My new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, is on The New York Times Bestseller List.
You’ll find a list of book-related events, interviews and responses below.
I’m happy people are reading my book. But I know that many talented Palestinian authors don’t get the same attention. So, I hope people who buy my book also buy one by a Palestinian author. For instance, Fida Jiryis’ exquisite memoir, Stranger in My Own Land
I hope readers also donate to people in Gaza. For instance, Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who were severely injured along with their four children by Israeli bombs and have been displaced 10 times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.
Ask Me Anything
I’m excited to discuss my book with newsletter subscribers. So, I’m hosting an Ask Me Anything session this Thursday, February 13, from 11-Noon Eastern. Our monthly Ask Me Anything sessions are for premium subscribers only.
Friday Zoom Call
This Friday’s zoom call, for all paid subscribers, will be 1 PM Eastern on Friday, our regular time. Our guest will the brilliant Palestinian legal scholar Raef Zreik, a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Sometimes the most penetrating analysts of a society are those who see it from below because they are members of an oppressed caste. I’ve often found that Raef, as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, has striking insights about Israeli Jewish society. So, in this horrifying moment, in which so many Israeli politicians and pundits have embraced mass ethnic cleansing, I wanted to hear his views.
Assistance in Ireland
This June, I’ll be traveling to Britain to speak about my book. I’m hoping to visit Ireland as well. If readers know of venues on the Emerald Isle that might be interested in hosting a book talk, please let me know.
Book Tour
(We’ll update this every week.)
On Monday, February 17, I’ll be speaking at San Diego State University.
On Tuesday, February 18, I’ll be speaking with UCLA historian David Myers at the Lumiere Music Hall in Los Angeles.
On Monday, February 24, I’ll be speaking with Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, DC.
On Monday, March 3, I’ll be speaking with Professor Atalia Omer at Notre Dame University.
On Tuesday, March 18, I’ll be debating an old classmate, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, on the proposition “The oppression of Palestinians in non-democratic Israel has been systematic and profound” at the Soho Forum in New York.
On Monday, March 24, I’ll be speaking at the University of Vermont.
On Tuesday, March 25, I’ll be speaking at Middlebury College.
On Wednesday, April 9, I’ll be speaking at United Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Book Interviews
Last week, I spoke about Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza on CNN’s Amanpour and Company, Democracy Now, Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo, Al Franken, RTE Radio in Ireland, TheNew Books Network and American Muslim Today.
The CEO of The American Jewish Committee responds to my recent essay in The New York Times.
The right-wing group, Betar USA, suggests I be given a pager.
Sources Cited in this Week’s Video
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, in 1992, on Tommy Lapid’s dark prophecy.
American Jewish Responses to Trump’s Expulsion Plan: Alan Dershowitz, John Podhoretz, Rich Goldberg, Lee Smith and The American Jewish Committee.
Israeli Jewish Responses: Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz, Ben Caspit.
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!), UCLA historian David Myers responds to Berkeley historian Ussama Makdisi’s reconsideration of the notion of Palestinians as “victims of victims.”
Mouin Rabbani on the immorality of abducting and mistreating Israeli civilians.
Edward Said on how to understand Palestinian armed resistance.
How Kamala Harris’ campaign suppressed voter discontent over Gaza.
See you on Thursday, February 13 and Friday, February 14,
Peter
Video Transcript
Ever since Donald Trump suggested a mass ethnic cleansing of Gaza, with the US taking over, my mind keeps going back to this kind of haunting interview that I saw with Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the great Israeli Orthodox social critic, and really kind of an inspiration from my book Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza. And Leibowitz had used the term ‘Judeo Nazi’ to refer to the mentality in certain corners of Israeli politics. It’s worth noting that by using that, he would’ve potentially made himself an antisemite, according to the definition of antisemitism that’s just been adopted by Harvard University. But Leibowitz was on a TV show and he was being challenged very aggressively, in particular, by a politician named Tommy Lapid. And Lapid, who is himself a Holocaust survivor, says to Leibowitz, ‘are we burning them? Are we burning them? Are we putting them in gas chambers?’ And there’s this long pause from Leibowitz, and he doesn’t say anything. And then he says, ‘that is your prophecy.’
And what I think Leibowitz is trying to say is not that Israel has committed a Holocaust against Palestinians, back then or in Gaza. I don’t think what’s happened in Gaza is the equivalent of the Holocaust. I don’t think those analogies are helpful at all. But I think Leibowitz was saying something different. Which is to say we as Jews, because we are human beings, we have the same capacity to commit the worst crimes in human history as any other group of people. And what will prevent us from committing those crimes, or will prevent any group of people from committing those crimes, is the recognition that it is possible. And if you deny that it is possible, then in fact there is no limit to what could possibly happen.
So, it was to me, a really horrifying irony to see in the last few days that after Trump called for forcibly expelling 2 million Palestinians from Gaza, that Tommy Lipid’s son, Yair Lapid, said that he thought in general it’s good. He replied to Trump’s response by saying, ‘it’s good.’ Lapid is not a right-wing politician in Israel. He’s a centrist politician in Israel. And this was the response from many people in Israel and the United States that are not by any means considered on the far-right. Benny Gantz, Israel’s other most prominent centrist leader called the idea ‘creative, original, and intriguing.’ Ben Caspit, one of Israel’s most prominent kind of prestigious mainstream centrist columnists, said that ‘every Israeli, barring the most delusional ones on the outer reaches of the left, ought to welcome this initiative.’
Similarly, in the United States, you saw again and again, not on the far right, not on people who are on the margins of the American Jewish community, but people who are in the mainstream responded to this, not with horror, but with a certain amount of intrigue, if not open support. So, the American Jewish Committee said it was ‘surprising, concerning, and confused,’ but then went on to say, an AJC official, ‘at the same time, one has to say it is a dramatic out-of-the-box attempt to shake up the regional dynamic. And I recognize that in a frozen, stale conflict, sometimes out of the box proposals serve a purpose.’ Alan Dershowitz said, ‘this is the first new bold, new out-of-the-box thinking about Gaza, and it should not be rejected out of hand.’ John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary Magazine, said that ‘after all, the United States had taken in lots of people from Mexico and Central America, so why shouldn’t Egypt and Jordan have to take Palestinians,’ ignoring the fact that the people coming from Mexico and other places are coming voluntarily, trying to get inside as opposed to people being expelled from their homes. Rich Goldberg of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies said on Dan Senor’s influential podcast, ‘let’s not imagine that we’re in some paradigm that can’t shift. Paradigms keep shifting.’ Certainly. Lee Smith in Tablet magazine wrote, ‘Trump, in his innovative mercy, has offered to save the Palestinian people from their own history and give them a new idea to live by. They should thank their maker for the chance to start anew and give thanks.’
This is, I think, what Leibowitz was saying to Tommy Lapid that these are the horrors that will lie in store for us if we don’t recognize that a state that is not subjected to any external moral standard where we say that international law should not apply, that this is what can come true and worse than this can come true. Just listen to the quotations of the people that I have been quoting. Again, I’m not quoting people from the far, far right of the American Israeli political spectrum. I’m quoting people from the center of the American political spectrum. And ask themselves, what confidence would you have that these people would object if the answer to Gaza was not simply expelling people, but killing all the people in Gaza? There is absolutely no suggestion in any of these comments of any absolute moral red line, which would lead people to say, enough, this and no further.
And this is what it means to worship a state, to treat a state as an idol. It justifies itself no matter what it does. This is the moral catastrophe that has been unfolding slowly in Israel and in the American Jewish community simply has now reached a new kind of crescendo in which Israel, with America’s help, destroys an entire society and then says, well, the place is destroyed, so you’d better leave. It’s worth noting by the way that a lot of these people weren’t really willing to admit that Gaza was actually destroyed, that the hospitals, the buildings, the schools, the agriculture, they weren’t willing to admit that until it became convenient for them to say that so that they could say that the people should have to go to other countries.
The obvious point would be that if Gaza has been destroyed by Israel with America’s help, and people in Gaza cannot safely live there, then people in Gaza, Palestinians in Gaza, should be able to return to the homes from which their families are from. And those homes, those communities, those lands are not in Egypt and they’re not in Jordan, and they’re not in Malaysia, they are in Israel. Most of the people in Gaza are refugees who were expelled from their lands in 1948. Many of them can see the lands from Gaza itself. And it’s remarkable that people say, well, the people who are defending this proposal, well, sure there’s some practical issues that we might have to figure out about how to resettle people in Egypt and Jordan, but they talk about it as if it's something that could be overcome, right. Practical issues, logistical issues, we can work on those. There are practical and logistical issues that are involved with Palestinians returning to the lands they’re from in Israel and living equally alongside Israelis, right. But those practical and logistical issues are never willing to be confronted because the basic assumption is that Palestinian life is worthless, right.
And that you can do whatever you want to Palestinians but you can’t inconvenience Israel Israelis at all, and you can’t question the nature of the state at all. And that’s what leads us to this place. It is, as I say this, as someone who loves the American Jewish community, and lives my life in the American Jewish community, could not imagine another way of living. It is utterly horrifying to see the degree to which people who enjoy great legitimacy and respect in our community are willing to support something that would be considered one of the greatest crimes of the 21st century. And that we don’t have the capacity at this moment to call these people who do this what they are, which are people who are engaging in a moral monstrosity.
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