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 the renowned activist and educator Angela Davis. We’ll talk about how the Palestinian freedom struggle resembles, and differs from, the struggles of other oppressed groups, and what US policy toward Israel-Palestine says about the United States. This call will be cosponsored by Jewish Currents.

Cited in Today’s Video

Adam Friedland interviews Ritchie Torres.

Israel moves closer to building settlements in E1.

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!), Simone Zimmerman asks why so many Jewish leaders took so long to condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza.

The Economist offers an “anatomy of a famine” in Gaza.

Why MAGA is turning against unconditional US support of Israel.

For the Foundation for Middle East Peace, I interviewed Al Jazeera’s Laila Al-Arian about Israel’s targeting of journalists in Gaza.

I talked to the Brave New Something Podcast about the need for a Jewish reckoning over Gaza.

See you on Friday,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So, there’s been a fair amount of attention, at least kind of that I’ve seen on social media, about an interview that a comedian named Adam Friedland did with Congressman Richie Torres that focused on the end of the interview a lot about Israel and Gaza. And it made me think about the role of comedians in often being able to say things that the mainstream media doesn’t say. You know, we think about people like Jon Stewart and John Oliver, and a lot of these folks. And I think that one of the reasons that these interviews with comedians often really break through, is that there is something fundamentally absurd about, especially about a lot of the American kind of establishment mainstream discourse about Israel and Palestine. And so often, the mainstream media, kind of takes this discourse as on the level, as credible, right, as sincere. And what comedians are more able to do is just recognize the absurdity of these things.

And one particular area where I think it would be really valuable if this just became much more common is this claim that we hear all the time by American politicians, by Jewish leaders, that they support the two-state solution, right? That’s kind of so often the refuge, right? Israel’s doing something bad for Palestinians, and people say, well, I support the two-state solution. The truth is that the vast, vast majority of people in American public office, in public life, people who lead American Jewish organizations who say they support a two-state solution simply do not. They obviously do not support the idea of a sovereign, contiguous Palestinian state. And yet, their claim to support a two-state solution is taken as serious, sincere, when it’s self-evidently not, righ