Episode Details

Our Zoom call this week will be at the usual time: Friday at Noon EST.

Our guest will Ussama Makdisi, Professor of History and Chancellor’s Chair at the University of California Berkeley, author most recently of Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World and co-host of the Makdisi Street Podcast. I want to ask Ussama, who is one of America’s leading historians of the Middle East and of the long encounter between Palestinians and Zionism, what makes this current moment distinct. I also want to ask how his scholarship into the history of coexistence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Arab world can help us think about a future of coexistence and equality in Israel-Palestine and across the Middle East.

Paid subscribers will get the link this Tuesday and the video the following week. They’ll also gain access to our library of past Zoom interviews with guests like Rashid Khalidi, Thomas Friedman, Ilhan Omar, Benny Morris, Noam Chomsky, and Bret Stephens.

Sources Cited in this Video

Bill Clinton’s comments after first meeting Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House are recorded in books by both Aaron Miller and Dennis Ross.

When Netanyahu said “America is something that can be moved easily.”

The problem with dropping humanitarian aid from the air.

Why America’s military support for Israel’s war likely violates US law.

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!), Dahlia Krutkovich and Jonathan Shamir write about the fight over Gaza inside Britain’s Labour Party.

Khalil Sayegh, a former guest on one of my Friday Zoom interviews and someone from whom I’ve learned a great deal, has launched a Go Fund Me page to evacuate his family from Gaza. It’s horrifying that so many people need to do this. I hope you’ll take a moment to imagine how you’d feel if your family were in such desperate straits and consider supporting him.

“I love Israel, but not more than Judaism itself. Not more than humanity.” Rabbi Kate Mizrahi on why she supports a ceasefire.

Jon Stewart on how US officials talk about war crimes in Ukraine versus Israel.    

I spoke with Rania Batrice about anti-war mobilization inside the Democratic Party for the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

I spoke w