The Tragedy of Picking Sides in the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Author Peter Beinart joins Derek to further discuss the war between Israel and Hamas
This is our second episode on the war between Israel and Hamas. Today’s guest is Peter Beinart. Peter Beinart is a professor at CUNY of journalism and political science, the editor at large of Jewish Currents, and the author of the Beinart Notebook newsletter. I don’t know another Jewish author who writes and speaks with as much eloquent anguish over this issue. Israel is an idea and a country so worth defending, and also the way Israel defends itself is so often inexcusable. It is almost impossible to keep both ideas in one’s head. We’re going to try.
If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com.
In the following excerpt, Peter Beinart talks with Derek about the emotional responses of people on both sides of the Israel-Hamas war, along with his own feelings of tension.
Derek Thompson: We have so much to talk about, and I am particularly interested in your take on the evolution of Israeli politics over the last 20 years and the effect that that evolution has had on Palestine, both in the West Bank and Gaza. But I want to start with a few more personal questions. The people that you know in Israel and in Palestine right now, what, if anything, is different about their emotional response to this round of violence, both the Hamas attacks and the military retaliation from Israel?
Peter Beinart: Well, I think people on both sides are just in agony. In Israel, there was a degree of some expectation of security. I mean, just the fact that Israel had—tragically, many of the people who lost their lives were at a music party, a music festival that was being held right near the Gaza border. Just the fact that such a thing was regularly held suggests the way in which Israelis felt a fair degree of security: certainly inside what we call the Green Line, maybe a little bit less so in the West Bank.
And that has really been shattered in a way that certainly hasn’t been the case since the second intifada between 2000 and 2005, but in some ways even more greatly, because the number of people who died was so much higher than on any single day during the second intifada. Americans might think a little bit about what it was like for us after 9/11. It’s not exactly the same, but we also had an expectation of a fair degree of security. It was shattered. There was a sense of unbelievable agony and grief, along with just white-hot rage.
I think for Palestinians, it’s a little different, because they didn’t have that expectation of security to begin with. For them, certainly Palestinians in Gaza and also Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, they also already felt under assault. They already felt endangered. But now the sense of danger has just gone through the roof because they know that Israel is going to respond incredibly harshly. They can see that the world is not going to restrain Israel, and they are largely defenseless. In Gaza, they’re also hemmed in. There’s nowhere for them to go. That’s a truly terrifying place to be.
Thompson: In July, on your Substack, you talked about your last visit to Israel, and you talked about feeling the magic of being back in that country: just ineffable, indescribable magic of being back in Israel. And then you talked about visiting the West Bank and seeing Palestinian homes under demolition and seeing Palestinian schools that have been destroyed by settlers. It seemed to me, reading that piece, the tension between the magic of Israel and the horrors of parts of the West Bank really tore at your soul.
I’d love you to talk a little bit about what it was like trying to maintain a sense of Jewish pride and also a sense of moral equanimity as you traveled between these two worlds.
Beinart: I mean, one of the things I find most fascinating about Judaism itself is this inherent tension that exists within it between the idea of a religion that has a universal moral message. As it happens, Jews, at least Orthodox Jews, begin the Torah cycle this week. You start with the first book of Genesis, and it’s not about Jews, the people in the first book. And then next week, Noah, these are not Jews. These are universal human beings. The Jewish story doesn’t start until the third Torah portion, with Abraham.
There’s a powerful universal moral message, like as in Christianity or Islam or any other religion. But it’s also the story of a family. Genesis is the story of a family that in Exodus becomes a nation. There is this very powerful metaphor in Judaism of family, Bene Israel, the children of Israel: Israel being the name that Jacob is given. That tension to me sometimes feels creative, and it can be managed. In some ways, I feel like that’s the way I want to live: with that kind of tension.
But there are other points at which the tension feels extremely painful and almost unbearable. And that is the way I feel certainly when I’m in the West Bank, and it’s the way I feel now. Because if you are a diaspora Jew, and even if you live a wonderful life, as many of us do, you don’t live in a Jewish society. In some ways, you don’t even necessarily really miss it or think much about it until you go and live in a Jewish society. When you’re in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, you really think, “This is Jewish civilization.”
It envelops me. There’s something for me, and I think many other people, extremely powerful and moving about that and energizing. But then if one engages with Palestinians in any meaningful way, you very quickly realize how much of that is built at their expense. I mean, literally, Tel Aviv is a Jewish city, almost exclusively a Jewish city, because Palestinians were expelled. This is not unique to Israel. This is also true in the United States. I mean, we’re also a country that expelled—did an actually much more thorough job than Israel has done.
That’s very painful and difficult for me [in regard] to Israel. When I go—and I love being there—I feel very, very guilty about whether I’m betraying my Palestinian friends and colleagues. When I go and spend time with Palestinians, I worry that I am becoming so deeply alienated and so profoundly angry that I am losing my ability to feel the sense of solidarity and connection to my own people.
This excerpt was edited for clarity. Listen to the rest of the episode here and follow the Plain English feed on Spotify.
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Peter Beinart
Producer: Devon Manze
Subscribe: Spotify
