Emuni (the Religious Left) will hold a conference in New York. Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is a finalist for PEN America’s John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. See you on Friday, Peter VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: So, on January 24th, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, observing what ICE and Border Patrol have been doing in his city, which is just terrifying so many immigrant families that their children are unwilling to leave the house, he wrote, ‘we have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Aunt Frank. Somebody’s going to write that children’s story about Minnesota.’ So, after that, Walz was attacked by the Anti-Defamation League and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and Trump’s antisemitism envoy for having kind of desecrated the history of the Nazi Holocaust by invoking Anne Frank’s name to talk about what happened in Minnesota, even though Tim Walz was not saying that children in Minnesota were being sent to death camps. He didn’t say anything like that. He simply was saying that there were children who were hiding in their homes, and that perhaps one of those children would be writing a diary that people would [read about some] day. I mean, it’s just important to make—this should be an obvious point—but not every comparison with the Nazis is to suggest that the thing being compared to the Nazis is involved in a process of mass extermination. The Nazis did many, many things in addition to the mass extermination of Jews, and Roma, and LGBT folks, and others, right? But these organizations, the ADL, the Holocaust Museum, right, basically don’t want to use the example of the Holocaust to suggest that something terrible is happening in Minnesota. They’re much less concerned about the massive human rights abuses and massive violations of the rule of law that are happening in Minnesota and across the country than in maintaining the claim that nothing can be compared to the Holocaust, or at least no other human rights abuses can be compared to the Holocaust, because they have no problem, for instance, comparing the Iranian regime with the Nazis, if that serves Israeli foreign policy. Interestingly, a few days after Walz’s comments, there was another analogy to the Holocaust, and this came from Moshe “Boogie” Yaalon. Boogie is his nickname. Boogie Yaalon is not a leftist radical. He was actually the chief of staff of the IDF. And then he was Benjamin Netanyahu’s defense minister from 2013 to 2016. And this is, I’m going to read you snippets of the translation of what Boogie Yaalon wrote. He wrote: ‘on the last Tuesday evening, I participated in an event marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. When I got home, I received a message about Jewish pogromists attacking Palestinians in southern Mount Hebron, stealing their sheep, and burning their property.’ And then he writes, “you can’t compare.” He goes on: “After ambulances, which tried to reach the scene were delayed by the Jewish terrorists, three Palestinians were evacuated to the hospital, one of them suffering from skull fractures.” And then he says, “no one can compare to the Holocaust that’s happened to us.” You see, he’s actually mocking groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Holocaust Museum in there, who get more upset about analogizing things to the Holocaust than they do, actually, to brutal attacks on people’s dignity. And he goes on: “To this day, no Jewish terrorist has been arrested because Israel’s police is controlled by a convicted criminal, a racist and fascist Kahanist. The Shin Bet is controlled by representatives of Jewish supremacy.” And then he goes on: “the ideology of Jewish supremacy, which has become dominant in the Israeli government, reminds one of the Nazi racial theory.” And then he goes on: “but it’s forbidden to compare.” And he goes on: “I commanded the”… he talks about all the parts of the Israeli military forces that he commanded. He said, “I knew the warnings of Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz against the process of moral coarsening to the point of turning us into ‘Judeo-Nazis.’” That was Leibovich’s phrase. And then he says, “as of today, Prof. Leibowitz was right, and I was wrong.” Now, I think none of these organizations, you know, the Holocaust Museum, Anti-Defamation League, Trump’s antisemitism envoy, none of them will have the guts to actually attack Boogie Yaalon for this Holocaust comparison, right? Because, in reality, if you are Israeli, you can get away with making these comparisons all the time. And, in fact, there’s a list by the writer Zach Foster just of the enormous number of times throughout Israeli history, in which Israeli leaders have compared Israeli policies, or other Israeli politicians, or tendencies to the Nazis. It happens all the time, right? But the real divide here is between people who feel that the memory of the Holocaust against Jews should be used in order to try to defend the rights of vulnerable people who were being abused and persecuted and brutalized, even if, of course, they’re not being abused and brutalized and persecuted in exactly the same way or to the same extent that Jews were when they were slaughtered, 6 million of them, and people who essentially want to segregate off the question of the Holocaust, and who are more offended by the idea of people invoking the Holocaust in order to defend the human rights and human dignity of people than they are by the attacks on the human dignity of those people themselves. And that’s where the American Jewish leadership is today. And it’s striking that they are so morally coarse, even in the wake of Israel having committed what human rights groups now call a genocide, even in the wake of Donald Trump committing human rights abuses in the United States, which are truly jaw-dropping in how frightening and profound they are, that still, the American Jewish leadership is more upset about Holocaust analogies than it is by the actual abuses themselves. Whereas Boogie Yaalon—to his credit—is just fed up with this stuff, and calling b******t on it, and I think it’s really refreshing to see. 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

    7 min
  5. One State or Two?

    1 FEB

    One State or Two?

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and author of State of Palestine NOW. He supports two states, because “the most urgent and doable solution now is the creation of an independent state of Palestine that can live at peace with Israel.” His brother, Jonathan Kuttab is a co-founder of the human rights groups Al Haq and Nonviolence International and author of Beyond the Two State Solution. He believes two states “is no longer feasible.” He therefore supports “solutions that truly address the fundamental issues and the needs of all parties, including settlers, and Palestinian citizens of Israel, which the two-state solution failed to do.” This week, Daoud and Jonathan offered their competing perspectives.

    11 min
  6. Mark Carney vs Pharaoh

    26 JAN

    Mark Carney vs Pharaoh

    A list of ways to help Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Last week’s guests were two Jewish brothers who disagree politically. This week, the intra-family disagreement will be between two Palestinian brothers. Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and author of State of Palestine NOW. He supports two states, because “the most urgent and doable solution now is the creation of an independent state of Palestine that can live at peace with Israel.” His brother, Jonathan Kuttab is a co-founder of the human rights groups Al Haq and Nonviolence International and author of Beyond the Two State Solution. He believes two states “is no longer feasible.” He therefore supports “solutions that truly address the fundamental issues and the needs of all parties, including settlers, and Palestinian citizens of Israel, which the two-state solution failed to do.” Daoud and Jonathan will offer their competing perspectives on Friday. Ask Me Anything Our next Ask Me Anything session, for PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS ONLY, will be this Wednesday, January 28, from 11-12 AM Eastern time. Cited in Today’s Video Parshat Bo in the Book of Exodus. Donald Trump’s interview with the New York Times. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos. 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 on whether congressional candidate Brad Lander can recreate Zohran Mamdani’s coalition between liberal and anti-Zionists. In The Guardian, I argued that Donald Trump is just the latest president to fall in love with war. In Haaretz, Libby Lenkinski asks whether the Netanyahu government will destroy independent cinema in Israel. Former Clinton official Abby Ross argues that it’s time to disband NATO. Because of bad weather, my talk to Carolina Jews for Justice in Asheville, North Carolina has been rescheduled from January 26 to March 9 and the subsequent fundraiser for Gaza has been rescheduled from January 27 until March 10. On February 3, I’ll be speaking at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. On February 12, I’ll speaking at the Conference on the Jewish Left at Boston University. On March 3, three descendants of Americans punished during the red scare will discuss America’s new McCarthyism. On March 8, Smol Emuni (the Religious Left) will hold a conference in New York. See you on Friday, Peter VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: So, there’s this famous line by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach where he says that Torah is a commentary on the world, and the world is a commentary on Torah. By which I think he meant that we see new things in Torah, just as people could see new things in any religious text, because of our life experience, because of what we see happening in the world in our time. And, I thought there was a kind of interesting illustration of this in last week’s Torah portion in the book of Exodus, Parshat Bo, which is particularly powerful to read in the age of Donald Trump. There’s one particular line. It’s during the last of the three plagues in Egypt. And Moses and his brother Aaron go to Pharaoh to announce the eighth plague, the plague of locusts. And when Pharaoh still refuses to allow the Israelites to go, to leave, the text says that ‘Moses turned and left Pharaoh’s presence.’ And the medieval commentator, ibn Ezra, interprets this phrase as suggesting that Moses left Pharaoh’s presence without Pharaoh’s permission, which, for an all-powerful ruler like Pharaoh, was potentially, risked death. There’s a bit of a parallel between the line we read in the book of Esther, in which Esther enters the presence of the Persian king without his permission, also an act punishable by death. And this is considered an act of tremendous courage, and it’s considered a kind of defiance, not only of Pharaoh’s tyranny, but of Pharaoh’s idolatry. Because in Jewish tradition, the fact that Pharaoh considers himself a god is intimately linked with Pharaoh’s tyranny and brutality. And so, to suggest that Pharaoh is not all-powerful, that Pharaoh doesn’t have some kind of divine status is not only part of a struggle for freedom, but it’s actually a rejection of idolatry itself. And so, Pharaoh becomes a kind of anti-model for the Jewish kings in the Hebrew Bible who are required to write a Sefer Torah, to write a kind of book of law, to show that they are not the law there, that the law binds them, and indeed, that they are not God. Now, Donald Trump, in his own kind of more modern secular language, also, I think, suggests often that he is a kind of a divine figure, right? He said to the New York Times recently that basically he is bound by no law other than his own sense of morality, kind of warped as that sense is. He also said, in speaking about his first year in office, or in his first year since returning to office, he said, God is very proud, right? So, if Donald Trump doesn’t explicitly think that he is God, he thinks that he should be bound by no domestic or international law, and that he has some kind of access to the mind of God. And so, I think you again see the message of Torah in that this linkage between idolatry and tyranny. There’s another interesting moment in Parshat Bo, after the ninth Plague, the Plague of Darkness, where there’s this very surprising line where the Torah says that Moses was much esteemed in the land of Egypt, which might seem very surprising. After all, Moses has defied the leader of Egypt, and is the leader of a slave rebellion, essentially. And yet, near the end, by the 9th or the 10th plague, it says that Moses was much esteemed in the land of Egypt. And I found that very resonant today, thinking about the way in which different people deal with Donald Trump, right? Think about figures like J.D. Vance, and Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham, right? These people who essentially are on perpetual bended knee towards Donald Trump, right? We know what they actually think of Donald Trump, because they, like so many other Republican politicians, when they didn’t fear Trump so much, they said what they thought of Donald Trump, which is pretty much what most of the rest of us think about Donald Trump: that he’s a liar, that he’s an idiot, and that he’s a would-be tyrant. He’s also a rapist, and a cheat, and many other horrible things. But they knew these things because these things are obvious, right? But now, in order to gain access to power, they act as the most fawning kind of sycophants, right, towards Donald Trump. And so, in doing so, they really lose, I think, the respect of even many, ultimately, in their own party. Maybe those people won’t say so, because they’re afraid too, right? But I think they’ve really surrendered their self-respect, whether they recognize it or not. Contrast that with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, right? Who, at Davos, gave a speech that publicly defied Donald Trump, really said things that many other foreign leaders feel, but were unwilling to say about what Trump has meant for the destruction of any notion of international law in the world. And you saw that Carney got a standing ovation, that he’s gotten widespread admiration, just like Moses had, you know, had the admiration not just of his own people for defying Pharaoh, but kind of very broad admiration for his attributes of courage and self-respect that we see that Carney’s courage and self-respect actually wins him many, many admirers across ideological divides and across nations. And I think this is really the model for those of us in the United States: the model of Moses, the model of Carney, which is to never, ever cower, to never, ever self-censor, to defy Donald Trump again, and again, and again, to laugh at him, to ridicule him, to oppose him in every way we possibly can in accordance with the rule of law. And also to recognize that people outside the United States, whether they’re foreign individuals, or indeed foreign leaders, like Carney, or like the leaders in South Africa, who defy Donald Trump—if they’re defying Donald Trump in the name of human dignity, in the name of the rule of law, they are our allies, even though we are in foreign countries. And that it is not anti-American to try to work with foreign governments in order to oppose the tyrannical and destructive policies of Donald Trump, any more than it was anti-South African for South Africans to ask countries to oppose apartheid, or that it is anti-Russian when Russian dissidents ask foreign countries to oppose the war in Ukraine, or that it is anti-Iranian when Iranian dissidents ask other countries to denounce their theocratic regime. That there is actually the best understanding, the best definition of what it means to be truly American—to be a patriotic American—is actually to stand up for America’s best traditions of human freedom, and of the rule of law, and to do so in alliance with anyone—anyone in our own country, anywhere around the world—who also cherishes those values. I think that’s what we see people doing on the streets of Minnesota right now, and their struggle is really a model for those of us all around the nation. And that this struggle, I think the lesson of this week’s Torah portion, is that this struggle, this model of courage, is not only essential in struggles for freedom, they are essential to self-respect. That what is on the line in the way that we respond to Donald Trump is not only the survival and fate of American democracy, of American freedom, of the rule of law, it is our self-respect as a nation. It is our self-respect as Americans. How can we respect ourselves if we act in the cowardly, subservient way that people like Vance and Rubio and Cruz are doing? But

    9 min
  7. Holding Liat

    25 JAN

    Holding Liat

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guests are brothers Yehuda and Joel Beinin and the director of the 2025 documentary about them, Holding Liat. On October 7, 2023, Yehuda’s daughter, Liat Atzili, was abducted by Hamas, and spent 54 days in captivity in Gaza before being released. Yehuda’s son-in-law, Aviv Atzili, was killed. In the film, Yehuda and Joel offer different understandings of the political context in which October 7 occurred. I asked them to elaborate on their views, and to talk about how an ideologically diverse Jewish and Israeli family grapples with an experience of terrible trauma.

    13 min
  8. All That's Left of You

    23 JAN

    All That's Left of You

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Cherien Dabis is an actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. In March 2022, Dabis was named Laureate for Cultural Excellence by the Takreem foundation for her work on authentic Arab representation in Hollywood. Dabis produced, wrote, directed, and acted in her latest film, All That’s Left of You. It follows a Palestinian family across three generations.

    10 min
See All (210)

About

A conversation about American foreign policy, Palestinian freedom and the Jewish people. peterbeinart.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Peter Beinart
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    210
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Peter Beinart
  • Show Website
    The Beinart Notebook
  • Provider

You Might Also Like