Every week I link to the GoFundMe page for Hossam and Mariam Alzweidi, who live in Gaza with their four children and have been injured by Israeli bombs and displaced ten times since October 7, and are trying to leave. I know putting up a Go Fund Me for one family is totally inadequate given the scale of the horror in Gaza, and the millions of people there who need our help— and most of all, need an end to this monstrous slaughter. Still, it’s something.
On June 24, Hossam sent the following message:
Today, I had the heart-wrenching experience of carrying my injured son, Mu’ayyad, through the rubble-strewn streets to the Ministry of Health headquarters. With the bombings intensifying around us, even reaching the building felt like a small miracle.
At the Ministry, the head of the Overseas Treatment Department examined Mu’ayyad. His words shattered us: Mu’ayyad’s injuries are extensive and life-threatening. He urgently needs surgery and specialized care that are simply not available here in Gaza.
While others in our family were also injured in the blast in 2024 and need medical attention, Mu’ayyad’s condition is far more severe. When the bomb hit, he was standing closest to the window—facing it—while the others had their backs turned. He absorbed the full force of the explosion, and his body bears the deepest wounds.
Yet in the midst of despair, there is a glimmer of hope. The department has arranged for Mu’ayyad—and another child in serious condition—to meet with a specialist doctor. This appointment is critical. The doctor’s assessment will help determine whether we can complete Form No. 1, required to seek urgent treatment abroad.
My wife, Miriam, our children, and I are holding on to this hope with all that we have. We are waiting to hear the appointment date, God willing. Each day, I reach out to everyone involved, praying for positive developments that could lead to a brighter future for Mu'ayyad. It aches to see him enduring these terrible injuries, and I pray that God grants him the strength and patience he needs during this incredibly tough time. Your support means a great deal to us; it fuels our determination to keep moving forward. Your presence inspires us as we strive to overcome this tragedy and seek the medical help that we urgently need.
Please considering helping.
Friday Zoom Call
This Friday’s Zoom call, for paid subscribers, will be at our regular time, 1 PM Eastern. Our guest will be Brad Lander, the Jewish City Comptroller of New York, and mayoral candidate, who cross-endorsed Zohran Mamdani and helped propel him to victory. In my opinion, Lander’s behavior modeled what a decent Jewish politics in America might look like. We’ll talk about Mamdani, the responses of Jewish New Yorkers to his victory, and why Lander did what he did.
Ask Me Anything
Our next Ask Me Anything session, for premium subscribers, will be this Monday, June 30, from 3-4 PM Eastern time.
Cited in Today’s Video
Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic members of Congress Eric Swallwell and Laura Gillen attack Zohran Mamdani.
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!), Mari Cohen details how, across the US, support for Palestinian freedom became considered a hate crime.
For the Jewish Currents podcast, I talked with Arielle Angel, Mari Cohen, and Alex Kane about how Zohran Mamdani defeated the pro-Israel machine.
For the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Occupied Thoughts podcast, I interviewed Iranian-American journalist Negar Mortazavi.
Muhammad Shehada on the ISIS-related gangs Israel is backing in Gaza.
See you on Monday and Friday,
Peter
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So, what’s been really depressing to me about the response to Zohran Mamdani’s victory kind of in mainstream media discussion, particularly on TV, is not the response of Republicans. I mean, many Republicans have been kind of blatantly Islamophobic. But in the era of Donald Trump, why would anyone be surprised, you know, by that? It’s really the response by Democrats, and the kind of the conversations between Democrats in mainstream, not right-wing political anchors, on TV that I find really most dispiriting. Because the only thing that they’re interested in when it comes to the subject of Israel is Mamdani’s, you know, statements about globalize the intifada.
Now, again, if you do an interview and you only talk to people about Mamdani’s, you know, record about New York, I think that’s legitimate. I mean, the guy ran on making New York affordable. But if you’re going to ask Democrats about things having to do with his views on Israel, right, how on earth is it justified to have the only thing that you ask about, his claim about globalizing the intifada? For the record, I don’t think his answer in that Bulwark interview on globalize the intifada was a good answer. The thing about intifada is that it’s an ambiguous term. It can mean non-violent uprising. It can mean violent uprising against soldiers. It can mean a violent uprising against civilians, which is a war crime, a violation of international law. Mamdani doesn’t know how other people are using the term. He should have just said that the term can be inverted in, you know, that’s not my term, here’s what I believe, and talk about his belief in nonviolence and his belief in inequality.
But to claim that Zohran Mamdani represents a threat to Jewish New Yorkers, is just ridiculous, right? I mean, if you just listen to what the guy has said in any kind of good faith, he’s again and again and again and again said he wants to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe. He’s talked about how serious antisemitism is as a problem. He talked about increasing funding to fight hate crimes by 800%, right? So, yes, there’s anti-Semitism. But Zora Mamdani does not pose a threat to Jewish New Yorkers, and most Jewish New Yorkers actually really know that, which is part of the reason why Mamdani’s actually done pretty well, according to polls among Jewish New Yorkers.
The people whose lives are in grave threat, who are threatened by a state, right, are Palestinians in Gaza, right? It’s not on the front page of the news anymore, but Palestinians continue to be slaughtered, actually an escalating numbers, right? The slaughter goes on and on, the bombing goes on and on, it’s just more and more hellish. It becomes more and more hellish every single day. So, how on earth, if you are a Democratic politician, like these Democrats who were asked about Mamdani, like Jefferies, and Gillibrand, and Swalwell, this Congressman from California, this Congresswoman from Nassau County on Long Island, how on earth can you justify making your one comment about this question, about Israel, being the question of kind of attacking Mamdani for globalize the Intifada, right?
And if you’re a news anchor, right, because the Democratic Party claims to believe that human lives are equal, right? It’s not like the Republican Party. It claims to believe that human lives are equal, right? And if you’re a mainstream news anchor who, again, also supposedly operates within some kind of broadly liberal framework, how can you justify having the one question you ask which relates to Israel and Palestine be this question about global the intifada, when you have an active slaughter going on, which has now been ruled a genocide by both of the world’s most prominent human rights organizations in different ways, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. Again, I’m gonna keep repeating this, because it doesn’t seem to get through, right? I mean, like, in mainstream media. And basically, by most of the international legal scholars who focus on this. The Dutch newspaper NRC basically went out and interviewed a whole bunch of them, including Israelis. They all said it’s now a genocide.
If you believe in human equality, how could you possibly justify asking about globalize the intifada and not asking about this catastrophic, genocidal starvation and slaughter. What it suggests is an assumption, right, which is so hardwired that I guess these people, these politicians, and these media figures are not even thinking about it, right, that Jewish lives matter infinitely more, right, than Palestinian lives. And that’s a racist assumption, right? It’s also an assumption that fundamentally violates my understanding of Jewish tradition, which starts with the recognition that all human beings, all human beings, irrespective of religion, race, ethnicity, anything, have infinite value because they’re created in the image of God. And these democratic politicians should face some consequence, some political cost, for engaging in what is this fundamentally supremacist, racist discourse, which imagines that Palestinian lives don’t matter.
And these media anchors should really have to wrestle with their consciences about the fact that they are participating in this. No one is forcing them to have the only question they ask which deals with Israel and Palestine and Gaza, be a question about globalize the intifada. Again, if you asked four questions about what’s actually happening to Palestinians, and one question about globalizing Intifada, fine. But to not ask anything to politicians who are actually in Congress, who are in a position to do something about it, about America’s role in providing weapons in an act of genocide, right, it’s just fundamentally immoral. And it’s so depressing to see how this just perpetuates itself on, kind of, mindless autopilot, as if all of this death, all of this killing, all of this starvation, it just doesn’t register, it doesn’t matter because the lives of Palestinians are not considered to matter. And this is part of the reason Zohran Mamdani is different, and he broke through, is because he actually acts as if they did matter. I just wish we had a Democratic Party and a mainstream media that agreed.
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