Episode Details

Our call this week will be at a special time: Thursday at 11 AM Eastern.

Our guest this week will be Geoffrey Levin, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University and author of the new book, Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978, which explores a largely unknown history of American Jewish criticism of Israel in the first decades of its existence, and how it was quashed. It’s a particularly relevant history today given the rise of Jewish organizing against the war in Gaza. 

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.

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.)

The Jewish Currents (subscribe!) podcast discusses the challenges of being part of an American synagogue community during this war.

Like so many people with family in Gaza, the political analyst Khalil Sayegh has endured unthinkable agony since this war began. He’s seen his father and sister killed. He’s trying to bring his remaining family members to safety. If you can help, please do. Please also consider helping the Alshawa family, which is sheltering in central Gaza and hoping to evacuate to safety.

A beautiful statement by the Deputy Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, Majed Bamya, about Noa Argamani’s release from captivity.

Is the global outcry over Israel’s actions starting to hit its high-tech sector?

What happens to Palestinian Gandhi’s?

Masculinity and the New York Jewish Intellectuals.

Wajahat Ali’s new newsletter, Left Hook.

See you on Thursday at 11 AM,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. As I’ve been following the news of the increased escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, which is really terrifying, my mind has kept going back to a conversation I had with an Israeli friend soon after October 7th. And my friend said, ‘you don’t understand, Peter. If we don’t destroy Hamas, people will never feel safe living in the south of Israel again. And we will have lost that part of our country.’ And what he was saying made a huge amount of sense, it seems to me, in terms of Israeli political culture, Israeli political psychology given the trauma of what had happened after October 7th. And so, he was saying because that is non-negotiable, we have to defeat Hamas. And what I was thinking was: but I don’t think you can defeat Hamas. I thi