AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: To talk more about Trump’s call for the United States to seize Gaza and force out the entire Palestinian population, we’re joined here in New York by Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents and professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York. He’s the author of the new book, just out, titled Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.

Welcome back to the program, Peter, and congratulations on your book, which we’ll turn to in a moment. But if we could first get you to respond to the remarks that Trump made a couple of days ago, astonishing remarks about, basically, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, turning it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” and so on? If you could respond?

PETER BEINART: I mean, what we are seeing really is — at a macro level, is the question of whether you can do in the 21st century what you could do in the 19th century, which is to basically destroy entire populations of people because you view them as subhuman. Donald Trump views Palestinians as subhuman, and therefore wants to oversee a mass ethnic cleansing, which would be one of the greatest crimes of the century.

And all across Washington, you hear people essentially shrug, where people say, “Maybe it’s impractical.” I don’t care. The question is not whether it’s impractical. The question is whether we should be thinking about how we get Donald Trump in front of the International Criminal Court as a war criminal. This is one of the most monstrous things an American president has said in our time. And the fact that he can be assimilated like this is just testament to the profound dehumanization of Palestinians that suffuses American public discourse.

AMY GOODMAN: I have a question for you. Diana Buttu, the well-known Palestinian attorney —

PETER BEINART: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — when asked about this, I mean, hours after President Trump made this announcement —

PETER BEINART: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — talking about the demolition site that is Gaza, she said she agreed it’s a demolition site. And about moving Palestinians, she said, “Well, the first point would be moving them back to their homes.” Can you give us the history —

PETER BEINART: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — that even you — 

PETER BEINART: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — really had no sense of, until you began to really study what was going on, outside your Jewish education?

PETER BEINART: Sure. I was raised in a family where Israel was central and where we thought about Israel in terms of what it meant for Jewish safety, a state for Jews where Jews could be safe after the Holocaust. And that was a source of great psychological security especially for my grandmother, for older people in my generation, who themselves had experienced a lot of trauma in their lives. I’m embarrassed to say it was really not until my thirties, when I went to spend time with Palestinians in the West Bank, that I began to really face what Israel and Zionism had meant for Palestinians.

And you’re exactly right. Every American media discussion of Gaza should start with the fact that people in Gaza, most of them, are not from Gaza. They are people who are from families that were forcibly expelled from what is now Israel. Many of them can see the lands from which their parents and grandparents were expelled, from Gaza. They can see these fertile, relatively uncrowded territories, while they live crowded into a ghetto half the size of New York City, that the U.N. called unlivable for human beings before October 7th.

And so, yes, if Gaza is unlivable because Israel and the United States have made it catastrophically unlivable, then people should be allowed to return to the places from which — not to expel Israeli Jews, but to live in equality alongside Israeli Jews, a principle that is considered unfathomable in Israel-Palestine, even though it’s the principle that we supposedly believe in in the United States.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, with those remarks, Peter, let’s just get to your book, if you could just begin, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. Explain why you wrote this book and to whom the book is addressed.

PETER BEINART: The book is addressed to my fellow Jews and trying to say that something has gone catastrophically wrong in our community, when an Israeli government, that claims to speak for the Jewish people, and American Jewish leaders can watch a Jewish state, with American weapons, destroy most of the buildings, most of the hospitals, most of the schools, most of the agriculture, leave an unprecedented number of child amputees in Gaza, and then justify this, with the flimsiest of possible justifications, as I go through in my book. Jewish tradition, as I understand it, believes in the infinite dignity of every human being, that, as we say, every life is a universe. How is it that people who — that our tradition speaks that way, and yet our leadership today acts in such a way that is radically contrary to that principle?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, one of the things that you say — it’s early on in the book — you talk about the secularization of Judaism, which, in certain instances, as you say, has led to a kind of moral evasion. Of course, one should say that that’s not only true of Judaism, but, arguably, of other Abrahamic faiths, as well. You say, quote, “In the absence of a belief in divine reward and punishment, we no longer wrestle in the same way with what our sacred texts say about Jewish ethical responsibility.” If you could elaborate on that?

PETER BEINART: I think what’s happened in Jewish communities in the U.S. and around the world is that a religion, a vast religion, that speaks in many, many different voices but emphasizes the dignity of all human beings, has been swallowed by ethnonationalism. In many Jewish communities around in the United States today, you get in more trouble for challenging the legitimacy of the state of Israel than for questioning the authority of the Torah, right? The social penalties for being a critic of Israel are much greater than the social penalties for violating Shabbat or keeping kosher, which are foundational principles in Jewish faith.

I think something similar in some ways is happening among many white Christians in the era of Donald Trump. These people seem to think that if you don’t have an American passport, you are worthless. It’s as if Christianity’s universal message has been swallowed by the ethnonationalism of America First. And in a way, when you see Jewish discourse over Israel, you see something similar. The state is sacred, and what our tradition says about human beings is ultimately devalued.

AMY GOODMAN: You write in your book, Peter, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, about the anguish of Palestinians. You say, “This book is about the story Jews tell ourselves to block out the screams.” So, go back in history and talk to us about what Jews understand, Israelis understand, and what the standard education is and how you reeducated yourself. For example, right now what’s being talked about is this forcing out of the Palestinian population. It’s not the first time. It’s not even the second time. Talks about the exoduses.

PETER BEINART: Right. This is in Israel’s political DNA. Israel was created with an act of mass expulsion of Palestinians. That’s why those people are in Gaza in the first place. There was another act of mass expulsion in 1967, and there have been smaller expulsions since then ongoing, right? And so, this is something that is inherent in the notion — if the notion of your state is that the state has to have a large Jewish majority, that Jews have to rule, then Palestinians constitute a demographic problem, right? And so it’s not really surprising at all that people on the Israeli right want to solve that demographic problem by getting rid of Palestinians. That’s how Israel was created in the first place.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what happened then in 1948. Explain what happened to the Palestinian villages.

PETER BEINART: They were completely demolished. What happened was that David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, said this cannot be a truly Jewish state unless it has a roughly 80% Jewish majority, which was actually — the state that Israel would have been given under the U.N. was far, far less than that. So you had to carry out mass ethnic cleansing. In Jewish communities, people tend to say this only began when the Arab countries invaded in May 1948. It’s not true. Haifa and Jaffa, for instance, the largest Palestinian populations, were ethnically cleansed before May 1948, because it was impossible to create a Jewish state. There were simply too many Palestinians there, so you had to clear them off in order to create a large Jewish majority where Jews controlled the land. That’s how Israel was created. And it’s the refusal in Israel and in organized American Jewish communities and in Washington to honestly discuss that history that brings us to this point where we have an American president who wants to replay that history.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And so, if you could say, Peter — you speak at some length in the book about the responses to October 7th in the Jewish communities, in Jewish communities and in the U.S., I would say, in some ways, generally, the kinds of analogies that were drawn to October 7th, the images that were invoked by October 7th. And you are critical of some of those images. If you could elaborate on what the analogies are, and what you think the better analogy, which you enumerate in the book, the better analogies are for what happened on October 7th?

PETER BEINART: Right. So, what happened on October 7th was horrifying. It was really, for me, one of the worst days of my life. And I fundamentally oppose any targeting of civilians, no matter what the circumstances are.

But if one wants to prevent a future October 7th and make both Israeli Jews and Palestinians safer, you have to understand the conditions that existed in Gaza on October 6th, not to justify but to understand. And instead, what happened in the Jewish discourse was this was immediately called a pogrom. It was called the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. The implication was that this is the reenactment of the murderous antisemitism in Europe. But it’s fundamentally wrong, because that antisemitism took place in a case in which Jews were legal inferiors. You can’t understand pogroms or the Holocaust without understanding the role of Jews as a subjugated people. But in Israel-Palestine, it’s Palestinians who are a subjugated people, who live without basic rights, who are being oppressed. October 7th was an inhumane response to that oppression.

And if you want to understand it, one should think about other inhumane responses to oppression. Think about in our own country. When Native Americans were forced off their land into smaller and smaller ghettos, there were many times in the 19th century where Native Americans broke out of those reservations and killed men, women and children in pitiless attacks, right? But you had to understand the context of what was happening to them to understand that violence. Instead, what we see — and this is exactly what happened with Native Americans — is they’re simply described as barbarians. And when you describe them as barbarians and savages, you justify even more catastrophic violence against them.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And you say — and this was a very interesting interpretation that you gave afterwards, you know, when you explained the correct way to understand this horrific violence of October 7th. You say that pondering these analogies is alien and uncomfortable — the analogy that you just gave, for example, of Native Americans. They alter — you write, “They alter the script that explains who we are.” And then you point out that earlier generations of Zionists made such comparisons and were, quote, “less invested in Jewish innocence.” So, explain why that is. One would instinctively think the reverse — right? — that it was in early Zionism that there was a greater investment in Jewish innocence, and, arguably, a greater case for it.

PETER BEINART: Right. It’s really remarkable now — right? — because today if you were to call Israel a colonial enterprise — right? — you would probably be kicked out of your synagogue. You would be censured by the American Congress, right? You could be penalized at some kind of university.

But if you go back and read early Zionist writers — Theodor Herzl, the most important founder of political Zionism; Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, which is Benjamin Netanyahu’s own tradition — they use this term frequently and positively to describe what they’re doing. Herzl writes to Cecil Rhodes, the archimperialist in southern Africa, and says, “We’re involved in a common enterprise here” — right? — because, for them, colonialism meant bringing progress and modernity to a backward part of the world, and taking control over it from the populations that were there, because a population from a more advanced civilization could use the territory better, right? That’s the real history of Zionism’s own — you don’t have to read Palestinians. You just have to read early Zionist writers, because there was an honesty there that is not possible today, because now we live in an age where “colonialism” is a dirty word. It wasn’t a dirty word in the early 20th century.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Beinart, how does growing up in South Africa inform your view?

PETER BEINART: I spent a fair amount of my childhood in a place where white South Africans, including members of my own family, were absolutely convinced that if there was legal equality, if Black people got the vote and could form a Black government, that their lives would be in mortal danger. It was considered just obvious.

And the reason I think this is important is that it is so common in American Jewish and American discourse to assume that if Palestinians got equality, Jews could never live in Israel and Palestine safely. And the point I try to make in my book is that whites South Africans believed the same thing. Protestants in Northern Ireland believed the same thing. Ian Paisley, the Protestant leader, on the eve of the Good Friday Agreement, which gave Catholics political equality, called it “prelude to genocide.” So many white Southerners, and white Americans, in general, believed that without slavery and segregation, white people would become the slave, would become the oppressed class. It’s not true. It wasn’t true.

In fact, what we find is that when you give people a voice in government, when they can be represented, that violence goes down, because people have a nonviolent path for government to listen to them. That, it seems to me, is the lesson that Jews should try to learn from those experiences.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I mean, just to go back to a point that you made earlier, Peter, about the kind of injunction against saying something against Israel, critical of Israel, versus saying something against Judaism, you also point out in your — or being a Jew — you point in the book that “In Israel itself, there is no religious requirement for election to the Knesset” — this is you writing. Of the 14 Israeli PMs, prime ministers, only one, Naftali Bennett, has observed Jewish law. But there is a Zionist requirement. Political parties cannot oppose, quote, “the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.” So, if you could talk about what the implications of that are for the potential for a transformation into the kind of context that you’ve described post-apartheid South Africa?

PETER BEINART: Yeah, the point I’m trying to make is that both in Israel and the United States, in different ways, the Jewish community is structured to basically make the existence of a Jewish state, a state that privileges Jews over Palestinians, sacred, right? So, in Israel, it doesn’t matter whether you observe Jewish law. You can be the prime minister. But you can’t run for Knesset under Israeli law unless you accept the principle of a state in which Jews rule. In the United States, if you look at Hillel, the organization that works on college campuses, they say very openly to students, “We don’t care whether you observe any Jewish practice at all, but if you don’t support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, then, essentially, you’re not welcome here.” Right? To me, this is essentially what happens when you elevate ethnonationalism — a Jewish state — over Judaism itself.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And in fact, in the book, you cite Hannah Arendt, who was already warning of the dangers of Jewish nationalism, saying, quote, “The greatness of this people” — the Jewish people — “was once that it believed in God. … And now this people believes only in itself?”

PETER BEINART: Yes. And, in fact, our own tradition also speaks in this way, right? One of the gravest sins in Judaism is idolatry. Idolatry is the worship of something human-made. A state is human-made, right? In Jewish tradition, as I understand it, you start with the sanctity and the dignity of the individual, and that is paramount. And then a state must be evaluated. Its legitimacy is dependent on how it treats the individual.

So, again and again, we are required to say that we believe Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. No. The children of Gaza have a right to exist. They have a right to live. Their lives are of infinite value. And the question you ask about the structure or the political system of any state is: Is that state guaranteeing that right to life and that right to flourish? And if it’s not, if it’s failing radically, if it’s destroying those lives, then you have to think about reconstituting the state in a more ethical way.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Beinart, leading Jewish organizations, like the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League, the AJC, would never question the findings of international legal organizations, like the International Court of Justice or the ICC, when it comes to concluding genocide took place in Bosnia, took place —

PETER BEINART: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — in Rwanda. Talk about the view of what’s happening today. And I want to fold into that your quoting of the leading Jewish theologian, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said, “Whenever I open the prayer book, I see before me the images of children burning with napalm.”

PETER BEINART: Right. You know, Heschel is a hero among many American Jews, because he brought the message of the prophets to America. When he marched in Selma and when he marched against the Vietnam War, he said, “I am the represent. I believe in a tradition that will speak truth to power in the name of the protection of all life.” And Heschel knew nothing of Vietnam. This man grew up — he grew up as a Hasid in Poland. He had no connection to those people. And yet he could see their infinite dignity, and he challenged the organized American Jewish community and the American government to stop destroying them.

And so, what I have asked myself again and again and again — and I’m an observant Jew — since October 7th: Where is our religious and moral leadership today of rabbis who would get up and say, “I can’t pray, because I am haunted by the sights of the child amputees in Gaza, of the people whose homes have been destroyed, who are living in tents, whose tents are now flooded, who can’t get hospital care, whose lives are being utterly ravaged”? And yet I just see a community that goes about its business and, indeed, penalizes people who have the audacity to stand in the footsteps of Heschel and raise these moral concerns.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, talk about that, Peter. I mean, what has happened? What have you seen happen here in the community? Because you’ve also said, even as there has been this, you know, very difficult to say anything critical of Israel, that there is a massive generational shift that’s occurring, that younger people are much more critical. They are much more oriented towards justice for Palestine. And what effect do you think that’s having on the conversation?

PETER BEINART: Yes, because there has been a deep contradiction at the heart of American Jewish life. We have told our children that our safety and our values lead us to believe in equality under the law, “never again” for anyone, and also that we have a tradition of fierce and open debate, which we’re very proud of. And then we say to those children, “except for on the subject of Israel,” which, by the way, is the most important subject, right?

And children are good at noting the hypocrisy of their parents — right? — and challenging the hypocrisy of their parents. And so, many of these children — I’ve met so many of them, who say, “You are violating the very principles in which I was taught to believe about what it means to be a Jew, and I’m going to live those principles, even if it brings me into conflict with you, even if it brings me into conflict with our community.”

AMY GOODMAN: And your response to the very serious crackdown on the pro-Palestinian — you could say, pro-justice — protests across the country, the encampments, both on the students — you’re a professor yourself at CUNY Journalism School, the Newmark School of Journalism — and on professors, and ultimately President Trump saying —

PETER BEINART: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — he’s going to deport —

PETER BEINART: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — the international students — I think he calls them “alien students” — who are, quote, “Hamas sympathizers,” meaning who engaged in pro-Palestinian protest?

PETER BEINART: Right. You know, Amy, I mean, you know this as well as I do. We have a tradition of learning that is sacred in our tradition, which is part of the reason that American Jews have had a particular affinity for these universities. So many American Jewish families have raised ourself up through these universities and this tradition. And these universities are a core of American liberal democracy.

And yet, in order to protect Israel from the criticism that is happening at these universities — because these universities have a lot of young, progressive people, including a lot of young, progressive Jews — the organized American Jewish community is essentially willing to get in bed with the Trump administration as it tries to crush academic freedom and freedom of speech at America’s universities.

And it won’t stop on the question of Israel and Palestine. We know very well that the restrictions on free speech, that this is going to be a model and a template for when students want to protest about abortion rights and climate change and racial justice, right? And we’re crushing these institutions, which American Jews claim to believe in so much, in order to try to protect them from criticism of Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Beinart, we want to thank you for being with us, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York. His new book is just out, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.

Up next, amidst the protests against President Trump and Elon Musk’s attempts to dismantle the federal government, we’ll look at Trump’s attacks on the Department of Education, the dismantling of the Department of Education. Stay with us.