Our former Reform congregation is in the clutches of the ADL, and finally we felt we had to leave it. We could no longer take the constant messaging from the pulpit supporting Israel. So I personally thank you for your condemnation of Greenblatt who to my mind is one of the most culpable people today (obviously he is far from the only guilty party!)
I have to believe there will be many half-empty synagogues for the upcoming high holidays. I could be wrong, but the elephant in the room can no longer be ignored.
The Warsaw Ghetto was established in 1940. 460,000 souls were imprisoned there. 250,000 of the Jews forbidden to return to their stolen homes or move freely were systematically exterminated at Treblinka in summer 1942. A full year passed until the WG Uprising, after which the ghetto was razed. 92,000 Jews were starved to death or died from disease and another 50,000 were murdered when transported out of the ghetto or while fighting.
Are the parallels not immediately apparent to Gazans and Palestinians across Occupied Palestine, the Gaza uprising of 2023, the current eliminationist campaign by Israelis to advance their lebensraum project, and their violent domination of the past century?
We will no doubt come to speak of Netanyahu in the terms of disgust reserved for H!tlér. Ben Gvir and Shmotrich as Himmler and Göring, Biden as Pétain, Trump as Mussolini, and Greenblatt as Goebbels. IOF soldiers in any capacity have secured their legacy as participants in the N@zi war machine, far closer to volunteers than true conscripts. US young people who ‘went up’ from the safety of the US to ‘serve’ in a killer army nothing more than SS enlistees. US social media defenders, silent rabbis, and Jewish institutional champions, as petit Riefenstahls, train drivers, and Polish, Hungarian bystanders. May we always remember to forget their names).
The parallels are obvious. This is a feeble imitation of the Third Reich and it's program for the Jews. I said "feeble" but it's a moment that history will not forget and that will be to the detriment of the Jewish people.
[I accidentally hit ‘return’ on the above before finishing my comment]
KNOWING A RECKONING APPROACHES & SHAME WILL BE APPORTIONED IN THE FUTURE IS OF LITTLE COMFORT
Palestinian children are still being rendered Ashlaa while they sleep. ‘Certified’ famine is still enforced by uniformed and plainclothes self-justifying Israeli supremacist bigots. My peers still recycle 2006-era propaganda points while calling on the world to demand we Stop Antisemitism and Free Gaza from Hamas, resulting in our children being expelled and doxxed and our neighbors deported, our colleagues fired or silenced or both, and our public resources being spent on space yachts for CEOs of Palantir (IBM) Lockheed (Daimler-Benz) and GEO (Deutsche Bank) along with sweet pensions for trustees and administrators at Columbia/CUNY (German universities 1933-45) while our parents lose their Medicaid, adjuncts their jobs, and students their prospects of a debt-free start.
JUST AS THERE WAS AN OPENING TO SAVE JEWS IN WARSAW AFTER THE 1942 INCOMPLETE LIQUIDATION, BEFORE GHETTOE’S END, NOW IS THE MOMENT TO PUT AN ABSOLUTE STOP TO ISRAELIS’ SPREE AND SAVE THE LIVES OF AS MANY PALESTINIANS AS POSSIBLE.
IMMEDIATELY.
The reckoning will come, but first an end to genocide and domination.
I thank God every day for people that can speak the truth like Peter. You are so good at, on the one hand, expressing the beauty of the Jewish religion and, on the other, calling out the murderous acts of the Israeli regime. This distinction keeps many from becoming antisemitic.
In Anti-Semite and Jew, Sartre said something like, "If there were no Jews, antisemites would invent them; and if there were no antisemites, Jews would invent them." The former statement has been true for thousands of years. The latter, however, has never been more evident than today. Greenblatt and his coconspirators at the ADL, AIPAC, and the criminals running the Israeli government seek to define anyone, Jew or gentile, opposed to genocide as antisemitic while providing true antisemites with ample evidence to support their prejudices. The media are either gutless or complicit, or both. Keep up the good fight, Peter.
Essential to hold accountable those Jewish leaders in the US who are attempting to distort and simplify the issues of Gaza, antisemitism and US politics. Greenblatt should be challenged by the MSM both for his blatant lies and for his assumptions that he speaks for all of us Jewish Americans, which he clearly does not.
The willful ignorance and collusion by most US journalists is what fuels this toxic fire. Greenblatt and others like him should not be given air time, once they have shown their lack of integrity, unless the journalist can take a lesson from Mehdi Hasan!
He lies with impunity because Isreal has always lied with impunity and its propaganda machinery is undoubtedly the best in the world. Jewish kids around the world are educated on a foundation of Jewish lies. Some grow up and are exposed to historical fact and realize they’ve been hoodwinked, but many genuinely believe that what they’ve been taught is truthful.
It’s a bigger picture example of the ‘40 babies that were beheaded on October 7’ story widely publicized and repeated by Biden. There were not 40 beheaded babies, but it was a horrific claim that was initially widely believed. Then when it was proven incorrect, the coverage of the correct information was a fraction of the coverage of the original lie.
Greenblatt undoubtedly genuinely believes that nonsense he spouts. And making an effort to better understand the historical facts that he thinks underlie such nonsense would risk impairing his personal identity. It takes courage to do that and the easiest course is to simply keep spouting the nonsense and then accuse those who disagree with him of anti-semitism.
It is also the medias’s responsibility that Trump was elected in 2016. One trope they hammered was making Trump who was already known to be a blatant racist who attacked women and cheated his workers not to mention crazy simply the right wing populist in relation to Bernie the left wing populist who defended civil rights and sinfully proclaimed the need for universal health care—who was obviously sane. And clearly in their minds a right wing extremist was more acceptable than a left wing social democrat. There’s obviously a major role played in relation to Palestine by mainstream media’s agreement to swing right in line with capital.
He also described the attacks on Maccabi supporters in Amsterdam as "this is what happens when you 'globalize the intifada.' It is merely a way to not take accountability and always shif the blame when in actual fact what happened is described in this poem I wrote right after:
ALL MY BROKEN HEARTS
A Poem of Tears for My Beloved Amsterdam
On the eve of the commemoration of Kristallnacht,
Once again, Jews were chased and attacked
In the streets of Amsterdam,
And terrible wounds from the time
My mother could only go outside
Wearing a yellow star
Are torn open.
On the eve of the commemoration of Kristallnacht,
Supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv,
Members of the so-called “New Jews,”
Roamed the streets of Amsterdam,
Shouting “death to Arabs”
And chanting:
“There are no schools in Gaza,
As there are no children left,
Olé olé olé!”
On the eve of the commemoration of Kristallnacht,
I am picturing my mother at her desk
At the Jewish Lyceum of Amsterdam,
Not far from where “New Jews” are stomping the streets,
I have to admit that in a very sad time with all the horror we cannot seem to stop in Gaza, I couldn’t help but break out laughing at calling Jonathan Greenblatt “Pope Greenblatt”. That is so funny and also encapsulates his utter pretentiousness in not only lying constantly but in pretending he is a spokesperson for all American Jews — as if anyone could be.
Unfortunately it isn't just the "mainstream" media. I've been a fan over the years of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher." But lately Maher has disappointed me with his rightward shift, criticizing the Dems, WOKE, etc., as if anything coming from those quarters is comparable to the outrages of the Trump Administration. In particular, however, Maher has me checking out over his seemingly limitless defense of Israel since October 2023. He has said many times he is on "team Israel", the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity for peace, and the notion of Zionism as settler colonialism is absurd. All of the guests on the show that I've seen that have discussed Israel/Hamas/Palestine have parroted these positions-- not one has come close to objectiveness or tried to express the Palestinian side of the argument.
Cutting to the quick, I think Peter would make an excellent guest on the show, to argue the other side. He could also promote his book "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza," which I've now read twice--liked it that much! I don't know how one gets on "Real Time", but I'd love to see Peter there!
During the height of the New Atheist movement, Bill Maher made a movie called "Religulous", which as the name suggests was about religion being ridiculous. His targets include Jews as well as Christians and Muslims. And when he talks about Jews, he brings up Zionism. However, the Jews he criticizes are those who are *anti*-Zionist on religious grounds.
Yes, I remember the movie but only saw a small part of it. I would have thought he would have criticized the extreme Zionists who have a slogan 'from the river to the river" (or something like that), meaning the Euphrates to the Nile. They argue all the land between those two bodies of water should be under Jewish rule.
Does anyone know what is happening with “Stand with my brother Hossam’s family”? It is the Go Fund Me I heard about through Peter Beinart’s Notebook. I have donated twice. It has reached 89% of the funding goal, but donations seem few and far between. I hoped we could learn that this family was evacuated from Gaza. Does anyone have any insight?
Our former Reform congregation is in the clutches of the ADL, and finally we felt we had to leave it. We could no longer take the constant messaging from the pulpit supporting Israel. So I personally thank you for your condemnation of Greenblatt who to my mind is one of the most culpable people today (obviously he is far from the only guilty party!)
I have to believe there will be many half-empty synagogues for the upcoming high holidays. I could be wrong, but the elephant in the room can no longer be ignored.
The Warsaw Ghetto was established in 1940. 460,000 souls were imprisoned there. 250,000 of the Jews forbidden to return to their stolen homes or move freely were systematically exterminated at Treblinka in summer 1942. A full year passed until the WG Uprising, after which the ghetto was razed. 92,000 Jews were starved to death or died from disease and another 50,000 were murdered when transported out of the ghetto or while fighting.
Are the parallels not immediately apparent to Gazans and Palestinians across Occupied Palestine, the Gaza uprising of 2023, the current eliminationist campaign by Israelis to advance their lebensraum project, and their violent domination of the past century?
We will no doubt come to speak of Netanyahu in the terms of disgust reserved for H!tlér. Ben Gvir and Shmotrich as Himmler and Göring, Biden as Pétain, Trump as Mussolini, and Greenblatt as Goebbels. IOF soldiers in any capacity have secured their legacy as participants in the N@zi war machine, far closer to volunteers than true conscripts. US young people who ‘went up’ from the safety of the US to ‘serve’ in a killer army nothing more than SS enlistees. US social media defenders, silent rabbis, and Jewish institutional champions, as petit Riefenstahls, train drivers, and Polish, Hungarian bystanders. May we always remember to forget their names).
The parallels are obvious. This is a feeble imitation of the Third Reich and it's program for the Jews. I said "feeble" but it's a moment that history will not forget and that will be to the detriment of the Jewish people.
[I accidentally hit ‘return’ on the above before finishing my comment]
KNOWING A RECKONING APPROACHES & SHAME WILL BE APPORTIONED IN THE FUTURE IS OF LITTLE COMFORT
Palestinian children are still being rendered Ashlaa while they sleep. ‘Certified’ famine is still enforced by uniformed and plainclothes self-justifying Israeli supremacist bigots. My peers still recycle 2006-era propaganda points while calling on the world to demand we Stop Antisemitism and Free Gaza from Hamas, resulting in our children being expelled and doxxed and our neighbors deported, our colleagues fired or silenced or both, and our public resources being spent on space yachts for CEOs of Palantir (IBM) Lockheed (Daimler-Benz) and GEO (Deutsche Bank) along with sweet pensions for trustees and administrators at Columbia/CUNY (German universities 1933-45) while our parents lose their Medicaid, adjuncts their jobs, and students their prospects of a debt-free start.
JUST AS THERE WAS AN OPENING TO SAVE JEWS IN WARSAW AFTER THE 1942 INCOMPLETE LIQUIDATION, BEFORE GHETTOE’S END, NOW IS THE MOMENT TO PUT AN ABSOLUTE STOP TO ISRAELIS’ SPREE AND SAVE THE LIVES OF AS MANY PALESTINIANS AS POSSIBLE.
IMMEDIATELY.
The reckoning will come, but first an end to genocide and domination.
I thank God every day for people that can speak the truth like Peter. You are so good at, on the one hand, expressing the beauty of the Jewish religion and, on the other, calling out the murderous acts of the Israeli regime. This distinction keeps many from becoming antisemitic.
I agree 100%. Thanks to Peter Beinart, and the many Jews I have heard from through Peter, I can experience the positives of Judaism.
In Anti-Semite and Jew, Sartre said something like, "If there were no Jews, antisemites would invent them; and if there were no antisemites, Jews would invent them." The former statement has been true for thousands of years. The latter, however, has never been more evident than today. Greenblatt and his coconspirators at the ADL, AIPAC, and the criminals running the Israeli government seek to define anyone, Jew or gentile, opposed to genocide as antisemitic while providing true antisemites with ample evidence to support their prejudices. The media are either gutless or complicit, or both. Keep up the good fight, Peter.
Essential to hold accountable those Jewish leaders in the US who are attempting to distort and simplify the issues of Gaza, antisemitism and US politics. Greenblatt should be challenged by the MSM both for his blatant lies and for his assumptions that he speaks for all of us Jewish Americans, which he clearly does not.
The willful ignorance and collusion by most US journalists is what fuels this toxic fire. Greenblatt and others like him should not be given air time, once they have shown their lack of integrity, unless the journalist can take a lesson from Mehdi Hasan!
Thank you as always for your voice.
Thank you Peter! Jonathan Greenblatt's role is toxic and shameful.
He lies with impunity because Isreal has always lied with impunity and its propaganda machinery is undoubtedly the best in the world. Jewish kids around the world are educated on a foundation of Jewish lies. Some grow up and are exposed to historical fact and realize they’ve been hoodwinked, but many genuinely believe that what they’ve been taught is truthful.
It’s a bigger picture example of the ‘40 babies that were beheaded on October 7’ story widely publicized and repeated by Biden. There were not 40 beheaded babies, but it was a horrific claim that was initially widely believed. Then when it was proven incorrect, the coverage of the correct information was a fraction of the coverage of the original lie.
Greenblatt undoubtedly genuinely believes that nonsense he spouts. And making an effort to better understand the historical facts that he thinks underlie such nonsense would risk impairing his personal identity. It takes courage to do that and the easiest course is to simply keep spouting the nonsense and then accuse those who disagree with him of anti-semitism.
Yes!! Yes!!! Thank you Peter!!!
It is also the medias’s responsibility that Trump was elected in 2016. One trope they hammered was making Trump who was already known to be a blatant racist who attacked women and cheated his workers not to mention crazy simply the right wing populist in relation to Bernie the left wing populist who defended civil rights and sinfully proclaimed the need for universal health care—who was obviously sane. And clearly in their minds a right wing extremist was more acceptable than a left wing social democrat. There’s obviously a major role played in relation to Palestine by mainstream media’s agreement to swing right in line with capital.
Thanks Peter. Your Barghouti quote was on point.
Is there a commandment that zionists will not violate in service to their false god?
He also described the attacks on Maccabi supporters in Amsterdam as "this is what happens when you 'globalize the intifada.' It is merely a way to not take accountability and always shif the blame when in actual fact what happened is described in this poem I wrote right after:
ALL MY BROKEN HEARTS
A Poem of Tears for My Beloved Amsterdam
On the eve of the commemoration of Kristallnacht,
Once again, Jews were chased and attacked
In the streets of Amsterdam,
And terrible wounds from the time
My mother could only go outside
Wearing a yellow star
Are torn open.
On the eve of the commemoration of Kristallnacht,
Supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv,
Members of the so-called “New Jews,”
Roamed the streets of Amsterdam,
Shouting “death to Arabs”
And chanting:
“There are no schools in Gaza,
As there are no children left,
Olé olé olé!”
On the eve of the commemoration of Kristallnacht,
I am picturing my mother at her desk
At the Jewish Lyceum of Amsterdam,
Not far from where “New Jews” are stomping the streets,
Tearing down and burning Palestinian flags—
In a city filled with grief and rage,
While ignoring the gold-plated Stolpersteine
Beneath their feet.
Day after day,
The classes of the Jewish Lyceum emptied out.
My mother, an “Old Jew” of German Jewish descent,
Was a high-priority deportation.
Soon, she became one of the missing children,
Forced to hide to save her life.
A year later, the school closed its doors.
There were no more children left.
But I am left—
With all my broken hearts:
For the children of Gaza,
For the murder of the Old Jews,
For losing my people twice.
I have to admit that in a very sad time with all the horror we cannot seem to stop in Gaza, I couldn’t help but break out laughing at calling Jonathan Greenblatt “Pope Greenblatt”. That is so funny and also encapsulates his utter pretentiousness in not only lying constantly but in pretending he is a spokesperson for all American Jews — as if anyone could be.
Thank you Peter for telling truths about the web of enablers in mainstream media. It is all connected.
Unfortunately it isn't just the "mainstream" media. I've been a fan over the years of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher." But lately Maher has disappointed me with his rightward shift, criticizing the Dems, WOKE, etc., as if anything coming from those quarters is comparable to the outrages of the Trump Administration. In particular, however, Maher has me checking out over his seemingly limitless defense of Israel since October 2023. He has said many times he is on "team Israel", the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity for peace, and the notion of Zionism as settler colonialism is absurd. All of the guests on the show that I've seen that have discussed Israel/Hamas/Palestine have parroted these positions-- not one has come close to objectiveness or tried to express the Palestinian side of the argument.
Cutting to the quick, I think Peter would make an excellent guest on the show, to argue the other side. He could also promote his book "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza," which I've now read twice--liked it that much! I don't know how one gets on "Real Time", but I'd love to see Peter there!
During the height of the New Atheist movement, Bill Maher made a movie called "Religulous", which as the name suggests was about religion being ridiculous. His targets include Jews as well as Christians and Muslims. And when he talks about Jews, he brings up Zionism. However, the Jews he criticizes are those who are *anti*-Zionist on religious grounds.
Yes, I remember the movie but only saw a small part of it. I would have thought he would have criticized the extreme Zionists who have a slogan 'from the river to the river" (or something like that), meaning the Euphrates to the Nile. They argue all the land between those two bodies of water should be under Jewish rule.
Does anyone know what is happening with “Stand with my brother Hossam’s family”? It is the Go Fund Me I heard about through Peter Beinart’s Notebook. I have donated twice. It has reached 89% of the funding goal, but donations seem few and far between. I hoped we could learn that this family was evacuated from Gaza. Does anyone have any insight?