The Beinart Notebook

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

  1. It’s OK to Want Trump to Lose This War

    3D AGO

    It’s OK to Want Trump to Lose This War

    This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of three remarkable books on the relationship between the United States, Israel and Iran. For as long as I’ve followed Trita’s work, he’s been warning that if hawks in Washington got their way, we would end up with the kind of catastrophe we’re currently witnessing in the Middle East. I want to ask him how this war will end— if it ever truly does— and what Iran, the Middle East and the world will look like afterwards. Please join us. 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 writes about the Democratic presidential candidates who are turning against Israel. Mohammad Eslami and Zeynab Malakouti on how Iran will use the Strait of Hormuz to end sanctions and isolate the US. Nate Silver on why Trump’s approval rating will likely never recover from this war. Ziad Abu-Rish on why Lebanon won’t disarm Hezbollah. For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts podcast, I talked to Mara Kronenfeld, Executive Director of UNRWA USA, about what UNRWA does, and about the lies spread told about it. I talked to the Wisdom of Crowds podcast about whether Israel, or any state, has a right to exist. Last week, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza won the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. Appearances On April 19, I’ll be speaking in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On May 6, I’ll be speaking to the Joint Christian Advocacy Summit in Washington, DC. See you on Friday, Peter VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: So, I’ve been noticing that some of the people who still support this war are saying that those of us who oppose it want America to lose. This is a kind of a common rhetorical strategy one hears during war. It kind of diverts the conversation away from the legitimacy and wisdom of a war to suggesting that people in that country who oppose the war are kind of unpatriotic. So, it’s the kind of thing that was said during Vietnam. It’s, I’m sure, the kind of thing that Vladimir Putin and his comrades have been saying in Russia to people who oppose the war in Ukraine. And it is a tricky charge to deal with, right? Because even in an unjust war, one could imagine that feeling like you wanted your country to lose would be a difficult thing. But I think there are cases in which one has to forthrightly say, yes, I want my country to lose. Those circumstances would be one in which there was a war that had overwhelming popular support among the people in your country, but you thought it was wrong, and you wanted your country to lose. In Israel, for instance, this is a war that has overwhelming popular support. Even Netanyahu’s Jewish political opponents support it. It has widespread support among Jewish Israelis. So, if you say, it’s hard to say in this war I want Netanyahu to lose without saying I want Israel to lose because Netanyahu is waging the war with the support of Israel’s Jewish citizens, who are the vast majority of Israel’s citizens. In the United States, though, I think it’s different. Which is to say, I think one can say that I want Donald Trump to lose this war—and I do—without saying that I want America to lose the war, that I think we can distinguish this as Donald Trump’s war without saying it’s America’s war. Why? First of all, because the American public has never supported this war from the very beginning, and because there was never a process of consulting the American people about going to war, as should have been required by the Constitution, in which Congress would have voted to authorize the war. There hasn’t been such a vote, and I think if there were such a vote, the pro-war position would lose. So, this really is a war without popular support, without popular consultation, and in that way, I think one can distinguish it as Trump’s war without saying it’s America’s war. It’s also the case that I think if Donald Trump loses this war, America will be better off. That America and Americans will be better off if Donald Trump loses than if Donald Trump wins. First of all, that’s because the consequences of Donald Trump losing this war will not be catastrophic for Americans. We can imagine circumstances where if you say you want your country to lose the war, that means you want… that means accepting that your country is going to be occupied, invaded. Let’s say you were a German who wanted the Nazis to lose World War II. I would say that that person deserves a lot of—is an admirable person. But you would say so knowing that Germany losing that war would mean Germany ending up in ruins. You can say you want Donald Trump to lose this war against Iran, while recognizing the United States could lose the war, Trump can fail to achieve his aims vis-a-vis this war, and it will not lead to the United States being occupied, ruined, destroyed. In fact, I think one can argue that Americans would be better off if Trump loses this war than if Trump wins, partly because Trump winning would empower him. This is already a man who’s seizing in blatantly unconstitutional ways, massive amounts of power, and extinguishing the rights of Americans, and potentially even extinguishing America as a liberal democracy. And the degree to which he’d be empowered by a victory in this war would actually empower him to go even further. And so, if one cares about America’s survival as a liberal democracy, you actually want Donald Trump to be disempowered, not to be empowered. I also think it’s better for the world if Donald Trump loses this war, because if he wins this war, he will then likely use this as a template for further kinds of aggression. Part of the reason we’re in this place we are in the first place is because Donald Trump believes that he won the war in Venezuela by decapitating the regime. God only knows, imagine, can only imagine what he would do if he were able to do that same thing in Iran, what would be the next country that he—in his kind of mega-maniacal, imperial visions as kind of the world’s king—where else he might attack after that: Greenland or God knows where else. So, I think one can say that the United States, and actually the world in general, will be better off if Donald Trump loses this war than if Donald Trump wins the war. And this kind of war, which is criminal, which is illegal, in which Donald Trump is every day boasting of the new war crimes that he’s going to inflict upon the Iranian people, this kind of war has to end in defeat if it’s going to be less likely that it continues, that it happens in the future, not only for Donald Trump, but for other leaders around the world, right? That leaders learn from one another, so the more successful this is, the more likely we will see more wars, criminal legal wars, with massive war crimes launched, not just for the United States, but by other countries around the world. One might argue that we shouldn’t root for Donald Trump to lose, because then that means the Iranian regime stays in power, is even stronger, and so the Iranian people are losers. That one could make an argument, potentially, that we should want Donald Trump to win, because that would also be a victory for the Iranian people, who therefore would be liberated from their regime. The problem with that argument, seems to me, is that Donald Trump’s real goal has never been, actually, to liberate the Iranian people. He’s been very clear that what he really wanted was a kind of Venezuela-style situation, in which he decapitated some level of the Islamic Republic and got some more compliant people there who, like Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela, would repress their own people, but would basically make oil deals with Trump and his friends and be compliant with Donald Trump. So, I can understand the desire of people to not want the Islamic Republic to win. It’s a horrible regime. It’s done brutal and terrible things to its people. I very much do hope that that regime falls and is replaced by a more tolerant, more representative, you know, ideally a liberal democratic regime. But I think to say that we should want Donald Trump to win because it would bring about that result for the Iranian people is very, very naive, given everything we know about Donald Trump and his deep preference for autocrats, particularly autocrats who put money in his pocket, as opposed to the messiness of actual democracy, which tends to mean that he has less control. So, I think we can say, in this case, that we want, legitimately, that we want Donald Trump to lose this war. But for Donald Trump to lose this war is not for America to lose. Indeed, it may be part of America winning, in the sense that America survives as a liberal democracy, and that America can move away from the kind of utterly nakedly, appallingly, grotesquely lawless and violent state that it’s become, and I think America is more likely to move away from that if Donald Trump loses this war than if he wins. 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

    8 min
  2. Passover in a Time of Inhumanity and Destruction

    APR 1

    Passover in a Time of Inhumanity and Destruction

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Rabbi Dr. Ismar Schorsch is chancellor emeritus of The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and the Rabbi Herman Abramovitz Distinguished Professor of Jewish history. He’s had a long, illustrious career of service to the Jewish community. Last year, we spoke after he wrote critically about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In a time when so many Jews are hungry for moral leadership, Rabbi Schorsch’s courage and decency have been all too rare. I wanted to speak to him before the Passover holiday, as I and so many Jews are struggling to reconcile our Jewishness with opposition to Israel’s actions. I’m honored and grateful he agreed to speak with me again.

    10 min
  3. Why America Never Learns

    MAR 30

    Why America Never Learns

    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

    11 min
  4. Meanwhile, in Lebanon

    MAR 29

    Meanwhile, in Lebanon

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com In the shadow of the war with Iran, Israel is doing terrible things in Lebanon: demolishing homes, killing more than one thousand people, displacing close to a million from their homes and perhaps pushing the country toward civil war. To discuss all this, our guest is Rami Khouri, a deeply knowledgeable commentator on Lebanese and international politics. He is Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, Director of the Anthony Shadid Archives Research Project, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Arab Center in Washington and author of the Rami G. Khouri Substack.

    12 min
  5. What Would Heschel Say?

    MAR 23

    What Would Heschel Say?

    This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. In the shadow of the war with Iran, Israel is doing terrible things in Lebanon: demolishing homes, killing more than one thousand people, displacing close to a million from their homes and perhaps pushing the country toward civil war. To discuss all this, our guest will be Rami Khouri, a deeply knowledgeable commentator on Lebanese and international politics. He is Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, Director of the Anthony Shadid Archives Research Project, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Arab Center in Washington and author of the Rami G. Khouri Substack. Please join us. Cited in Today’s Video I’m grateful to Dr. Dror Bondi, Corcoran Visiting Chair in Christian-Jewish Relations at Boston College, who brought the Heschel quote about Abravanel to my attention. He cites it in this lecture. 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!), Maya Rosen details the way Israel is using the current war to seize more Palestinian land in the West Bank. On the It Could Happen Here podcast, Dana El Kurd explores intra-Palestinian debates about armed resistance. For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts podcast, I talked with Sari Bashi, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, about the dismissal of charges against five Israeli soldiers who were filmed violently abusing a Palestinian detainee in the Sde Teiman detention facility. Appearances On March 30, I’ll be speaking at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. On May 6, I’ll be speaking to the Joint Christian Advocacy Summit in Washington, DC. Partnership Starting today, all paid subscribers of The Beinart Notebook get a 50 percent discount on a one-year paid subscription to Robert Wright’s Nonzero Newsletter. I’ve known and respected Bob for decades — my earliest appearance on his show will turn 20 this year, and the latest happened earlier this month. He’s a rare voice of reason on questions ranging from foreign policy to psychology of tribalism to AI, and I think you’ll find a lot of value in his writing. The NonZero Newsletter is part of a broader effort Bob has been building called the NonZero Network — a group of independent Substack voices, including mine, as well as Glenn Loury, Kaiser Kuo, and others with whom I may not always agree on substance, but who share a commitment to intellectual honesty and reasoned analysis. Reader Comment A listener (who asked that their name be withheld) commented on last week’s video, in which I argued that synagogues should remove the “We Stand with Israel” signs that dot their lawns. They write: “I think you mischaracterize attacks on Zionist institutions. I have seen these attacks’ defenders on social media, and their line is not support for attacks of synagogues as such. It is, rather, support (or at least apologia) for attacking institutions that align themselves with the Israeli state. I saw some people claiming that Temple Israel [in Michigan] was sending money to the IDF. That sounds dubious—I’m not intimately familiar with the Israeli military’s funding strategies, but it seems unlikely that American congregations play a major role—but it is certainly true that many Jewish American institutions’ support for Israel goes beyond the purely notional. To say, then, that one should not attack Americans who ‘share a religion, an ethnic, national ancestry, a race,’ with some disfavored foreign country—in this case, Jews and Israel—is to box with a strawman. To the attack’s supporters, it’s not about Jewishness as such, under whichever of the four rubrics you name one wishes to conceive of it; it’s about Zionism, and it’s about Israel.” See you on Friday, Peter VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: I recently came across a quote that just kind of stopped me, like, dead in my tracks, kind of almost dumbfounded, because it reflected a view of how Jews should live and think, which is so radically in contrast to the views propounded by the leadership of the organized American Jewish community today. The quote is from a biography that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote of a remarkable Portuguese 15th century figure named Isaac Abravanel. Now, Abravanel was an advisor to the Portuguese king, as well as being a very distinguished commentator on the Bible and philosopher of Jewish thought—really a remarkable synthesis of the kind that you were able to have on the Iberian Peninsula for a period of time. And then in some ways reflects the kind of possibilities that might be imaginable in the United States today, in which Jews have the freedom to both wield political power and also study Torah in a serious way. And this is what Heschel writes about Abravanel and the Jews of his period in the Iberian Peninsula. Heschel writes, ‘the Jews, who had held imposing positions in the state, left their Spanish homeland. Had they remained on the Iberian Peninsula, they most probably would have taken part in the enterprises of the conquistadors.’ And then he says, this is the most astonishing line, then Heschel says, ‘the desperate Jews of 1492 could not know that a favor had been done them. That a favor had been done them.’ What Heschel is saying is that the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula were lucky to have been expelled because it meant that people like Abravanel, who had these positions of great power, that they then did not become morally complicit in the terrible crimes that the Spanish and the Portuguese were to commit as conquistadors in the New World. Now, one can very legitimately argue with Heschel’s perspective, I mean, it is quite radical, and I’m not sure even I would necessarily endorse his view that one should say thank you for having been expelled from one’s home because it means that then one is not morally complicit in the terrible crimes that the kind of empire in which you played a prominent role has committed. It’s a very, very audacious thing to say. I don’t think I would go as far as what Heschel is saying. But it is just an astonishing, astonishing contrast to contrast that moral perspective that Heschel is offering to the dominant attitude in the organized American Jewish community today. And if you look at the leaders of America’s most influential Jewish organizations, the Anti-Defamation League, but also the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, others, they’ve all been, in recent months, basically saying the same thing. Which is that American Jews, because we’re in an era of rising antisemitism—which is true—that Jews have a responsibility only to themselves. Jonathan Greenblatt, in particular, has this new slogan, which he likes to repeat, which is, put your own mask on first. That basically, because we are in a precarious moment for Jews, and because, allegedly, other groups have abandoned Jews, you know, American Jews, in our hour of need, by which people like Greenblatt mean they didn’t wholeheartedly support the destruction and genocide in Gaza, therefore, Jews are relieved of their moral responsibilities to fight for other people in the United States, no matter what they’re going through. Now, this is a radical contrast to the perspective that Heschel is offering in his biography of Abravanel. And one might be tempted to say, well, you know, I mean, this is a completely otherworldly, profoundly naive perspective. How could someone, make this argument, you know? But Heschel wrote his biography of Abravanel in Berlin in 1937 under the rule of the Nazis. In 1937, Heschel wrote those words, right? And so, you just think a man who could write those words about Jewish moral responsibility, about the necessity that Jews not participate in the brutalization and of oppression of others, what right on earth do we have to tell Heschel that he’s naive for writing that? Because we’re worried about antisemitism in the United States in 2026. He’s writing in Berlin in 1937, and yet he still was not saying, let’s put on our own mask first, right? He was actually saying something radically the opposite. Again, not to say that Heschel wasn’t concerned about the preservation of Jewish life. He himself escaped from Nazi Germany. Of course, he was profoundly concerned about that, but not at the expense of the notion that Jews had a responsibility to care about others. And I think what he’s saying by writing about Abravanel, and focusing on a Portuguese Jew who is, for a period of time at least, has great influence in the kingdom in which he lives is to suggest that when you have greater power, you have an even greater moral obligation to try to oppose the crimes that are being committed, to not be complicit, right? I mean, I don’t think Heschel could have imagined a figure like Stephen Miller. I think he would have literally… it would have shaken him to the core to imagine America producing a Jew like Stephen Miller, with his power doing what he’s doing today. But in writing about Abravanel, he was in some ways warning about that possibility and making a kind of remarkable, even extreme statements about the importance of Jews never allowing ourselves to create figures like we, in the American Jewish community, have now created in Stephen Miller. I can’t imagine, I can’t imagine what Abraham Joshua Heschel would say were he alive today about the people who claim to speak for the organized American Jewish community, people who have so radically repudiated his moral fervor in his belief that Jews have a profound, fervent responsibility to take moral responsibility for all of the people in the societies in which they live. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this

    7 min
  6. “This Is Our Home”

    MAR 22

    “This Is Our Home”

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guest is Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and political analyst with Israeli citizenship. Since this war began, I’ve struggled to understand why most Israeli Jews support it. I discussed this last week with the Iranian, Jewish, and Israeli writer Orly Noy. But sometimes, the people who best understand a society are those who live within it as outsiders. It’s that experience of marginality, of seeing things from below, that often animates the insights of Black writers in the US and long animated the insights of Jewish writers in Europe. That’s why I’m turning to Diana, a Palestinian in Israel, to help understand Jewish Israeli society in this awful moment. She’s someone I’ve been learning from for a long time. I’m grateful I had the chance to do so again.

    11 min
  7. Thoughts on the Michigan Synagogue Attack

    MAR 16

    Thoughts on the Michigan Synagogue Attack

    This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and political analyst based in Israel. Since this war began, I’ve struggled to understand why most Israeli Jews support it. I discussed this last week with the Iranian, Jewish, and Israeli writer and translator Orly Noy. But sometimes, the people who best understand a society are those who live within it as outsiders. It’s that experience of marginality, of seeing things from below, that often animates the insights of Black writers in the US and long animated the insights of Jewish writers in Europe. That’s why I’m turning to Diana, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, to help understand Jewish Israeli society in this awful moment. She’s someone I’ve been learning from for a long time. And I’m grateful to have the chance to do so again this Friday. Please join us. 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 explains AIPAC’s attack on liberal Zionist politicians. Greg Sargent on how the Iran War is hastening the end of the Trump coalition. An insightful discussion with Esfandyar Batmanghelidj on the American Prestige podcast about how this war might change the long term trajectory of the Gulf countries. Last week I spoke to Bob Wright (whose newsletter I strongly recommend) about Israel, antisemitism and this war. On March 26, Jason Stanley will speak with Nikole Hannah-Jones in Brooklyn about his book, Erasing History. Appearances On March 17, I’ll be speaking at George Washington University. On March 30, I’ll be speaking at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. See you on Friday, Peter VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: I want to say two things about this terrible attack on a synagogue in Michigan. The first is that no matter what Israel does, no matter how immoral or brutal or horrifying, it doesn’t justify attacking a synagogue or justifying attacking American Jews in any way. There’s a basic principle here. The principle is that Americans are not responsible for the actions of foreign governments or foreign organizations just because they share a religion, an ethnic, national ancestry, a race, with that state or foreign organization. So, by that principle, it is just as wrong to target a synagogue because you’re upset at what Israel did, as it was when people attacked Chinese Americans because they were angry at the Chinese government during COVID, or when people attack Muslim Americans because they’re angry at Al-Qaeda, or ISIS, or Hamas, or Iran, or as when the United States government itself held Japanese Americans responsible and put them in internment camps because of what the Empire of Japan had done in Pearl Harbor. These things are all fundamentally wrong. And—not but, but and—Synagogues in the United States should take down the signs that many have on their lawn that say, ‘We stand with Israel.’ They should take them down, because those signs make the congregants less safe, and because they are immoral. Because they create a climate of… they make the Congress less safe, because they encourage exactly the same conflation between Israel and American Jews that we must resist, and because in this moment, doing so is immoral. Now, if it were morally correct for our synagogues to say in this moment, ‘We stand with Israel,’ then I think you could make an argument that even though those signs may make the congregants less safe, that it would be legitimate to do so. You could say that it’s even courageous for Jews in a synagogue to come together and say: we’re going to take a moral action that’s going to create some risk to our safety because it’s the right thing to do. But how could one possibly argue that this is the right thing to do in this moment? That it is morally right to put yourself at risk by conflating yourself with the Israeli government when the Israeli government is doing the things that it is doing now. Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s imagine that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that the Russian Orthodox churches in the United States, that they had signs saying ‘We stand with Russia.’ By putting those signs out there, they would be putting, to some degree, the people inside those churches at risk, because there would be people who were furious about what Russia had done in Ukraine, that might take out their anger against people in those churches. But beyond that, it would be immoral to say, given what Russia has done in Ukraine, for a church to say, ‘We stand with Russia.’ And what Israel has done over the past few years, to Palestinians, and now, also, in Lebanon and Iran, is worse than what Russia has done in Ukraine. It’s worse. Let’s just look, for starters, at the numbers. The best numbers we have suggest that since the war that began in 2022 with Russia’s invasion—expanded invasion, because they first invaded in 2014—that perhaps 100,000-150,000 Ukrainians have been killed, which is horrifying. In Gaza, the best numbers we have is that perhaps 100,000 have been killed by Israel, directly and indirectly. So, that’s a slightly smaller number. But remember, Ukraine has 40 million people. There are only about 2.2 million people in Gaza. It’s a much, much smaller area, and yet almost as many people have been killed. The percentage of people in Gaza who have been killed is 4-5% of the population. In Ukraine, it’s perhaps a quarter of a percent. The oppression and the violence that Israel has committed against the people in Gaza also is much older, long predates what Russia has done in Ukraine under Vladimir Putin. The people in Gaza are there because their families were expelled from what’s now Israel in 1948. Gaza has been under Israeli occupation since 1967, and that occupation never ended, contrary to what you often hear in American Jewish spaces. Because even when Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers in 2005, it maintained virtually all control over people and goods coming in and out of Gaza by air, land, and sea. Yes, with some assistance at the Rafah crossing with Egypt, but even there, Israel had a lot of control of what goes in and out. So, Israel has killed many, many more people in Gaza than Russia has done in Ukraine. And the oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond long predates Russia’s invasion in 2014, and then expanded invasion in 2022. And that doesn’t even include now what Israel has been doing over the last couple of weeks. Estimates suggest that Israel has killed 850 people in Lebanon, including perhaps 100 children. The U.S. and Israel have killed, estimates are, about 1,300 civilians in Iran. These attacks on the oil facilities have created this toxic black rain that will have health and environmental consequences for years, maybe even decades. Now, I am very, very familiar that the Israeli government and its supporters have all kinds of justifications for all of these actions. And frankly, Vladimir Putin has his own justifications, and I think they’re all fundamentally wrong. They’re all fundamentally wrong. Because no justification, nothing justifies the targeting of, the mass killing of civilians, especially when you are targeting them, as Israel has targeted them in Gaza, for instance, when it shut off food, fuel, and water at various intervals after October 7th, or when you attacked oil refineries that you know are going to have these toxic environmental effects. So, if it’s wrong to put out a sign, for a church to put out a sign that says ‘We stand with Russia,’ surely it’s also wrong. For a synagogue to say in this moment, ‘We stand with Israel.’ And it’s surely wrong to put yourself, your congregants, at risk for something that is also immoral. So, what could the synagogues say on these signs, on their lawns instead? They could say, ‘We stand with Israelis and Palestinians.’ Or they could do something more radical than that. They could say: ‘This is a house of Torah.’ This is a house of Torah. The reason I say this would be a more radical act is it would be a response, it would be a re-centering of Torah in American Judaism. What has happened in so many of the synagogues, as exemplified by the ‘We Stand with Israel’ side outside, is that Israel has eclipsed Torah as the object of veneration, the object of worship inside these religious holy spaces. I say worship and veneration because when the synagogues put the sign out that says, ‘We stand with Israel,’ it’s not like they then reconsider that sign every year or a couple years based on what Israel’s doing. Oh, we stand with Israel, we don’t stand with Israel because we think Israel is acting in some moral or immoral way. You know, Israel’s human rights organizations have now just said that it’s committing apartheid and genocide. Maybe we should reconsider that sign. No, that’s not the way this operates. Because it’s not actually a statement of political support. It’s more like a statement of worship, that fundamental to our Judaism is our belief in this state, no matter what the state does. That’s what I mean by worship rather than mere support. And replacing that with a sign that says ‘This is a home for Torah’ would be a moving away from this idolatrous centering of the state as an object of unconditional good, right? Unconditional value, irrespective of how it treats the people inside of that state, and a reassertion that what is at the center of this synagogue, what’s at the center of Judaism is Torah, is our religious texts that are far, far older and deeper than the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. And what this synagogue stands for is the study of those texts as a way to try to understand how we as individuals and how the Jewish people should live, r

    11 min
  8. Chris Hayes

    MAR 15

    Chris Hayes

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guest is Chris Hayes, host of All In with Chris Hayes on MSNOW and the Why Is This Happening? Podcast. He’s also author most recently of The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource. Chris sits at a difficult and crucial intersection, between the progressive world (he’s the former Washington editor of The Nation) and mainstream television. I want to talk about how he navigates it, including on Israel-Palestine, what progressives should understand about the American media, and how his work has changed given the perils now facing American democracy.

    11 min
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About

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

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  • Creator
    Peter Beinart
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    228
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Peter Beinart
  • Show Website
    The Beinart Notebook

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