Thank you. I appreciate that you call out The NY Times for not providing a more insightful interview. And the end of your post is so significant, that we must never again allow a president like Joe Biden or a Secretary of State like Anthony Blinken to carry out a genocide. I hope they will spend the rest of their days facing challenges and protests. But they both appear shameless and arrogant, and perhaps will never feel a modicum of guilt for the deaths they have caused.
In the interview, Blinken blames public criticism of Israel for the continuation of the bombing campaign and the failure to achieve a ceasefire! Here he is: "...whenever there has been public daylight between the United States and Israel and the perception that pressure was growing on Israel....Hamas has pulled back from agreeing to a cease-fire and the release of hostages." How convenient of him to shift responsibility away from US support for Israel's decimation of Gaza and its people... He will have to live with himself for his role. Sadly, American officials who have been responsible for mass murder have escaped accountability.. think of Kissinger...
I'm puzzled by the refusal of some fellow subscribers to accept the verdict that Israel, with U.S. complicity, is committing genocide. Do they choose to ignore the fact more Palestinian children have been killed than the number of Palestinian men? Are they unaware of Israel's deprivation of adequate food, water, shelter, and electricity for Palestinian civilians? Then there's the destruction of all the universities and virtually all of the hospitals. The killing of over 1,000 healthcare workers and the kidnapping of others. To cap it off, the IDF has killed over a hundred journalists and has prevented outside journalists to witness, unencumbered, the ongoing mayhem perpetrated by the IDF. Perhaps that allows some to pretend there's no genocide. Then, like Blinken, there's always the simplicity of intellectual dishonesty.
I’m with you on this 99%. The leftover 1% is regarding intellectual dishonesty. I think Blinken is being honestly attached to his insanity and blindness. Given what is known at this point, I think that that miserable human being truly believes what he says. Good riddance to him and to his boss, and as Peter suggests, we need to challenge him at every moment of his remaining career after January 20th, 2025.
I was there when Harvard gave Noam Chomsky an honorary degree. The citation spoke only of his work as a linguist. Not a word about his political writing and activism. I got to ask Chomsky if this was his decision or Harvard's. It was Harvard's – he didn't see the citation before it was read out at the ceremony. I said in that case the word that comes to mind is chickenshit.
The word that comes to mind for the NY Times is chickenshit.
Peter's rage expressed gutturally brought tears to my eyes but my lesson in life has been to turn pain into anger to drive my antifascism. His(sorry!)likely impotent rage makes clear how rage is a pure fuel for Palestinian armed resistance as we all wait for Amnesty Intl's, the ICC's and ICJ's glacial progress in the face of genocide.
Thank you Peter for having the stomach to view the interview. The Times' moving image showing him shifting, bobbing and weaving made me queasy enough and as I see, told me all I fundamentally needed to know. Non-supporters of Palestinian armed resistance, as one tool among so very few, are facing a moral crisis. Non-violence was a tactic of a specific era and cannot be our limiting template faced with Zionist genocide. How, beyond the rhetorical moving of progressive redlines, this practically assists Palestinians, I do not and cannot know. I do know that opposing armed resistance seems increasingly like a betrayal of the Palestinian people and I hasten to commend Peter for forthrightly posing the question to Grazia last week. His grappling for moral consistency is a shining light. Her answer was weak tea but in no way discredits AI's and her measured advocacy to be sure. To those who argue that support for the Gaza Ghetto Uprising legitimises Zionist reprisals: Did the Partisans or the Warsaw Uprising risk legitimising Nazi atrocities? Do opponents of Hamas' armed attack retrospectively argue against anti-Nazi resistance, perhaps even against allied bombing--akin to Houthi or Iranian missiles? Which part of the analogy do these opponents find flawed, that-some-Jews can be Nazis, de facto as well as in blood and soil, master race, Lebensraum, death camp ideology?
the reputation and money laundering going on via our top universities is disgusting - more absurd battles to burden our younger generations...And people naively wonder why their quality of life keeps getting worse. If you continuously excuse these brazen acts of moral hypocrisy, then you erode civil society at every level.
I would never have believed that a US Secretary of State could be so profoundly ignorant. The NYT interview should yes have pushed Blinken much further, but without doing so it gave Blinken plenty of room to hang himself. I thought that surely Biden was getting bad advice from some underlings, but with this interview we see that the problem was Blinken, and I imagine others at his level.
Blinken is as complicit in the Gazan genocide and crimes against humanity as Biden is. Biden—Blinken. Now we know.
Invoking Sen. Fulbright’s Arrogance of Power is fully appropriate. Maybe we can add the mantra of Arrogance of Ignorance.
Your emotion, outrage, clarity, analysis - all of it ... you speak my mind, Peter. This syndrome of social power being used so tragically and to such ignominous ends can't be described merely as arrogance. We need a new syntax to describe it. The syndrome is the moral enemy of all humanity. The syndrome is how knowledge is allowed to be represented without any moral norm to provide governance of its legitimacy. In the hands of people like Biden and Blinken, this syndrome becomes a clear existential threat to humanity. Our best response to such people practiced in these dark arts is not violence but clarity of the use of a new syntax to describe it. Because that will sponsor new productive narratives and action that will show in millions of new ways. The syndrome is what I would call "autocracy", giving that term a slightly different turn of emphasis than in its typical use. Such autocracy I would define as ruling over others by private preferences, not knowledge. It can immediately be identified by the ability to prevent feedback and be unencumbered by humility. And here is the most difficult part of autocracy. It is the corruption of autonomy. We all must participate in autonomous action. But when that autonomy is given permission to flow into social environments, it morphs into disastrous autocracy. Governance of self can only be conflated with governance of groups of individuals at costs too great to bear.
Thank you, Peter! I love your finish - "The elite institutions in America have to change to ensure that there is never again a president like Joe Biden and never again a secretary of state like Antony Blinken who do this. It can never be allowed to happen again." I wholeheartedly agree. But the Dems trying to lionize Biden are a mighty and vocal force... And many would just like this issue to fade into the background. There needs to be a movement to better educate the next layer of Democrat Party leaders. Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom are woefully under-educated and under-prepared for this issue. Sadly. I was shocked at how ignorant she was, given her hallowed upbringing in Berkeley/Oakland. And look at our CA Senators! Shocking betrayal of the values they espouse inside our state - to treat everyone fairly regardless of their background. They suckered us.
Unlike most neocons who went from the far-left to blind support for US interventionism, Peter Beinart went the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, my former political mentor has become the epitome of what Paul Hollander called Political Pilgrims.
Arguing that Hamas butchered and raped members of the Israeli left because Gaza is an open-air prison is a sheer fallacy. Hamas wants to destroy Israel and to persecute Israeli Jews thereafter. As for the occupation, Israel accepted three times to return to the 1967 borders (in 2001, 2008 and 2014). Did it prompt Hamas or Arafat/Abbas, for that matter, to sign a deal? The truth is that Beinart too believes that Israel must disappear, and "resistance" is justified until the Palestinian flag is raised on Tel Aviv’s city hall.
By the way, Blinken referred to the Israeli society (not the Jewish people), which includes all Israelis. It seems like Beinart, more than Blinken, engages in "ethnonationalism", the far-left’s new catchword (no serious scholar of nationalism believes there is such a thing as nationalism devoid of ethnicity, not even in the U.S.).
The occupation must end for moral reasons. But there is a huge difference between supporting the U.S. war in Vietnam and supporting the Vietcong. Beinart’s radical chic posturing won’t free the Palestinians.
1) Israel dropped its reservations to the Clinton parameters on December 29, 2000. Afterwards, Israel went BEYOND the Clinton parameters.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, Yair Hirschfeld and Nimrod Novick offered the equivalent of 100% of the West Bank to the Palestinians (instead of 97%).
2) Shlomo Ben-Ami offered the Palestinians exclusive sovereignty over the Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount provided that this area would be recognized as a Jewish holy site as well (Clinton called for a vertical sovereignty over this area).
As for the Palestinians, they
1) rejected the idea that the settlement blocs (4-6% and 80% of the settlers) of the WB could remain under Israeli in the framework of a land swap (they were willing to swap only 2% of the WB and 50-60% of the settlers).
2) They insisted on exclusive sovereignty over the Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount without any symbolic recognition for the Jews over Judaism’s main holy site.
3) They stressed that Israel had to accept exclusive (not partial responsibility) for the Nakba, in addition to an individual right of return to Israel for all refugees. Revisionists keep arguing that the right of return is a symbolic issue, as the PA demanded only the return of the refugees living in Lebanon. This is just untrue. Once the right of return is recognized, refugees can take Israel to international courts, as it creates jurisprudence.
Avi Shlaim defended Hamas before October 7. Rashid Khalidi opposes the Clinton parameters. Siegman became anti-Israel after the outbreak of the 2nd Intifada. I’m not impressed by your revisionist sources.
I was talking about the Clinton parameters (Dec 2000), not the Camp David offer (July 2000). Aaron Mate is a hoax, as well as a Bashar Al-Assad supporter.
Thank you. I appreciate that you call out The NY Times for not providing a more insightful interview. And the end of your post is so significant, that we must never again allow a president like Joe Biden or a Secretary of State like Anthony Blinken to carry out a genocide. I hope they will spend the rest of their days facing challenges and protests. But they both appear shameless and arrogant, and perhaps will never feel a modicum of guilt for the deaths they have caused.
In the interview, Blinken blames public criticism of Israel for the continuation of the bombing campaign and the failure to achieve a ceasefire! Here he is: "...whenever there has been public daylight between the United States and Israel and the perception that pressure was growing on Israel....Hamas has pulled back from agreeing to a cease-fire and the release of hostages." How convenient of him to shift responsibility away from US support for Israel's decimation of Gaza and its people... He will have to live with himself for his role. Sadly, American officials who have been responsible for mass murder have escaped accountability.. think of Kissinger...
I'm puzzled by the refusal of some fellow subscribers to accept the verdict that Israel, with U.S. complicity, is committing genocide. Do they choose to ignore the fact more Palestinian children have been killed than the number of Palestinian men? Are they unaware of Israel's deprivation of adequate food, water, shelter, and electricity for Palestinian civilians? Then there's the destruction of all the universities and virtually all of the hospitals. The killing of over 1,000 healthcare workers and the kidnapping of others. To cap it off, the IDF has killed over a hundred journalists and has prevented outside journalists to witness, unencumbered, the ongoing mayhem perpetrated by the IDF. Perhaps that allows some to pretend there's no genocide. Then, like Blinken, there's always the simplicity of intellectual dishonesty.
I’m with you on this 99%. The leftover 1% is regarding intellectual dishonesty. I think Blinken is being honestly attached to his insanity and blindness. Given what is known at this point, I think that that miserable human being truly believes what he says. Good riddance to him and to his boss, and as Peter suggests, we need to challenge him at every moment of his remaining career after January 20th, 2025.
Then there's the NY Times.
I was there when Harvard gave Noam Chomsky an honorary degree. The citation spoke only of his work as a linguist. Not a word about his political writing and activism. I got to ask Chomsky if this was his decision or Harvard's. It was Harvard's – he didn't see the citation before it was read out at the ceremony. I said in that case the word that comes to mind is chickenshit.
The word that comes to mind for the NY Times is chickenshit.
Peter's rage expressed gutturally brought tears to my eyes but my lesson in life has been to turn pain into anger to drive my antifascism. His(sorry!)likely impotent rage makes clear how rage is a pure fuel for Palestinian armed resistance as we all wait for Amnesty Intl's, the ICC's and ICJ's glacial progress in the face of genocide.
Thank you Peter for having the stomach to view the interview. The Times' moving image showing him shifting, bobbing and weaving made me queasy enough and as I see, told me all I fundamentally needed to know. Non-supporters of Palestinian armed resistance, as one tool among so very few, are facing a moral crisis. Non-violence was a tactic of a specific era and cannot be our limiting template faced with Zionist genocide. How, beyond the rhetorical moving of progressive redlines, this practically assists Palestinians, I do not and cannot know. I do know that opposing armed resistance seems increasingly like a betrayal of the Palestinian people and I hasten to commend Peter for forthrightly posing the question to Grazia last week. His grappling for moral consistency is a shining light. Her answer was weak tea but in no way discredits AI's and her measured advocacy to be sure. To those who argue that support for the Gaza Ghetto Uprising legitimises Zionist reprisals: Did the Partisans or the Warsaw Uprising risk legitimising Nazi atrocities? Do opponents of Hamas' armed attack retrospectively argue against anti-Nazi resistance, perhaps even against allied bombing--akin to Houthi or Iranian missiles? Which part of the analogy do these opponents find flawed, that-some-Jews can be Nazis, de facto as well as in blood and soil, master race, Lebensraum, death camp ideology?
I do hope that any university that decides to give him a professorship will have to deal with extensive protests and come to regret their decision.
OTOH, John Yoo is still on the tenured faculty of Berkeley.
the reputation and money laundering going on via our top universities is disgusting - more absurd battles to burden our younger generations...And people naively wonder why their quality of life keeps getting worse. If you continuously excuse these brazen acts of moral hypocrisy, then you erode civil society at every level.
I would never have believed that a US Secretary of State could be so profoundly ignorant. The NYT interview should yes have pushed Blinken much further, but without doing so it gave Blinken plenty of room to hang himself. I thought that surely Biden was getting bad advice from some underlings, but with this interview we see that the problem was Blinken, and I imagine others at his level.
Blinken is as complicit in the Gazan genocide and crimes against humanity as Biden is. Biden—Blinken. Now we know.
Invoking Sen. Fulbright’s Arrogance of Power is fully appropriate. Maybe we can add the mantra of Arrogance of Ignorance.
Thank you, Peter, for the well-analyzed piece.
When I click the play button for this video, it does not play your commentary on Blinken, but rather last week’s interview with Gracia
Same here as well.
Yeah, same here. Wrong video.
Thank you, Peter, for raising your voice so insistently and letting your insight drive your passion.
Bravo, Peter!
Your emotion, outrage, clarity, analysis - all of it ... you speak my mind, Peter. This syndrome of social power being used so tragically and to such ignominous ends can't be described merely as arrogance. We need a new syntax to describe it. The syndrome is the moral enemy of all humanity. The syndrome is how knowledge is allowed to be represented without any moral norm to provide governance of its legitimacy. In the hands of people like Biden and Blinken, this syndrome becomes a clear existential threat to humanity. Our best response to such people practiced in these dark arts is not violence but clarity of the use of a new syntax to describe it. Because that will sponsor new productive narratives and action that will show in millions of new ways. The syndrome is what I would call "autocracy", giving that term a slightly different turn of emphasis than in its typical use. Such autocracy I would define as ruling over others by private preferences, not knowledge. It can immediately be identified by the ability to prevent feedback and be unencumbered by humility. And here is the most difficult part of autocracy. It is the corruption of autonomy. We all must participate in autonomous action. But when that autonomy is given permission to flow into social environments, it morphs into disastrous autocracy. Governance of self can only be conflated with governance of groups of individuals at costs too great to bear.
Thank you, Peter! I love your finish - "The elite institutions in America have to change to ensure that there is never again a president like Joe Biden and never again a secretary of state like Antony Blinken who do this. It can never be allowed to happen again." I wholeheartedly agree. But the Dems trying to lionize Biden are a mighty and vocal force... And many would just like this issue to fade into the background. There needs to be a movement to better educate the next layer of Democrat Party leaders. Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom are woefully under-educated and under-prepared for this issue. Sadly. I was shocked at how ignorant she was, given her hallowed upbringing in Berkeley/Oakland. And look at our CA Senators! Shocking betrayal of the values they espouse inside our state - to treat everyone fairly regardless of their background. They suckered us.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Thank you Peter
Unlike most neocons who went from the far-left to blind support for US interventionism, Peter Beinart went the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, my former political mentor has become the epitome of what Paul Hollander called Political Pilgrims.
Arguing that Hamas butchered and raped members of the Israeli left because Gaza is an open-air prison is a sheer fallacy. Hamas wants to destroy Israel and to persecute Israeli Jews thereafter. As for the occupation, Israel accepted three times to return to the 1967 borders (in 2001, 2008 and 2014). Did it prompt Hamas or Arafat/Abbas, for that matter, to sign a deal? The truth is that Beinart too believes that Israel must disappear, and "resistance" is justified until the Palestinian flag is raised on Tel Aviv’s city hall.
By the way, Blinken referred to the Israeli society (not the Jewish people), which includes all Israelis. It seems like Beinart, more than Blinken, engages in "ethnonationalism", the far-left’s new catchword (no serious scholar of nationalism believes there is such a thing as nationalism devoid of ethnicity, not even in the U.S.).
The occupation must end for moral reasons. But there is a huge difference between supporting the U.S. war in Vietnam and supporting the Vietcong. Beinart’s radical chic posturing won’t free the Palestinians.
A little bit more on some of those peace proposals from Israel.
The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n16/henry-siegman/the-great-middle-east-peace-process-scam
The Two-State Solution – Illusion and Reality By Avi Shlaim
https://www.pij.org/articles/2144/the-twostate-solution--illusion-and-reality
The Middle East 'peace process' was a myth. Donald Trump ended it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/18/the-middle-east-peace-process-myth-donald-trump-ended-it
This is all hogwash
1) Israel dropped its reservations to the Clinton parameters on December 29, 2000. Afterwards, Israel went BEYOND the Clinton parameters.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, Yair Hirschfeld and Nimrod Novick offered the equivalent of 100% of the West Bank to the Palestinians (instead of 97%).
2) Shlomo Ben-Ami offered the Palestinians exclusive sovereignty over the Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount provided that this area would be recognized as a Jewish holy site as well (Clinton called for a vertical sovereignty over this area).
As for the Palestinians, they
1) rejected the idea that the settlement blocs (4-6% and 80% of the settlers) of the WB could remain under Israeli in the framework of a land swap (they were willing to swap only 2% of the WB and 50-60% of the settlers).
2) They insisted on exclusive sovereignty over the Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount without any symbolic recognition for the Jews over Judaism’s main holy site.
3) They stressed that Israel had to accept exclusive (not partial responsibility) for the Nakba, in addition to an individual right of return to Israel for all refugees. Revisionists keep arguing that the right of return is a symbolic issue, as the PA demanded only the return of the refugees living in Lebanon. This is just untrue. Once the right of return is recognized, refugees can take Israel to international courts, as it creates jurisprudence.
Avi Shlaim defended Hamas before October 7. Rashid Khalidi opposes the Clinton parameters. Siegman became anti-Israel after the outbreak of the 2nd Intifada. I’m not impressed by your revisionist sources.
My opinion on Henry, Avi and Rashid’s articles is that they are honest and truthful in their analysis, in fact they are perfect gentlemen.
In the early part of this video, Aaron Mate debunks Israeli peace offers.
https://youtu.be/9Uy0HNIJ1yo?si=n-wngjDh-gTDE-dT
I was talking about the Clinton parameters (Dec 2000), not the Camp David offer (July 2000). Aaron Mate is a hoax, as well as a Bashar Al-Assad supporter.
“Tu regere imperio, Romane, memento
Hae tibi erunt artes pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subiectis et debellare superbis »
Virgil, Aeneid Book 6
“Roman, remember, you rule an Empire.
This will be your profession. To impose the custom of Peace.
To spare the defeated. To take down the proud in War.”