The Beinart Notebook

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Dan Shapiro served as ambassador to Israel under the Obama administration. He’s currently Distinguished Fellow at the Scrowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council. Shapiro and I hold very different views about what needs to happen in Israel-Palestine, so I invited him to discuss them. Topi...

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time: Friday at 1 PM. Our guest will be Munther Isaac , a Palestinian minister and theologian based in the West Bank. He gained international attention for his Christmas 2023 sermon, Christ in the Rubble . We’ll talk about Palestinian life in the West Bank, Munther’s critique of Christian Zionism, his views of Hamas and his interview with Tucker Carlson...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com James Zogby is a scholar on Middle East issues and a Visiting Professor at New York University Abu Dhabi. From 2001 to 2017, he was part of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee. He was appointed by Barack Obama to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. He is the...

This week’s Zoom call will be at a special time: Thursday at 1 PM . Our guest will be Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and author of the new book, When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine . She has been sanctioned by the Trump administration, which has barred her from entering the United States and frozen her ass...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Palestinian-American Georgia State Representative Ruwa Romman recently wrote on X of former Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene: “I’m tired of Palestine being used to erase every other misdeed once someone with a platform says anything for us.” Ben Lorber is the co-author of Safety Through Solidarit...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Ariel Beery believes American progressives should listen more carefully to Israeli liberal Zionists. I listened to him, and asked some questions. Topics include: Is Israel a liberal democracy? Is America a Christian state like Israel is a Jewish state? Beery’s decision not to include Palestinian voices in his b...

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. We will talk about how progressives should respond to the anti-Israel right. Our first guest will be Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian-American State Representative from Georgia, who in a recent comment on X about former Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote, “I’m tired of Palestine being used to erase every other...

Issa Amro is a renowned non-violent human rights activist in the West Bank, and Sari Bashi is the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel . Both were referenced in the recent New York Times op-ed by Nicholas Kristof entitled The Silence that Meets the Rape of Palestinians . Given the strong reaction against the piece by supporters of Israel, I wanted to dig deeper with...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guest is Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate for Senate in Michigan, whose Democratic primary has become the most hotly contested in the nation. El-Sayed has been attacked for saying that both Israel and Hamas have acted in evil ways, for campaigning with Hasan Piker and for calling Benjamin Netanyahu a war crimina...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Professor Omer Bartov, is the author of the newly released, Israel: What Went Wrong . Haaretz Columnist Gideon Levy, in a recent column , criticized an interview about the book that Bartov conducted with Haaretz . I invited both of them to join me in a discussion. Topics include… The difficulty for some Jews of...

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate for Senate in Michigan, whose Democratic primary has become the most hotly contested in the nation. El-Sayed has been attacked for saying that both Israel and Hamas have acted in evil ways, for campaigning with Hasan Piker and for calling Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal. He re...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guests are Molly Crabapple, author of the newly released, New York Times bestseller, Here Where We Live is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund , and Joshua D. Zimmerman, Professor of History and Chair in Holocaust Studies at Yeshiva University, and author of Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationalit...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Ro Khanna is a U.S. representative from California's 17th congressional district and sits on the House Armed Services Committee. He also served in the Obama administration in the US Department of Commerce. Topics include… Should the US accept defeat in Iran? How scared should Americans be of an Iranian nuke? Sh...

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Our guests will be Molly Crabapple, author of the newly released, New York Times bestseller, Here Where We Live is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund , and Joshua D. Zimmerman, Professor of History and Chair in Holocaust Studies at Yeshiva University, and author of Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bu...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guest is Cenk Uygur , co-creator and host of The Young Turks , a popular progressive political show. Cenk and I largely agree about the war in Iran and US policy towards Israel, but I’ve been uncomfortable with some of his comments about Israel’s role in America's wars. I’m grateful to Cenk for being willin...

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Cenk Uygur , co-creator and host of The Young Turks , a popular progressive political show. A month or so ago, Cenk and I were interviewed together by Piers Morgan and while we agreed about the war in Iran and US policy towards Israel, I was uncomfortable with some of the ways he spoke about Israel’s suppo...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guests are Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon, co-authors of the new book, The Future is Peace . Aziz, a Palestinian born in the West Bank, saw his brother die from injuries sustained while held in an Israeli prison. Maoz, a Jewish Israeli born on a kibbutz near Gaza, lost both of his parents on October 7, 2023....

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Twitch streamer and political commentator Hasan Piker has been much in the news of late. He first rose to fame as a producer and host for The Young Turks, where he created the popular news series The Breakdown . Today, he’s one of the most-watched creators on Twitch , frequently collaborating with political fig...

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Our guests will be Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon, co-authors of the new book, The Future is Peace . Aziz, a Palestinian born in the West Bank, saw his brother die from injuries sustained while held in an Israeli prison. Maoz, a Jewish Israeli born on a kibbutz near Gaza, lost both of his parents on October 7, 2023. Somehow,...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guest is Mehdi Hasan, formerly of MSNBC and now founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo . Mehdi isn’t only one of the most important progressive voices in American media. He’s also a Muslim who cares deeply about his faith, and about reconciling it with his progressive principles. For several years now, we’ve...

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Mehdi Hasan, formerly of MSNBC and now founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo. It’s a little unnerving to be interviewing Mehdi, who may be the single best political interviewer in America. We’ll talk about why American journalists don’t ask tougher questions. But we’ll also talk about more personal things....

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guest this week is Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of three remarkable books on the relationship between the United States, Israel and Iran. For as long as I’ve followed Trita’s work, he’s been warning that if hawks in Washington got th...

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time, Friday at 1 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of three remarkable books on the relationship between the United States, Israel and Iran. For as long as I’ve followed Trita’s work, he’s been warning that if hawks in Washington got their way, we would...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Rabbi Dr. Ismar Schorsch is chancellor emeritus of The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and the Rabbi Herman Abramovitz Distinguished Professor of Jewish history. He’s had a long, illustrious career of service to the Jewish community. Last year, we spoke after he wrote critically about Israel’s treatment of Pa...

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