I’ll be on book tour for Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza for the next couple of months. You’ll find a list of book-related events 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, Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestine Lives and Culture, edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller with Juliette Touma and Jayyab Abusafia.
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 ten times since October 7th. They’re trying to raise the money to seek medical care in Egypt. Their GoFundMe page is here.
Friday Zoom Call
This Friday’s zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at 1 PM Eastern, our regular time. Our guest will be Joy Reid, former MSNBC host and author of the Joy’s House Substack. We’ll talk about how the mainstream media covers Israel-Palestine, and how it covers America.
Book Tour
(We’ll update this every week.)
On Monday, April 28, I’ll be speaking at Princeton University.
On Tuesday, April 29, I’ll be speaking twice in Washington, DC: with Khaled Abu El Fadl at Noon at Georgetown University and at 6 PM with Mehdi Hasan at Busboys and Poets.
On Wednesday, April 30, I’ll be speaking with Barnett Rubin via Zoom to the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library.
On Sunday, May 4, I’ll be speaking at Kehilla Synagogue in Oakland/Piedmont, California.
On Monday, May 6, I’ll be speaking at Stanford University.
On Monday, May 12, I’ll be speaking at Parkdale Hall in Toronto.
On Tuesday, May 13, I’ll be speaking at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation.
On Sunday, May 25, I’ll be speaking with Debbie Whitmont at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney, Australia.
On Tuesday, May 27, I’ll be speaking at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne, Australia.
Book Reviews
I discussed Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza on Public Research with Daniel Schwartz. The book was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement and Moment Magazine.
Sources Cited in this Week’s Video
India’s denial of water to Pakistan.
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!), Alex Kane reports that the New York Police categorized keffiyehs as symbols of antisemitism.
Karen Attiah on why Columbia cancelled her class.
Jacobin interviews Omer Bartov about Gaza.
A conversation between the director of The Encampments and a pro-Israel influencer.
See you on Friday,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So, last week there was an armed attack by militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir. And India is accusing neighboring Pakistan of having a role in it. And in retaliation, it has now suspended a water treaty from 1960, in which rivers that pass through India provide Pakistan a very large percentage of its water. And for the first time since 1960 India is now saying it’s suspending this water treaty in retaliation, which really could devastate the Pakistani agriculture and the Pakistani population more generally. So, this would be an act of very, very serious collective punishment against the people of Pakistan. And this is really the kind of thing that I think people have been warning about since Israel’s assault on Gaza. Which was that the things that Israel was doing in Gaza would become templates for countries around the world.
And so, one of the things Israel has done in Gaza—starting before October 7th, but more dramatically since October 7th—is a policy of collective punishment of the entire population, right? So, Israel has now been denying all humanitarian into Gaza since the collapse of the last ceasefire agreement. And from the very beginning, Israel said very clearly that it would deny significant amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. And indeed, it did, which is one of the reasons that there’s been many, many reports of starvation in Gaza, of lack of medical care. One of the reasons that so many children have had their limbs amputated, according to my friend Ahmed Moore who wrote a long piece about this in The Guardian, is that Israel has denied the ability of people to Gaza to bring in the medical supplies and medicines that might have allowed doctors to be able to be able to save those limbs.
So, this policy of collective punishment that Israel has been pursuing in Gaza now is echoing in the policies that India is pursuing in Pakistan. I can’t prove that India is doing this because of what Israel is doing in Gaza. But I think if we look at the tire of the last 20-25 years of world history, you can see the way in which when a norm is eroded by one government, it becomes easier for other governments to also erode these norms. So, for instance, we know that Vladimir Putin in justifying his invasion of Ukraine, and his invasions of Georgia also has kind of cited America’s behaviors in Iraq, for instance, or in Libya, right? The idea is, well, if the United States doesn’t need United Nations approval to go and attack other countries, then why should I?
This is one of the reasons I think that the impunity that America has given Israel over the last year and a half is so disastrous, not only for Palestinians and for Palestinians in Gaza, but indeed for the whole world. People in Washington now like to say that it’s no longer a unipolar world, that America’s margin of power over other countries has diminished. One of the things that that means is that it is going to be more likely that other countries will be able to start to do the things that Israel and the United States have done because they will have more power to do so. And because the institutions and norms that might prevent them from doing so have been substantially weakened. Right after the United States, after all, in order to defend Israel has repeatedly now attacked the International Criminal Court. So, you’re going to think that the International Criminal Court is now going to turn to focusing on India, right? It’s been weakened by the way in which it’s been hamstrung by the United States in its response to Gaza.
So, I did a conversation with Jonathan Freeland of The Guardian last week for paid subscribers. And Jonathan and I—I have a lot of respect for him and we agree on a lot—but one thing we disagree with is that he basically believes in the idea of a state that gives legal privilege to Jews over Palestinians, even though he would want to minimize that privilege and he would want Israel to give back the West Bank and Gaza. I don’t believe in states that give legal privilege to people of one ethnic, religious, or racial group. I believe in the idea of states based on equality under the law. And one of the reasons that I believe that I have to apply that principle to Israel and Palestine is not only because Palestinians deserve to be treated equally wherever they live between the river and the sea, but because it’s just become clearer and clearer to me that when one makes exceptions to basic principles about human equality and international law in one context, you are contributing to opening the door to those exceptions being acted on in many other contexts. And that’s why Israel is part of a global rising network of ethno-nationalist regimes and movements across the world. That the exception for this in Israel doesn’t stay in Israel. And it’s also why we now see that Israel’s behavior in Gaza seems to be providing a very, very frightening template for what India is doing in Pakistan.
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