Episode Details

A list of ways to help Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

This week’s call will be at a special time, WEDNESDAY at 1 PM. Given the controversy over my talk at Tel Aviv University, and subsequent apology, I thought it would be interesting to talk to two experts on boycotts: one South African and one Palestinian. Zackie Achmat is a veteran South African political activist and a leading authority on the role of boycotts in the anti-apartheid movement. Mazin Qumsiyeh is founder and volunteer director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University and the author of Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment, which chronicles non-violent protest in Palestinian history. We’ll talk about the history of boycotts in both places, the ethical dilemmas they create and whether or not they work.

This week’s live Zoom call will be for paid subscribers, as usual. But we will make the video available for everyone.

Cited in Today’s Video

The Trump administration’s agreement with Northwestern University.

At Harvard, Muslim students are more than twice as likely as Jewish students to feel unsafe.

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!), Lee Mordechai chronicles Israel’s “collective amnesia” about the genocide in Gaza.

For the Foundation for Middle East Peace, I talked to Ahmed Moor about my apology for speaking at Tel Aviv University.

I talked on the Know Your Enemy podcast about the varying Jewish reactions to Zohran Mamdani.

Haaretz profiles Israel’s “Faithful Left.”

Check our Terrell Starr’s excellent Substack newsletter.

The New York Times named Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza one of the 100 notable books of 2025.

I’ll be speaking on December 8 at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism in New York City.

Reader Response

I occasionally publish letters from readers who take issue with something I’ve said. This one comes from Hillel Schenker, co-editor of the Palestine-Israel Journal:

“I don’t understand why you felt you made ‘a serious mistake’ by speaking at Tel Aviv University. Virtually all of the humanities lecturers at the university are on the left, as are a good percentage of the students. They are highly critical of the extreme right-wing government policy, and the current Tel Aviv University President Prof. Ariel Porat has defended the right of Arab and left-wing students to protest against the war.

My predecessor as Israeli Co-Editor of Palestine-Israel Journal was Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal. When he was the Co-