Q.

In a new book, “To be a Jew after the destruction of Gaza: an accountPeter Pinart argues that many American Jews defending Israel have lost their moral bearings. It makes the issue, in a series of related articles, that the Jews in America and around the world should press for one country that includes Israel and the Palestinian territories that give everyone equal rights. “This book revolves around the story that the Jews tell us ourselves to block screaming,” Benart writes. “It comes to the story that enables our leaders, families, and friends to see the destruction of the Gaza Strip – the flattening of universities, the people who were forced to make bread from straw, and children who freeze to death under the buildings turned into a tube by riding a state that speaks of our name – and ignores, if not a deal.”

I recently spoken on the phone with Beinart, which I met nearly twenty years ago when I went to work for it New Republic. He had just stepped down from one of the cases that edited the magazine, during which the Iraq war and Joe Lieberman’s presidential campaign supported for the year 2004. After step down, Pinart abandoned his support for the war and began to focus more on issues related to Israel and American Jews. (present Newsletter It is called the “Beinart”. Next, and how discussions on Israel have distorted talks about anti -Semitism in America.

There was hope for a decade ago among people like you that the American Jews – especially the younger – were away from IronClad’s support for Israel. Do you feel surprising or disappointed by the degree that the United States, and even the Democratic Party, did not move in this direction after October 7?

I think I may have reduced the degree that, even within the Democratic Party, politicians can remain unwilling to transformations in public opinion, because they do not face much cost. There are other forces that are more important to public opinion.

O?

Well, the role of money in politics is a really big role. I think this was especially true for Jo Biden, because he had no ability to raise money from the audience as a whole. Bernie Sanders or Barack Obama could not raise large sums of money from small donations. It is also a problem for members of Congress. With the exception of a small handful of celebrities, they are not national personalities who can raise enough money that can compete with an organization like AIPAC if AIPAC He decides to target them.

But I think there is a danger to focus exclusively on money. Money plays a role in this, but there is also a deep way in which the Israeli story is very capable of many Americans, because it resembles the American story. It is a forged date land on hostile borders. The more your investment in the founding legend of America, the more attractive the legend of Israel, the more the legend of Israel finds. I think many people in the Republican Party, even if there is no campaign financing at stake, finds this novel very strong. And Israel, in some respects, is a vision of what they want to be America, a more national and more military country, and has stronger protection for borders, and has clear hierarchical sequences based on race and religion.

As the famous Edward said, the Palestinians still lack the permission of the novel. Their story is in some respects a story of a threat to the founding legend of America. When you start using phrases such as “colonization of the settler”, it does not take much for Americans, especially white Americans, to discomfort. After that, October 7 was terrifying. It was a terrifying event. Thus, there was a natural desire to express sympathy and solidarity with Israeli Jews at this moment of the amazing shock. Then the Israeli government says, “Well, you want to show you the concern of the Israeli Jews? Then we supported the destruction of the Gaza Strip.” It was somewhat similar to the moment after 9/11, when it was very difficult in the public discourse to distinguish between the act of terror- What happened, sympathy for the victims-and the political response, which was just catastrophic.

Why was the Biden administration unwilling to do anything to the punishment of Israel or try to stop its behavior?

If you come in Washington for politics and political circles, you are used to a template for how you deal with Israel. This template is generally to avoid public battles, because those will not go well for you. And I think people in the Biden administration remember the Obama administration. I will never forget the moment, after Obama mainly made a speech on how a Palestinian state was located near 1967, Harry Reed, the Democratic Leader of the Senate, went. AIPAC Obama threw under the bus.

If you are in Washington for a long time, you are almost stopping part of your mind when it comes to the issue of Israel and Palestine. You just take the safest political path and some of your humanitarian responses are degraded to what is really happening to the Palestinians. I have become very used to only looking at the basis, rationalization and not doing anything. I think people in the Biden administration have reduced the degree that ordinary progressive Americans who have not been subjected to this type of garbage will simply look at what was happening in the social media age and say, what is the curse? Why do we support this? They reduced the degree that Gaza was important for American progress.

One of the things you say in your book is that many American Jews responded differently to this war from what they would have happened if any other country did what Israel did in Gaza. How do you understand that now?

Well, for most American Jews, not just another country, right? It is a country that we grew up to see us deeply and link us, as an essential part of our story – the story of genocide, survival and childbirth. It is a story of pride and safety. The Jewish tradition has this kind of borrowing the family through which this type of imagined family. Imagine if you start getting evidence that your family members are doing terrible and terrible things, right? This is very painful for confession. In addition, you realize that people in the family in general do not take gently to family members who start saying, “Hey, we are doing terrible things.”

This leads to the way the American -organized Jewish community works. Whatever Israel, it reachs some justification after allocated. “It is Hamas’s mistake because he uses human shields. It is the people in the Gaza mistake because they voted for Hamas. The numbers are a lie – you cannot trust them.”

What did you do from the response here and in Israel to President Trump suggest that the Palestinians be expelled strongly from Gaza and sent to Egypt and Jordan?

I think Trump is an example of bare imperialism, as America must take the lands for itself and should benefit personally. But within Israel and the American Jewish society, the worst nightmare of me confirmed that there was no independent moral standard that can be established in the face of Israel. That everything that Israel did, there will be justified after the designated. look at me statement From the American Jewish Committee. They say this is “related”, but the statement is incredibly weak and Trump is happy. The statement of the Anti -Divorid Association was also weak.