The Beinart Notebook

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com I spoke with my friend, the brilliant, Gaza-born, political analyst Muhammad Shehada, about the ceasefire agreement, the horrific conditions in Gaza, and what might come next.

Romi, Emily, and Doron Are Home Our Zoom call this week, for paid subscribers, will be on Friday, January 24, at 1 PM Eastern, our regular time. Our guest will be Jamaal Bowman, who lost his seat in Congress last year after his support for Palestinian rights prompted a ferocious attack by AIPAC and other pro-Israel organizations. I’ve met many politicians. Very few risk their careers on questions...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Jamil Dakwar is the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Human Rights Program and a former senior attorney at Adalah , which defends the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel. We talk about the Trump administration’s coming crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech and activism.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Mairav Zonszein is Senior Israel-Palestine Analyst for the International Crisis Group . She kindly agreed to talk with me about this breaking news.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist and author. He has long written a weekly column for Haaretz. In our conversation, Gideon tells about his younger days, how he evolved away from racism, and how he now lives in a society he regularly accuses of grave crimes. I was struck by his openness and intimacy and expec...

The Outgoing National Security Advisor’s Orwellian Interview at the 92nd Street Y Our Zoom call this week, for paid subscribers, will be on Friday, January 17, at 1 PM Eastern, our regular time. Our guest will be Jamil Dakwar , director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Human Rights Program and a former senior attorney at Adalah, which defends the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel. We...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Israeli-born British journalist Rachel Shabi is the author of the new book, Off-White: The Truth about Antisemitism . Last week, she published a column on the subject in The Guardian . She’s particularly knowledge about antisemitism, and its weaponization, in Britain, a subject of ferocious contention since Jer...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Israeli religious thinker and activist Mikhael Manekin is one of the founders of smol emuni , the faithful left. We discuss Mikhael’s new book, so far available only in Hebrew, entitled, Sermons from the Abyss , which uses the five Megillot that Jews read during the year in synagogue to reflect on the horrors o...

The Outgoing Secretary of State’s Astonishing Interview with the New York Times Our Zoom call this week, for paid subscribers, will be on Friday, January 10, at 1 PM Eastern, our regular time. Our guest will be the Israeli-born British journalist Rachel Shabi , author of the new book, Off-White: The Truth about Antisemitism . Last week, she published a column on the subject in The Guardian . She’s...

Carter’s Break with the White South Over Civil Rights Offers a Model for Jews Our guest for the Zoom call this Friday, January 3rd, at 1 Eastern, for paid subscribers, will be Paul O’Brien , Executive Director at Amnesty International USA. We’ll discuss Amnesty’s new report accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. My New Book Knopf will publish my new book, Being Jewish After the Destructio...

Our Communal Leaders Keep Conflating Discomfort with Unsafety Something happened earlier this month in December that might seem like—given the scale of all the magnitude of the horrors that are happening around Palestine and Israel—might not seem so significant, but I think really is emblematic of something that’s gone terribly, terribly wrong in the organized American Jewish community. This is a...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guests are Mahmoud Muna, Matthew Teller, and Juliette Touma, editors of the new anthology, Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture , which includes close to a hundred stories about the lives of people in Gaza, both before and after its recent destruction. This interview is co-sponsored wi...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com I talked with the Palestinian-Norwegian writer Iyad el-Baghdadi about the regional implications of the Assad regime’s fall in Syria and Israel’s military intervention there.

It’s not about the legal definition. It’s about Western and Jewish exceptionalism. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com I talked with my extraordinary CUNY colleague, the Syrian-American journalist Alia Malek, author of The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria .

It’s Wonderful Assad is Gone. But Neither He, Nor Iran, Was Ever Israel’s Real Problem. There will be no Zoom call this Friday. We’ll resume on Friday, December 20 at 1 PM with a conversation with Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller, author of the new anthology, Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture . But I’ve recorded a Zoom interview (without a live audience) with my extraordina...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guest is Muzaffar Chishti , Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, and one of America’s foremost experts on immigration policy. We’ll talk about Donald Trump’s plans for the mass deportation of undocumented—and perhaps even legal— immigrants. We’ll talk about the human cost of such a roundup and w...

When Even Billionaires Are Afraid to Criticize Trump, What Does That Mean for the Rest of US? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guest is the renowned, Israeli-born, Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov , who teaches at Brown University. In August, he described returning to Israel and encountering students whose “rhetoric brought to mind some of the darkest moments of 20th-century history.” This month he concluded that Israel was committing...

It’s a Test of Whether International Law Applies to the West This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guest is The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer, author of one of the most famous essays of the first Trump presidency, which he turned into a book: The Cruelty is the Point . We’ll talk about what is similar, and different, as Trump returns, and how Americans should respond to our country’s capacity for cruelty, both...

Our call this week, for paid subscribers, will be on Friday at 1 PM Eastern, our new regular time. Our guest will be The Atlantic ’s Adam Serwer, author of one of the most famous essays of the first Trump presidency, which he turned into a book: The Cruelty is the Point . We’ll talk about what is similar, and different, as Trump returns, and how Americans should respond to our country’s enormous c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit peterbeinart.substack.com Our guest is New York Magazine  Editor-at-Large Rebecca Traister, among the best writers on gender and politics (and many other things) in America. This  essay  she wrote after Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 still captures many painful truths about the brutal burden facing not only women presidential candidat...

These monthly conversations are usually reserved for Premium members, but given the gravity of this moment, we decided to make this one available to everybody. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe

Just Because People Vote For Something Doesn’t Make It Right This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peterbeinart.substack.com/subscribe