This is Democracy – Episode 248: Israel and Hamas

[00:00:00] Intro: This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues. And how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:22] Jeremi: Welcome to our new episode of this is democracy.

This is a very dismal week and we are coming to you this week to talk about the dismal events that have occurred in Israel and the Palestinian territories of the last week to make sense of the violence, to make sense of the terrorist attack by Hamas and to make sense of the Israeli response. and American and worldwide reactions to that.

We are joined by a friend and the person who I think is writing some of the most important coverage of these events and the person who puts this really in perspective as a historian and scholar and journalist. This is Peter Beinart. Peter is a professor of journalism. and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

I hope all of you subscribe to his Substack newsletter, Beinart’s Notebook. He’s also the editor at large of Jewish Currents, an MSNBC political commentator and frequent writer for the New York Times and various other publications. Peter has written a number of important books, uh, and most recently published a piece in the New York Times on October 14th titled There is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation.

It Must Survive. A really wonderful, uh, title. Peter, thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Before we turn to our discussion, uh, with Peter Beinart, of course we have our scene setting poem for Mr. Zachary Suri. Uh, Zachary, what’s the title of your poem? For the children of

[00:01:54] Zachary: Israel and the ones who will try to

forget.

[00:01:58] Jeremi: Hmm, that’s a, that’s a mouthful of a title. Yes. Okay, let’s hear the poem.

[00:02:03] Zachary: As the leaves begin to make their way, red and pooling under the ancient elms, those flashing lights pulse through the hours and go blazing through the dreaming minutes. At each step a little of that anger spilling over, which I nursed for two years and tried to forget, each drop making up for one of the tears in my little boy eyes as the fire burned just out of sight at the altar where I prayed.

And where I became a man. The man on the television screen. He holds a gun the way a little boy holds a teddy bear. His only remnant in this life, of a past fetal world, which was warm and never knew the words, Eretz Yisrael. As anything but a blazing dream. The way we toast with each passing Pesach, next year in Jerusalem.

Next year in Jerusalem, I will see the scars of each successive generation, each bullet hole alike. No matter the creed of skin pierced, I will feel the ghosts around me, singing at some grand music festival in the sky, where the desert is still, and the only shaking is the beating of the joyous drums.

Mine is an anger primordial, which screams at each ignorant one to stop their crawling in the dark for easy answers. Look up into the eyes still warm, in which once blazed the same naive and hopeful fire, not burning but escaping in smoke into the purifying clouds, where each drop of blood shed becomes rain, and falls like brandy into the sea.

I have forgiven the boy with his fire. I have forgiven the man with his gun. I cannot forgive the ones who do not look, the ones who wave another’s flag like a blindfold which will keep them from seeing we’re human.

[00:04:02] Jeremi: Very moving, Zachary. What is your poem about? My

[00:04:06] Zachary: poem is, it’s many things, but I think it’s really sort of my feelings as someone on a college campus living through.

this moment, also someone who is very familiar with anti Semitism, but also I think it’s a hope for a common humanity and a recognition that, that some of the trauma that I think this moment has raised in all of us is something that isn’t specific to either side of the conflict or to any, any particular religion or, or nationality even, but, but something that, that we all feel viscerally and hopefully there can be at least some comfort in the possibility that maybe That sort of collective trauma or experience of violence can, in the future, lead to some, some hopeful, peaceful conclusion.

Right,

[00:04:51] Jeremi: right. We, we hope there’s something, something good that can come from this horrible set of events. Peter, before we get to the future, let’s, let’s step back a little bit. How do you explain what’s happened the last few weeks, uh, in, in Israel and in Gaza?

[00:05:07] Peter: Well… I think nobody, there is no structural explanation that can or should take away moral responsibility from people who knowingly kill civilians.

So when Hamas launched this massive attack in Israel on the morning of October 7th, their fighters killed an enormous number of Israeli innocent civilians, in addition to Israeli troops. And that was a decision that was made. by Hamas collectively and by those in those individuals, and there’s no excusing it.

It is a sign of an organization that just fundamentally does not respect the value of human life. I think the the challenge for me and I really struggle have struggled with this a lot. over the last, you know, 10 days or so is to hold that reality, which to me is indisputable, and also kind of hold the things that I am hearing from Palestinians.

And when Palestinians talk about Hamas, almost invariably, they point to the conditions in Gaza and the conditions for Palestinians more generally. As things that one has to understand in order to understand what Hamas is and why Palestinians might, um, uh, might have, why Palestinians might tolerate it, um, and the forces that produced it.

And so I think I find this a very honestly precarious intellectual and moral. tension, which is not unique to this situation, I think exists in many situations because there are many situations, tragically, throughout history where groups of people who are oppressed, and I think Palestinians are undeniably oppressed.

Nonetheless, some of them do a horrifying things, and we need to be able to hold these two truths that there is genuine oppression that calls us morally. And there was an hideous massacre that also requires a moral response. And,

[00:07:21] Jeremi: Peter, I appreciate your honesty and articulateness about that. It’s very hard for most of us to say both of those things at the same time, but I think they are crucial truths.

Zachary, you had the next question? Why

[00:07:32] Zachary: this moment for Hamas to attack so brutally, but also for Israel’s response, one which has been… Remarkably unified, at least from a domestic political perspective in the last few days. Maybe that’s not the case now. Well,

[00:07:48] Peter: why now? So I think the first thing that’s always important to remember when we say it, talk about Israel being unified is that 20 percent of Israel’s citizens are Palestinians.

So they are not part of that unity. Right. Not to mention the other, the Palestinians who are held under Israeli control in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, for instance, who can’t, who are not citizens. Right. So, yes, I think among Jewish Israelis, there is an overwhelming consensus that Israel has to act militarily and, um, and, and destroy Hamas.

The difficulty in answering why now is, I think, frankly, that There is not great reporting on Hamas. There are not a lot of reporters right now in Gaza, and there are not a lot of people with the kind of sources in the background and the linguistic facility that would be capable of, I think, of actually answering that in a sophisticated way.

So there’s a lot of speculation. I think that… There is, I think, what Hamas’s military commander, Mohamed Def, has said, I don’t quote him in any way to suggest that he is, um, someone that we should think of with anything but utter disdain, but he’s speaking to Palestinians. And the quote, this, basically the statement he made was, we have seen Um, mounting assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank, on the Al Aqsa Mosque, increased intrusions by Israelis onto the Al Aqsa Mosque, which is a not just a really important religious site, but a very important national site for Palestinians.

A blockade that has no in Gaza that’s been lasted 17 years and has no prospect for ending. And he basically said in his statement, the world is doing nothing, um, about our oppression and indeed about. And, uh, And accelerating oppression because of the how radical this Israeli government is. So we took acts into our own hands.

Now, one can take that with a grain of salt. There’s others who suspected it may have been an act to try to derail the Israeli Saudi normalization plan because that would have been for the Palestinian cause. a big setback because if the Israelis have the Saudis without needing to accommodate the Palestinians and the Palestinians lose a big card, although some will say if they were training for this for two years, how could it have been meant to do that?

There’s others that is in speculate. I mean, there are all kinds of speculation. But the truth is, I haven’t seen much that really gives us a good answer to that. And I think it’s a I agree,

[00:10:09] Jeremi: Peter. I agree. And I think even asking that question is so important. Let’s talk, if we might, about the Israeli response, which, of course, is ongoing, as is the set of actions from Hamas and others in the region.

Obviously, Israel, as any sovereign state, has a right to defend itself. How do you assess the Israeli response in that context?

[00:10:31] Peter: You know, it just reminds me so much. of the American discourse after September 11th, which was agony, overwhelming grief, and a sense of justified, in both cases, justified rage and a sense that something decisive Had to be done because Israel Gaza, Hamas has controlled Gaza, the inside of Gaza from since 2006, 2007, really, and Israel has controlled the perimeter and they had a kind of a, they had these skirmishes, but in a way.

there was some thought that there was a kind of modus operandi between the two of them. Now, I think the overwhelming number of Jewish Israelis say that is finished, that Hamas cannot be allowed to continue in control. And it reminds me a little bit of when people said the Taliban can’t be allowed to be remain control in Afghanistan.

It’s entirely an understandable response, but it doesn’t answer the very difficult questions, right? The United States found that it could topple the Taliban. It could also topple Saddam Hussein. And then it was essentially stuck with a country that it had to try to manage. in the face of an insurgency it could not put down.

And it seems to me the most likely result of Israel going in on the ground and overthrowing and destroying Hamas would be a similar situation. How should

[00:11:56] Zachary: we understand the response first from the United States, uh, and then from other nations around the world to Hamas’s attacks and the ongoing, uh, Israeli response?

[00:12:06] Peter: I actually first want to say something about the Biden administration before this attack. I think history will judge the Biden administration very harshly because the, again, not in any way to excuse the horror of what Hamas did. The Biden administration by deciding, unlike the Obama administration, from the very beginning to make no effort whatsoever to create any possibility that Palestinians might be able to achieve basic human rights.

I think that that. Was a contributing factor to the desperation that made it easier for Hamas to act easier among Palestinians, because if you from what I’ve seen about interviews from Palestinians, many Palestinians, including those who really don’t like Hamas, don’t like the way it governs, don’t like his ideology have essentially been asked when they think about what they think about this action.

They say, Well, we might as well die now because we were dying slowly anyway. And that’s, I think, a despair that empowers Hamas for which the Biden administration, because it didn’t want to deal with the difficult politics of Israel in Washington, I think bears some blame. So now the Biden administration is basically supporting Israel, although, and trying to manage the situation by trying to have some humanitarian.

The supplies go into Gaza, and I think also spending a tremendous amount of time trying to try to ensure that this conflict does not spiral into the West Bank, into Jordan and into Lebanon, all of which are very real possibilities that this could end with the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, that this could end with attempts with the war with Hezbollah in the north, uh, and that this could threaten the government in Jordan.

So I think those are all of what it’s doing. But what it’s not doing still is offering any possibility of a political horizon that could deal with the underlying problems here of a territory Gaza, which has been deemed unlivable by the United Nations and by a Palestinian population that lives under the control of a state that does not give it basic rights.

And

[00:14:10] Jeremi: what should the US do then in this situation? How can the United States be a productive actor within the context of your criticism?

[00:14:19] Peter: I mean, It’s so difficult now at this point, given how far gone things are, but I think I would start by, by wishing that the Biden administration, and they may be saying this privately, um, to say to the Israeli government and the Israeli government, and to say to the Israeli government in a forceful way, do you have an end game?

We understand your rage. We understand your desire. to defend yourself in response to this horrific massacre. But what is your endgame? Um, because we are not prepared to just indefinitely supply you militarily and support you diplomatically if there is none. Israel can kill a great many Hamas fighters.

And it can destroy a tremendous amount of Hamas infrastructure, but it will also in the process produce a new generation of Palestinians who are so traumatized and so rageful that even if Hamas doesn’t exist, they will join Hamas 2. 0 or Hamas 3. 0. It’s worth remembering that Hamas only was only created in the late 1980s.

Palestinians have been. Fighting Israel, including fighting Israel in horrifying ways, in terms, with attacks on civilians going back to at least 1929. The terrorist attacks of the 1960s and 70s against airplanes and against the Munich Olympics in 1972 were not carried out by Islamists. They were carried out by leftist Palestinian factions like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

So this is much bigger than Hamas. And I think those are the issues, the kind of questions that I would hope the Biden administration, at least privately, is trying to get the Israelis to think about. Peter,

[00:16:02] Jeremi: how do you respond to, um, your Jewish relatives and friends, uh, who tell you that Israel needs to be strong and tough, and the deeper structural issues you’re pointing to, those have to wait.

[00:16:15] Peter: Look, I’ll be honest with you. I’m not convincing anybody. I don’t know that I was ever there. I was convincing many people before. I’m really not convincing people. Now there is, I don’t need to tell you there is, um, there is an agony and grief and rage that I just think has blocked out. The potential of, except for a relatively small number of American Jews and an even smaller number of Israeli Jews, what I’m saying, so I think in some ways I’m just kind of whistling into the wind, but I, my fear is that we will have these conversations eventually, just like we eventually had them.

In the United States, once Iraq and Afghanistan were going south. But by that point, so many more people will have died and been maimed and have their lives, had their lives destroyed. Palestinians for social reforms, but also a lot of Israeli soldiers, a lot of Israeli soldiers, when they go in fighting on the ground, the, you know, Hamas has presumably been waiting for this and it’s on their home turf.

And I, I just tremble when I think, cause I know you may as well, I know. Israelis are going to be going in, and I, I tremble for what will happen to those soldiers. And I, I worry that we will have this conversation, but we will have it after a lot more trauma.

[00:17:32] Jeremi: Right. And I also worry, Peter, and you’ve written about this, uh, in this situation and in others, I worry about both the, the rising anti Semitism that this contributes to, but also the rising anti Muslim, anti Palestinian sentiment.

How, how do you think about managing that at this moment?

[00:17:48] Peter: I mean, yes, we already had an attack. I think it was in Illinois. I think on a we already had a deadly anti Muslim attack. There is evidence. There’s academic evidence from I think the studies were done. It was a study in Belgium and a study. And I think New Zealand or Australia, which showed that when there is more violence in the Israeli Palestinian conflict, it, it leads to a greater number of reported anti Semitic attacks because some people tragically and wrongly don’t distinguish between their fresh anger at what Israel is doing and Jews who happen to live among them.

And that’s very frightening. So I absolutely agree with that. And I also. Worry about the way in which some in the pro Palestinian camp and in the left have lost the ability to see Israeli Jewish humanity. I think there is a legitimate debate to, I understand the fury. that Palestinians have because they feel like their suffering gets so much less attention than Israeli Jews.

And they feel like they are so often silenced in this conversation. Um, but I do worry very, very much. And actually I’m quite kind of chilled when I see people in certain left wing spaces essentially say things along the line of, well, This is what decolonization looks like, and if you have to break, if you have to break some eggs to make an omelette, so be it.

That is, it seems to me, a dehumanization of Israeli Jews that in the wake of this, of this horror, really, really worries me. Zachary,

[00:19:20] Jeremi: to close us out, you’ve been experiencing all of this on, on your college campus, and of course, I’ve been seeing it on my campus. I’m sure Peter’s seeing it as well, and I know you’ve been very moved by this.

How do you react? to exactly what Peter’s describing here, this sort of dehumanization on both sides, and what do you think we can do? I

[00:19:40] Zachary: think, first of all, it’s, it’s very difficult. I know, to be clear, I go to Yale University. Um, I’m a first year and I’ve

[00:19:47] Peter: heard of

[00:19:47] Zachary: it. Yeah. There are, there are so many students.

I know of Jewish students, uh, that I know quite well who have, who have had to take weeks off of school at this point, a week off of school of class or, or, or have, have delayed turning in assignments or participating in activities just to process, process the trauma. And, and the worst part of it is that so many of our classmates seem.

At least online to present themselves as, as not just not caring, but being triumphant about the violence suffered in Israel. But on the other hand, I think that it’s too easy to focus on that. Sometimes we held a vigil in the center of campus on Monday. The Monday after the attacks, and it was attended by some six to 700 people, whereas the only sort of pro Palestinian or pro Hamas demonstration, depending on how, how one characterizes it, had only a few dozen people.

And so I think it’s, it’s very easy To characterize or to focus on those points of friction. But I think that, that non Jews and Jews alike came together at least in large part to mourn the lives lost. Um, and hopefully in the future we’ll, we’ll come together. Um, To push for peace

[00:21:09] Jeremi: in the region, right? And I think many of our episodes we try to come to some conclusion where there’s a path forward where history points to a way we can all come together or hope to come together.

But I think in this situation, just building on what you’ve said, Zachary and your points, Peter, it seems to me that the history offers us maybe a moment of caution. A moment to pause and to, to try to avoid some of the extreme words and extreme actions that we’re seeing around us. The emotions, as you said, are, are strong, but, but our actions sometimes need to be more cautious than our emotions.

Your, your final thoughts on that, Peter?

[00:21:45] Peter: Yes. I mean, the, the, to make in the, in that piece is that, um, the forces that I think are trying

pursuit of the basic principles that I think we cherish, which are that human dignity is an unnegotiable, that all life is infinitely precious, and that these two peoples have to live together. In peace and injustice, those forces have been dealt a tremendous blow, uh, a tremendous blow. I mean, I just see it in so many of the relationships that the relationships between Jews and Palestinians, the activists, people who were struggling together have been made vastly harder because there’s just such overwhelming pain and rage and grief.

And we have to remember that. What Jews experienced and we can continue to experience the reverberations, especially with those captives, Palestinians are now experiencing as Israel just pummels Gaza. I know people who have relatives in Gaza. They have, they can’t reach them. There are no, they have no shelters.

There’s no place to, there’s no place to hide even in hospitals, schools. So, so, so that’s producing, that, that response, even as Jews are. out of their minds with grief. But I think that the, you know, I had an Israeli friend who left a fancy American academic job and went back to Israel. And I asked her if she saw any prospect for the kind of Israel Palestine that she dreamed of.

And she said that she felt like an abolitionist in the 1820s. And so what I interpreted her saying is that she was trying to keep something alive that might not. bear fruit for a long time. And it seems to me that’s all we can do in this moment.

[00:23:25] Jeremi: Zachary, you wanted the last word on this? I just

[00:23:28] Zachary: wanted to echo what both of you said and say, I think one of the things we, we need to keep in our minds is humility.

Because I think none of us, even those like, like the two of you who have studied this conflict for, for decades. None of us can can fully grasp all of the the historical complexities and and the repeated instances of violence and trauma at play. And I think the best we can do is to recognize the sort of common humanity in in in everyone who is suffering in this conflict.

Um, and, and not to assume that, that our response has to always be political or, or necessarily on, on either side, if you will.

[00:24:08] Jeremi: Well said, Zachary. Uh, amidst all the suffering and the pain, I think history does teach us that, uh, humility is necessary, particularly in these moments to be able to listen and not to search for easy answers.

Peter Beinart, thank you so much for sharing really your, your extraordinary insights and your courageous articulateness on this issue with, with our listeners.

[00:24:29] Peter: It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me. And Zachary,

[00:24:32] Jeremi: thank you for your, um, really moving poem and your wonderful questions. And thank you most of all, to our loyal listeners for joining us for this week of This Is Democracy.

[00:24:47] Outro: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts I t SS development studio in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode is written and recorded by Harris Kini. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find This Is Democracy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

See you next time.