Episode Details

A new way to donate to people in Gaza.

Friday Zoom Call

This Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern, our usual time. Our guest will be Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian-American green card holder abducted by the Trump administration in retaliation for his activism at Columbia University— and later released. We’ll talk about his childhood in the West Bank, his experience at Columbia, his detention, and what he’s learned from the experience.

Ask Me Anything

Our next Ask Me Anything session, for premium subscribers, will be this Monday, August 25, from 2-3 PM Eastern time.

Cited in Today’s Video

Jonathan Greenblatt’s recent appearance on CNBC.

Marwan Barghouti on the Second Intifada.

The polls about Zohran Mamdani’s support among New York Jews.

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 and Erez Bleicher remember slain Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen.

The Israeli military’s own data suggests that over 80% of the people it has killed in Gaza are civilians.

How Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro influenced the University of Pennsylvania’s response to pro-Palestinian protest on campus.

Omer Bartov predicts that the International Court of Justice will find Israel guilty of genocide.

Eyal Press on Columbia’s disastrous decision to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

I talked to Harrison Berger about Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.

“Home? A Palestinian Woman's Pursuit of Life, Liberty, & Happiness” is playing in San Francisco and New York this fall.

See you on Monday and Friday,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

I think when this horror in Gaza is over—this destruction, this slaughter, starvation, which so many human rights organizations and legal scholars now call genocide—when it’s over, there’s gonna have to be a reckoning in the United States. Not just in the U.S. government providing the weapons and diplomatic support, but a kind of broader cultural reckoning. Because there’s so many institutions that I think are culpable in this, that will need to look themselves in the mirror. An