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israeli apartheid
How the Jewish Chronicle Whips Up Fear by Conflating Antisemitism With Anti-Zionism
The oldest surviving Jewish newspaper seems dead set on using antisemitism not so much to fight racism, but to defend a racist regime and cover up horrific violations.
Dec 07, 2025
On Yom Kippur, two British Jews were killed at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester, during a cruel, antisemitic act of violence. One of them was accidentally shot by police.
Later that week, while discussing antisemitism at the dinner table, my teenage son, who frequents a high school in Hackney, London, took out his phone and displayed scores of antisemitic Instagram reels.
Numerous AI-generated clips depicted Orthodox Jews in different settings, appearing to be obsessed with money, while other reels denied the Holocaust—questioning, for example, the possibility of preparing 6 million pizzas in 20 ovens. A few of his school friends liked the reels, thinking they were funny.
Antisemitism is alive and well in the UK and across Europe. This must be vigorously clamped down on. But, instead of focusing on this very real problem, major Jewish groups have instead followed the Israeli government by instrumentalizing antisemitism in an effort to criminalize and silence Palestinians and their supporters in the struggle for liberation and self-determination.
On the Chronicle’s pages, Corbyn appears to be much more threatening to Jews than Hitler.
The cruel irony is that, in effect, these organisations are dramatically weakening the real fight against antisemitism.
A case in point is the Jewish Chronicle, the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper. In December 2024, the Chronicle published an article by commentator Melanie Phillips, who wrote: “Deranged fear and hatred of Jews and the aim of exterminating them define the Palestinian cause… Left-wing governments that ideologically support the Palestinian cause and also kowtow to Muslim constituencies in which Jew-hatred is rife, shockingly recycle the lies about Israel.”
Claiming that the worst offenders have been “the governments in Britain, Australia and Canada,” Phillips concluded by casting all supporters of the Palestinian cause as “facilitating deranged and murderous Jew-hatred.”
Stripped of Meaning
Three weeks later, the Chronicle published an article entitled, “Did Elon Musk really perform a Nazi salute at Trump rally?” The subtitle assured readers that “Jewish charities deny it was a Nazi reference,” while the Anti-Defamation League was quoted as saying that Musk’s gesture was “awkward” but not a Nazi salute.
The juxtaposition of these articles—one conflating pro-Palestinian activism with murderous antisemitism, and the other downplaying the concrete dangers of antisemitism, as manifested in a nefarious salute by one of the world’s most powerful people—provides a gateway into the Chronicle’s universe, and its aggressive campaign against any demonstration of solidarity with Palestinians.
Antisemitism is often stripped of its original meaning—namely, discrimination against Jews as Jews—and used instead as an “iron dome” to defend Israel from its critics. Articles like these led me to look more closely at how the newspaper has historically understood and employed antisemitism on its own pages—a research project whose findings were recently published.
Examining the appearance of the term “antisemitism” over a period of 100 years—from 1925 to 2024—I assumed that its occurrence would be most pronounced during the Holocaust, when antisemitism led to the extermination of 6 million Jews.
This graph shows the number of articles in the Jewish Chronicle that included the word "antisemitism," from January 1, 1925 to December 31, 2024. (Courtesy Neve Gordon)
The results, however, revealed that in 1938, at the height of the Nazi clampdown on Jews in Germany (which, unlike the “final solution,” was not shrouded in secrecy), antisemitism was mentioned in 352 articles. While this was substantially higher than its average appearance, it was substantially less than the term’s appearance during Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 national election bid and Israel’s latest war on Gaza, where the number of articles invoking antisemitism was nearly double that.
Even though the term has become more common in recent decades, shockingly, in the Chronicle’s apparent view, the antisemitism threat is perceived as greater now than it was in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Whipping up Fear
Between January 2023 and June 2024—a period covering nine months before the 7 October attack and nine months after—the term antisemitism, almost always denoting anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel, appeared in roughly every fifth article. This suggests that the UK’s primary Jewish newspaper has been weaponizing a Zionist notion of antisemitism to produce moral panic among its readers.
The Jewish weekly, in other words, has played a role in whipping up fear and anxiety by falsely conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism or criticism of Israel. This false and dangerous conflation explains the dramatic increase in the term’s frequency, and why on the Chronicle’s pages, Corbyn appears to be much more threatening to Jews than Hitler.
But for such spurious allegations to gain credibility, anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel must be constructed as posing an imminent threat to individual Jews around the world. This is accomplished, in part, by introducing another false conflation—this time between a person’s sense of “feeling uncomfortable” and “being unsafe.”
Given the fact that genuine antisemitism remains an all-too-present reality, the way the Chronicle has spouted the term risks displacing the threat of actual existing antisemitism.
Obviously, the claim that Israel is carrying out genocide, or that it constitutes a settler-colonial regime and an apartheid state, might make Jews who identify emotionally with Israel and Zionism “feel uncomfortable.”
But the Chronicle positions their discomfort as itself injurious, or as “being unsafe.” Ultimately, then, a fallacious notion of antisemitism is cast as a safety hazard to conjure up fears of Jewish annihilation—and this is then used as a counterinsurgency tool to silence Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists who criticize Israel’s apartheid and, more recently, its genocidal war in Gaza.
Given the fact that genuine antisemitism remains an all-too-present reality, the way the Chronicle has spouted the term risks displacing the threat of actual existing antisemitism.
Indeed, the oldest surviving Jewish newspaper seems dead set on using antisemitism not so much to fight racism, but to defend a racist regime and cover up horrific violations. By abusing the term antisemitism, the newspaper is harming the very Jews it claims to represent—myself included.
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South Florida Jews Organizing for Palestinian Justice: Reality Defies Reputation
The visibility of anti-Zionist organizing throughout South Florida breaks the normalization of mainstream Jewish and other support for Israel and will continue to do so.
Oct 09, 2025
The actual reality of organizing for Palestinian justice in South Florida defies the region’s reputation of near unanimous support for Israel and its genocide against the Palestinian people. And the belief that all Jewish people in South Florida support Israel (it’s almost a mantra) is also not reflective of the full picture.
Joining with a coalition of groups committed to justice—Palestinian, Muslim, student, socialist, and others—Jewish organizing for Palestinian justice in South Florida takes multiple forms. Its Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) chapter (of which this author is part) is unabashedly anti-Zionist, abolitionist, and socialist and stands firmly with Indigenous-led organizing (most recently against the Everglades Concentration Camp), queer and trans liberation, and disability justice. Part of what makes this work noteworthy is that it is happening in a state, with its reactionary governor, Ron DeSantis, at the helm, that is a step ahead of much of the country in its excessively repressive climate and policies. Though we know the rest of the country seems not to be far behind.
Community education is central to the group’s commitments, especially as more and more people are joining, rooted in the understanding that we are all learners and teachers. In ongoing workshops such as "SWANA Jews and Zionism After 1948 and in the 20th Century"; "The History and Current Day Reality of the ADL"; and "The Palestinian Nakba," participants meet outside (Covid-19 safety is a priority!) to learn together and to deepen and strengthen ongoing organizing. Jewish holidays are also observed within an anti-Zionist framework, often by the ocean, with learning including “Engineered Famine: Israel’s Starvation of Gaza–a Teach-in, Havdalah, and Solidarity Fast” and “An Anti-Zionist Shabbat Teach-in on Antisemitism from a Collective Liberation Framework.”
Most recently, one of the community’s areas of focus has been on challenging the fervent support for genocide in the rabidly pro-Zionist Miami Beach City Commission. Many across the country, and even beyond, followed the city’s fight with the local arts theatre, O Cinema, for showing the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, which was one chapter in an ongoing battle with the city’s mayor and City Commission in their attempts to censor criticism of Israel and its ongoing violence against the Palestinian people.
Contrary to what some may assume in South Florida’s political climate, activists have succeeded in being visible in the media and bringing these issues into the public eye.
The City of Miami Beach’s support for Israeli apartheid shows up in myriad ways: It donated an ambulance to Israel (smack in the middle of the genocide), has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars into Israel bonds, and adopted a resolution that prohibited the city from hiring contractors who refused to do business with Israel. At City Commission meetings, during the space for public comment, as residents stand up to speak against the city’s support for genocide, the mayor and commissioners consistently shut down opposition by turning off the mics and then ranting on and on in support of Israel. They accuse speakers of being antisemitic and invited the Consul General of Israel to give an invocation, whose words, in the middle of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza, included, “We lift up the brave soldiers of the IDF.”
That has not deterred the community’s very visible presence and opposition at these hearings and in the streets.
But the Miami Beach commissioners and mayor didn’t just stop there. As a result of the ongoing organizing in support of Palestinian justice, the city instituted an anti-protest ordinance that denies the constitutional right to protest. After the ordinance was enacted, when activists attempted to protest at the Convention Center where large numbers of people have gathered for Art Basel and the Aspen Ideas Climate Festival, the Miami Beach Police Department barred protesters from gathering on the Convention Center sidewalk in violation of their constitutionally protected right of free speech.
In response, Jewish Voice for Peace South Florida has filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to declare the anti-protest ordinance and the actions of the Miami Beach Police Department unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment rights of its members.
“The First Amendment protects the right to protest in public places, including public sidewalks. It is for the protesters, not the mayor, the City Commission, nor the police, to determine where that right may be exercised, “ said Alan Levine, a member of the legal team representing Jewish Voice for Peace South Florida.
Another critical and vocal area of organizing among Jewish Voice for Peace South Florida and other local advocates is its Break the Bonds Miami campaign, devoted to challenging the county’s investments in Israel Bonds. Just recently, the campaign released a new report based on over 700 survey responses from Miami-Dade County residents, examining public opinion of the county’s $151 million investment in Israel Bonds. The findings show strong opposition to these investments and support for redirecting funds away from genocide toward much-needed local priorities.
“As a Jewish resident of Miami-Dade, I don't believe the county should be investing in a country committing a horrific genocide and starvation campaign…The $151 million Miami-Dade has invested in Israel Bonds should be redirected to empower our local community to flourish, not buy bombs and guns for Israel’s military to kill children, journalists, and doctors," said Hayley Margolis, a JVP South Florida member leader and Miami Dade County resident, at a recent press conference releasing the report.
Contrary to what some may assume in South Florida’s political climate, activists have succeeded in being visible in the media and bringing these issues into the public eye. The protests, actions, and campaign have been well-covered on TV and in print media, and numbers of opinion pieces have been published in all the local papers. The visibility of anti-Zionist organizing throughout South Florida breaks the normalization of mainstream Jewish and other support for Israel and will continue to do so. As the JVP South Florida chapter reiterates in all its messaging: “We will not be silent, and we will not be silenced.”
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The Status of Palestinian Resistance: an Interview With Jibril Rajoub
The secretary general of Fatah’s Central Committee delivers indispensable insight on topics such as Fatah-Hamas unification, Israeli fascism, the importance of international law, and the peace process.
Jul 20, 2025
“If the Israelis fail to make the deal with our generation, believe me that the future will be worse,” claims Jibril Rajoub. The secretary general of Fatah’s Central Committee, Rajoub is widely considered one of the most powerful figures within the Palestinian Authority. Rajoub’s life has been filled with both militant political activities and institutional roles. In 1970, Israel sentenced Rajoub to life imprisonment for throwing a grenade at an Israeli army bus, but he was released during a prisoner exchange in 1985. In 1988, Israel deported Rajoub to Lebanon because of his activities during the First Intifada. After returning to the West Bank in 1994, Rajoub headed the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security Force until 2002. Apart from his activities as secretary general, Rajoub has led the Palestine Football Association since 2006.
Recently, I had the chance to interview Rajoub at his office in Ramallah. While I’ve previously interviewed various political commentators and government officials (including former Palestinian Authority officials, such as Sari Nusseibeh), Rajoub is easily the most intense figure I’ve ever conversed with. Since the Palestinian Authority is famously repressive of political dissent (such as utilizing torture to punish critics), I tried to directly confront Rajoub with criticisms of his government. In this interview, Rajoub delivers indispensable insight on topics such as Fatah-Hamas unification, Israeli fascism, the importance of international law, and the peace process. According to Rajoub, Palestinian resistance must uphold the principle of nonviolence.
Richard McDaniel (RM): You’ve maintained that Palestinian independence requires unification. What are the steps needed to unify Fatah and Hamas? Do you think that this is a realistic possibility in the near future?
Jibril Rajoub (JR): First of all, as a matter of principle, I do believe that the emergence of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state requires issues on the national level in order to convince the international community to support [the Palestinians]. The first is a Palestinian national unity, with all Palestinians united behind one leadership, one goal, and an agreed upon strategic resistance approach or tool. This national unity should recognize international legitimacy, [such as] all United Nations resolutions as still of reference to settle this conflict. The second [is to] present our perspective about the shape of the future state, [or how] this state will contribute to regional stability and global peace.
I think this [Israeli] government and those crazy [figures in the Israeli government] are the existential, real threat to the State of Israel, not anything else.
Is it possible? Sure, it’s possible. I think that, according to my own experience and understanding, it’s a must. It’s a necessity, but it’s possible to achieve that by developing a national ideology on two faces. The first one is literally between Fatah and Hamas to develop a common ground about a political plan. [This includes] convincing Hamas to accept the 1967 borders, accept nonviolence and peaceful means as a strategic choice, and also accept the principle that the shape of the future state will be [one of] political pluralism with one authority, one gun, one police, and one law. If we have this kind of bilateral agreement as a common ground, then we go for national ideology with all Palestinian political factions. I think we do need the civil society to participate in a comprehensive, national ideology hosted by Egypt to develop a Palestinian political plan, with all Palestinians supporting and accepting an independent, sovereign [state] according to the U.N. resolutions. I think the whole world is fed up with the blood shedding. Therefore, we believe, in Fatah, that the nonviolence, the peaceful could, and should, [be] a strategic choice for all Palestinians.
The second is also that the future state will have democracy, freedom of expression, law and order, but with one authority. The sharing of power should come through general democratic processes, through general elections. The only way should come through this process. This is what I think. Now, we have this Israeli unilateral aggression on all Palestinians: genocide in Gaza, starvation, targeting everybody and everything to deport the Palestinians from Gaza through terror and crazy, fascist means. The other side is this resilience, this steadfastness of the Palestinians. Also, what [the Israelis] are doing here in the West Bank: the Israelization of East Jerusalem, the creeping annexation of the West Bank (dictating realities, building settlements, expanding existing ones). Some [Israeli ministers] are making it clear that it’s a matter of time that, officially, they will declare the annexation of all Palestinian territory. This is what we have, and we are trying to expose our justice cause. I think Israel now is in a very difficult situation. It’s a shame for the grandsons of the victims of the Holocaust to do the same, to use the same means against our people in Gaza, Tulkarem, Jenin, Hebron, Jerusalem, and everywhere in the Palestinian occupied territories.
Here, there are realities in this conflict. The first reality is that any settlement, any solution for this long and arduous conflict is a political solution. A political solution with a mutual understanding of each other’s rational concerns. For us, [our concerns include] independence and freedom to live in our legitimate territories (the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967). For the Israelis, I think security is a rational [concern]. But, to use security as an excuse to invade and to declare war—I think, today, no one is ready to swallow this fascist and racist Israeli policy. The second [is] the demographication. We are living here between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordanian River. [There’s around] 15 million [people], Jews and non-Jews. This is a reality. [There’s] no military, no religion, [and] no other means to settle this conflict. The only game on down is the political solution. Recognizing the very existence of the Palestinian people and our right to self-determination is the only way to make business in this conflict.
The third reality is [that] unilateral steps will never achieve [peace]. Dictating facts, building settlements, suffocating the Palestinians, killing, starving, and so on will never achieve anything. The fourth reality is that trust is nonexistent. Therefore, here, we do need a third party to bridge the gap, to build confidence. I think the international community [should be the third party]. The Americans could be the ones who can lead, but they should be fair. They should start by recognizing the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, recognizing the U.N. resolutions, and raising a red card to the racism, fascism, and new Nazism [in this Israeli government]. I think this [Israeli] government and those crazy [figures in the Israeli government] are the existential, real threat to the State of Israel, not anything else.
The other reality is that disengagement, divorcing each other by an agreement is the solution. But, if you want to divorce your partner, you should go to the court, and the court is the U.N. resolutions. It’s not a fascist, racist Israeli right-wing messianic [court]. It’s the same model that we all faced in the 1940s. This is what I think. We, as Palestinians, whether in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, we have no other place. We will not leave. We have been here. Since 1948, we are facing the same policies, the same means. Go back to the history [and read about] the atrocities. The genocide started in 1948. [Why should] the Palestinians be a scapegoat for what happened to the Jews in Europe [during the] last century, which I think was a shame? But, we were not part of it. We were not the ones who [committed the Holocaust], and we should not pay the price.
I think it’s now the time for three reasons. The first one is that this conflict will continue, will remain open as long as the Palestinian cause is not settled, is not solved, and as long as the Palestinians are not enjoying the right to self-determination. Second, I think this conflict is a real threat to regional stability and global peace. Third, the whole world will be distant, according to their position or policy toward this conflict.
RM: You’ve prioritized methods of nonviolent resistance, such as sport. In your view, when is violent resistance justified? Is there a point at which violent resistance is justified?
JR: No, no. Listen, I’ll tell you. I was part of militant resistance. I was arrested, and I spent 17 years in Israeli jails. I was even deported by the Israelis in a very brutal way. But, we are now in the 21st century. I think our generation, including Abu Mazen, does believe that, for many reasons, the most effective means of resistance to convince and keep the momentum of support all over the world should be based on nonviolence. No matter what the Israelis are doing, we have to expose our justice cause. We have to present our cause through our people’s steadfastness, resilience, and nonviolence. I believe that violence and killing in the 21st century is no more.
I never gave up, and I will never give up. I was, and will remain, optimistic.
Our cause is no more a local or a regional [problem]. Now, it’s on the agenda of the whole world. The whole world is engaged. The sympathy and support will never be sustained if bloodshedding is part of it. This is what I think, and this is what I believe. For example, I am in charge of the sports sector. I do believe that exposing our justice cause through sport, through athletes and players, could contribute to, achieve, and lead a very effective, convincing [message] everywhere.
RM: When I talk to both foreigners and Palestinians about the Palestinian Authority, some of them tell me that the Palestinian Authority is complicit with or powerless compared with the actions of the Israeli government. What do you make of these accusations?
JR: Listen, I don’t want to [talk about] the internal mess. In the long term, we should have democracy [and] freedom of expression. People have the right to criticize. I’m not satisfied with the function of the Palestinian Authority. I’m very critical. But, I think the reforms and the change should come from inside. [The changes] should come through a democratic process. We should not go to some Arab models like what happened in Egypt or Tunis. We should develop a democratic internal dynamic to change, to achieve our goals, to remove this or that, but not through any means which is not according, as I said, to processes [such as] elections.
RM: Since you mention you’re critical, what do you think is the most legitimate criticism directed toward the Palestinian Authority today?
JR: Excuse me. I’m not satisfied with the whole [government]. I think we can do a lot of things. We can, and we need, to make a lot of reforms: political reforms, security reforms, administrative reforms, financial reforms, judicial system reforms, media reforms. But, we should do it. We should initiate that. We should invest in that. The occupation, the suffocation, the checkpoints, the restrictions are preventing everything. I think the Israeli occupation is the worst model and terrorism.
RM: Related to that, after Hamas’ actions on October 7, 2023, you stated that “the next conflagration will be more violent in the West Bank”—[The next question was supposed to be: Is a Third Intifada from the West Bank still imminent?]
JR: Excuse me. This is not true. This is not true. Excuse me. What I said, and what I say today, is that he who is responsible for 7 of October is this crazy, stupid, and fascist Israeli government. I never supported killing civilians or kidnapping kids and women. Never! Even in the past. Okay?
RM: I know—
JR: Excuse me, please. He who should be blamed is this Israeli, fascist, racist, and expansionist—they are responsible. What I said is that if there is no international wake up—in the West Bank, it’s a matter of time. Until today I say, it’s a matter of time. Are you following the settlers? Are you following the army, the occupation? What do you expect? This is what I said, and this is what I believe. It’s a matter of time. What happened in Gaza will be [in the West Bank] because here we are living together. We are not isolated. The Americans should understand that the Israelis cannot enjoy security, official recognition, integration in the Middle East [while simultaneously perpetrating] occupation, expansionism, and unilateral activities including killing, arresting, humiliating [Palestinians].
RM: Right now, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Palestine?
JR: I was born optimistic. Revolutionaries are always optimistic. I spent 17 years in Israeli jails, and I was deported. I spent years outside in exile. I never gave up, and I will never give up. I was, and will remain, optimistic. Once again, we are here. The non-Jews [make up] 50%. Look and see the Palestinians who are inside Israel—the racism, the apartheid. Do they enjoy equal rights? All of them [come from this land] before Israel was established. I think what happened in Europe [was terrible], but the Palestinians were not part of it. In spite of that, Israel is a reality. We are ready. Within their internationally recognized borders, [Israel has] the right to enjoy security and official recognition. This policy [of expansionism] is a real threat. The existential threat is not Iran or anything. It’s this expansionism and this stupid, fascist government. If the Israelis fail to make the deal with our generation, believe me that the future will be worse. The Palestinians will never give up, and will never leave.
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Palestine And Its Metaphors
Palestine is not a symbol. It is a real place, under siege. And to see it clearly, we must burn the language that keeps us blind.
Jun 06, 2025
Metaphors kill. Not with bullets or bombs, but with confusion. They blur what demands clarity. They sentimentalize what should horrify. They distract.
Susan Sontag wrote that the most honest way to understand illness is to strip it of metaphor. To stop saying cancer is an invasion, or tuberculosis is romantic, or AIDS is punishment. Disease is not a morality play. It is a condition of the body. What burdens the sick is not just the illness itself, but the stories society tells about it.
So too with nations. So too with Palestine.
Palestine is not just a land or a people. It has been made into a metaphor. For resistance. For loss. For stubbornness. For martyrdom. For chaos. For terrorism. For hope. For grief. It is everything except what it is: a place where people live, suffer, starve, and die.
Palestine punctures the fantasy of Western innocence. That is why it must be abstracted, medicalized, moralized, silenced.
Turning Palestine into a symbol allows the powerful to avoid the facts. You don’t need to look at checkpoints if you’re talking about “conflict.” You don’t have to name apartheid if you’re debating “disputed territories.” You don’t have to say stolen if you say contested. You don’t have to say killed if you say clash. Metaphor is how power talks about violence without taking responsibility for it.
Palestine becomes intolerable not because of what Palestinians do, but because of what they represent: an open wound that refuses to close, a people who will not disappear. This is why their story must be constantly reframed, misnamed, wrapped in euphemism and myth. Their existence disrupts the fantasy that liberal democracies are just, that settler states are stable, that history is over. And so, the metaphor persists. It buries reality. It protects the liar.
We must refuse to speak in code, refuse to let metaphor do the work of silence. Palestine is not a symbol. It is a real place, under siege. And to see it clearly, we must burn the language that keeps us blind.
Palestine resists. That much is true. But once you say it like that—without detail, without names, without time or place—it becomes a slogan. And slogans consume clarity. The world loves the idea of resistance more than the reality. It loves the photo of the boy with the slingshot. It loves the keffiyeh, the flag, the tear gas. It loves the spectacle of defiance. What it does not love is the cost.
It does not love a broken spine from a checkpoint beating. It does not love a family digging their daughter from rubble. It does not love the dull terror of drones. That kind of resistance is not romantic. It’s not metaphor. It’s not poster-ready.
Palestine is trapped in a paradox. Its resistance is admired as long as it stays symbolic—noble suffering, poetic dignity, children throwing rocks at tanks. But when resistance becomes material—when it demands rights, when it takes up arms, when it names its oppressor—it is immediately recast. Now it is extremism. Now it is terrorism. Now the metaphor turns toxic. This is the trap of metaphor: It flatters, and it criminalizes, depending on what power needs.
The powerful don’t fear Palestine because of its military strength. They fear the idea of it. The persistence of it. The fact that something so small, so wounded, so systematically crushed still refuses to submit. Palestine is proof that domination is never total. That’s what makes it dangerous.
And so, the metaphor must be managed. Contained. You can wear the keffiyeh but not name the Occupation. You can say “Free Palestine” on Instagram but not mention Gaza. You can quote Darwish but not talk about bulldozed olive groves. You can mourn the dead but not accuse the killers. In this way, metaphor becomes a leash. It lets you gesture toward justice without ever touching it.
But Palestine doesn’t need symbols. It needs liberation. Not metaphors, no myths needed, only land, water, safety, and return from exile. These are not poetic demands. They are concrete, measurable, and deliberately denied. To really see Palestinian resistance, you must stop calling it resistance. Call it what it is: survival under siege. Organizing under surveillance. Memory under erasure. It’s not metaphor. It’s real life.
Once you frame a people as pathology, you don’t need to justify what you do to them. You only need to call it medicine. And when treatment fails to sterilize the threat, the language escalates. Now the body must be purged. Now the neighborhood is a target. The entire population becomes suspect.
They say Hamas “hides among the population.” But what does that mean in a fenced in strip of land 40 kilometers long, where there is no army base, no safe zone, no separation between life and resistance? The phrase is not a statement of fact—it is a metaphor. And like most metaphors in war, it serves a purpose: to erase the line between fighter and civilian, to turn every man, woman, and child into a potential target. If you can’t see your enemy, then everyone becomes your enemy. The home is now a military site. The hospital, a command center. The school, a shield. “Among the population” doesn’t describe a tactic, it justifies indiscriminate killing. It is how the language of war collapses into the logic of extermination.
But what if the patient isn’t sick? What if the disease is the system choking him? What if the diagnosis is projection? There is no vaccine for settler colonialism. No cure for apartheid—except dismantling it. But if Palestine is spoken of like a disease, its survival will always be framed as a threat.
Power never calls itself by name. It prefers neutral terms. Clinical. Procedural. Empty terms. Palestinians aren’t starved—they face a humanitarian crisis. Their homes aren’t stolen—they’re part of a property dispute. They’re not imprisoned—they’re under security lockdown. Their lives aren’t ended—they’re neutralized. This is not just bad language. It’s policy disguised as grammar.
Words like conflict, clash, cycle of violence—these are metaphors of balance. They suggest symmetry, as if this is a fair fight, as if both sides are equally armed, equally culpable, equally free. But this is not a clash. It is not a cycle. It is a colonizer and the colonized. An occupier and the occupied. The difference is moral. The difference is material. The metaphor erases both.
The demand is not poetic. It is logistical: land back, borders erased, walls down, refugees returned, bombing stopped, sanctions imposed, settlers removed, rights restored.
Sontag wrote that when people described cancer as an “invasion,” they were borrowing the language of war to make sense of something terrifying. But when the war is real, and the invasion is actual, language flips. War becomes operation. Invasion becomes security measure. You speak of it like infrastructure. This is how you sanitize occupation.
The wall isn’t a scar across the land—it’s a barrier fence. Settlements aren’t illegal—they’re new neighborhoods. Checkpoints aren’t instruments of control—they’re points of coordination. And Gaza isn’t under siege—it’s self-governed, as if a prison becomes free the moment the guards move outside its walls. Metaphor in this context does not reveal. It anesthetizes.
It allows liberal democracies to wash their hands with language. You don’t need to condemn apartheid if you can call it a complex situation. You don’t have to intervene in ethnic cleansing if you can label it a tragic escalation. You don’t have to listen to the grieving if you describe their pain as incitement. This is not metaphor as poetry. It is metaphor as smokescreen.
The media uses it. Diplomats use it. NGOs use it. Even well-meaning activists get trapped in it, calling for dialogue, for both sides to come together, for peaceful resolution, without ever naming the violence that blocks peace at every turn. But clarity is not extremism and precision is not incitement. To describe things as they are is not radical—it is necessary. There is no symmetry between the boot and the neck. And any language that suggests otherwise is complicity with the boot.
Palestine is not a wound in the Western psyche. It is a mirror of that psyche. And what it reflects is unbearable. The reason the world can’t look at Palestine directly is not because it is too foreign, but because it is too familiar. It shows the West everything it claims to have outgrown: apartheid, racial hierarchy, empire, extermination. Not in the past tense, but right now. Daily. Live-streamed.
Palestine is where the myth of Western moral authority collapses on itself. It’s easy to denounce the crimes of the past: slavery, fascism, genocide, so long as they stay in museums or textbooks. But Palestine breaks the frame. It puts the vocabulary of historical evil in the present tense. It makes Holocaust-committed Europe complicit in a same kind of ethnic cleansing. It makes the U.S., champion of “rules-based order,” the primary funder of impunity. It makes liberalism look like a mask, not a principle.
This is what makes Palestine dangerous—not its resistance, but its clarity.
Palestine exposes the real function of international law: who gets to break it, and who must obey. It exposes journalism’s quiet racism: who gets names and childhood photos, and who becomes “a number.” It exposes the limits of identity politics: how many doors are slammed shut when the oppressed are inconvenient. The metaphor of Palestine-as-problem allows Western institutions to avoid seeing the problem in themselves.
To look clearly at Palestine is to confront questions most people would rather leave buried. What does it mean that the state born from the ashes of the Holocaust has become a jailer? What does it mean that human rights groups whisper what Palestinians scream? What does it mean that the most surveilled, bombed, and besieged population on Earth is asked to behave peacefully, while their occupier is praised for restraint?
Palestine punctures the fantasy of Western innocence. That is why it must be abstracted, medicalized, moralized, silenced. Because if you face it directly—without metaphor, without euphemism—you must admit that the world is not post-colonial. That we live in a global system where some lives are sacred, and others are collateral. Where entire populations can be punished for existing. Where the worst crime is not violence but remembering.
Palestine remembers.
The time for symbols is over. Palestine is not a metaphor. It is not the universal struggle. It is not the world’s conscience. It is not an allegory for Brown resistance, or the dream of return, or the poetry of loss. It is not an Instagram aesthetic. It is not a stand-in for every injustice on Earth. It is a place, with borders and people, a colonial regime, a military occupation, a blockade and a death toll. It is a place where a child drinks from a bomb-cracked pipe. Where a mother sleeps in a school because her house is dust. Where a man counts the names of his dead before checking if his leg is still attached.
To speak of Palestine clearly, we must break the habit of metaphor. We must stop treating it as a narrative arc, a tragedy to be admired from a safe distance. It is not art. It is not history. It is the present, and it is now, as we ourselves live and breathe. We must reject the language of soft avoidance: Say occupation, not “conflict.” Say apartheid, not “dispute.” Say siege, not “border closure.” Say massacre, not “escalation.” Say starvation not “hunger.” Say Palestinian, not “Hamas.”
The demand is not poetic. It is logistical: land back, borders erased, walls down, refugees returned, bombing stopped, sanctions imposed, settlers removed, rights restored. This is not metaphor. This is what justice looks like; anything less is a performance.
Sontag understood that metaphor, in the wrong hands, becomes a weapon. It doesn’t soften violence—it smuggles it in. It doesn’t reveal truth—it repackages it in palatable form. She wrote against metaphor to rescue the ill from stigma. We must resist metaphor to stop the disappearance of Palestine.
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The Shame of What We've Done: Assessing Jews' Responsibility for Israel's Actions
A new book by Peter Beinart analyses how the maudlin story we Jews tell ourselves of our virtue and heroic endurance inoculates Jews from seeing Israel's agency in creating the resistance it faces.
Feb 02, 2025
The dominant self-conception of the Jewish story is innocence, repeated persecutions, and then redemption by creation of the Jewish nationalist State of Israel.
This narrative is critically examined in Peter Beinart's new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.
Beinart's book says the maudlin story we Jews tell ourselves of our virtue and heroic endurance inoculates Jews from seeing Israel's agency in creating the resistance it faces: "We must now tell a new story to answer the horror that a Jewish country has perpetrated… We are not history's permanent virtuous victims."
The predicted consequence of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine to Jews in "diaspora" is happening. Jews feel they are being scrutinized and called to account for Israel's actions, on campuses and in the streets worldwide.
Beinart, former editor of The New Republic, is now an editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, and a New York Times contributor.
He has been in a 20-year progression of seeing, more and more sharply, the "Jewish and democratic" state of Israel as anti-democratic and incompatible with Jewish tradition.
He writes that support for a Jewish state has become "idolatry," permitting endless killing, torture, and oppression of Palestinians "There is no limit. No matter how many Palestinians die, they do not tip the scales, because the value of a Palestinian is finite and the value of a Jewish state is infinite."
Contemporary Jewish life is filled with that idolatry, he observes: "In most of the Jewish world today, rejecting Jewish statehood is a greater heresy than rejecting Judaism itself."
The book attributes the horrors imposed on 2 million human beings in Gaza not only to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) but to Jews: "Worshipping a country that elevates Jews over Palestinians replaces Judaism's universal God—who makes special demands on Jews but cherishes all people–with a tribal deity that considers Jewish life precious and Palestinian life cheap."
Beinart is not playing the peekaboo game of saying Jews are not responsible for Israel, and the other half of the time saying Israel is the Jewish State.
He's not saying "all Jews," but fairly saying "representative," "mainstream" Jewish organizations worldwide are now Zionist. Anti-Zionist organizations are dissident.
He observes that many synagogues have an Israeli flag on the bima (platform where the Torah is read) "and a prayer for Israel in the liturgy."
It was predicted and warned about, as the Zionist movement grew, that the effect of creating a Jewish nation-state would be Jews being seen in the light of that state's actions.
The predicted consequence of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine to Jews in "diaspora" is happening. Jews feel they are being scrutinized and called to account for Israel's actions, on campuses and in the streets worldwide.
Beinart places the Hamas violence of October 7, 2023 in context, as consistent with the history of suppressed peoples without peaceful means to contest their status, as is seen in slave revolts and anticolonial guerilla wars.
I note that Beinart's thoughts are resonant with what, almost 100 years ago, historian and then-Zionist Hans Kohn wrote of 1929 anti-Jewish riots after 12 years of Zionist colonization in Palestine under British authority:
We pretend to be innocent victims. Of course the Arabs attacked us in August… They perpetrated all the barbaric acts that are characteristic of a colonial revolt… We have been in Palestine for 12 years [since the Balfour Declaration] without having even once made a serious attempt at seeking through negotiations the consent of the Indigenous people.
Israeli retribution since October 7, 2023 on the 2 million-plus population of Gaza and their means of life—homes, utilities, schools, universities, hospitals—has officially resulted in over 46,000 deaths and innumerable injuries directly from IDF attacks.
The medical journal Lancet estimates deaths as likely much higher, counting "deaths from starvation, disease, or cold."
Most of the population of Gaza was made homeless, huddled in improvised shelters, pushed by IDF warnings from one "safe zone" to another, often then bombed.
Beinart's book is an analysis of Zionist apologetics that are necessary to both regard oneself as moral and defend what Israel has done, from the 1947-49 Nakba—terroristic expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from their communities within present-day Israel—to Gaza in 2025.
He denounces dehumanizing, demonizing, Zionist lies about Palestinian resistance: "These claims don't withstand even modest scrutiny. They're less arguments than talismans. They ward off dangerous emotions like grief and shame."
Using the model of the dismantling of apartheid South Africa, he tries to envision what principles could heal Palestine :
The details matter, but they matter less than the underlying principles. Wherever they live together, Jews and Palestinians should live under the same law. And they should work to repair the injustices of the past. The Israelis who were made refugees on October 7 should be allowed to go home. And the Palestinians who were made refugees in 1948 should be allowed to go home. Historical wrongs can never be fully undone. But the more sincere the effort, the greater the reconciliation that ensues.
This would be a radical reconception of Jewish life in Palestine, that in abandoning the role of conquerors, Jews may live as Jewish Palestinians. He makes the point that whites relinquishing apartheid was a more peaceful process for South Africa than having it overthrown.
In the summary chapter of the book, Beinart says Israel's conduct is from a heretical Jewish tendency to believe Jewish people are sacred, rather than people with extra obligations: "So what if a few dreamers in Moorish Spain or the Silesian shtetl [Eastern European Jewish village] consoled themselves with the idea that deep within us lies a special spark of the divine? They didn't have the power to do anything about it."
This self-deification, first proposed by an Israelite named Korach, who challenged Moses' leadership, hadn't mattered as much until the creation of "Jewish" national power: "All that changed with the creation of Israel. Only once Jews control a state with life-and-death power over millions of non-Jews does Korach's claim of intrinsic Jewish sanctity become truly dangerous."
Beinart calls for liberation for Jews from the Zionist doctrine that Jews are only victims, never victimizers: "We can lift the weight that oppressing Palestinians imposes on Jewish Israelis, and indirectly, on Jews around the world… We can lay down the burden of seeing ourselves as the perennial victims of a Jew-hating world."
More than level of observance or denomination, the question of Zionism is going to be a fault line in Jewish fellowship, Beinart believes:
Remove Jewish statehood from Jewish identity and, for many Jews around the world, it's not clear what is left. But the benefit of recognizing that Jews are not fundamentally different from other people is that it allows us to learn from their experience. Jewish exceptionalism is less exceptional than we think. We are not the only people to use a story of victimhood to justify supremacy.
Israel's perpetual peril is the Arab population it has displaced but not exterminated. They are determined to redeem their birthright to live as freely in Palestine as Jews do.
Instead of conquest, Beinart proposes a model of restraint, cooperation, and respect—along a line of Jewish thinkers from Ahad Ha'am to Judah Magnes to Albert Einstein.
Many of the visions for Jewish settlement in Palestine were universalist and pacific.
In 1927, Zionist writer (and Chaim Weizmann protege) Maurice Samuel mused, in his book I, The Jew, that Jewish civilization "for 60 generations" demonstrated "that neither conquest or oppression was necessary to its survival… a group can survive without mass murder."
Whether trauma or hubris allows Zionists in Israel and elsewhere to trust that model—finding the image of God even in their "enemies"—is the question.
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History Shows Carter Was Right to Warn Against Israeli Apartheid
While the Democratic Party has mostly maintained its pro-Israel stance since the publication of Carter’s 2006 book, his words now appear quite prescient and reflect a growing international consensus.
Jan 05, 2025
The late President Jimmy Carter was not a particularly progressive president, but his exemplary service as a peacemaker and humanitarian since leaving office has resulted in an outpouring of heartfelt tributes following his death at the age of 100 on December 28. During his final years, however, the Nobel Peace Laureate was met with intense criticism for insisting that standards of peace, human rights, and international law should apply not just to countries hostile to U.S. interests, but to U.S. allies like Israel as well.
Particularly controversial was Carter’s 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which went on to be a New York Times bestseller, in which he argued against Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank, the Palestinian territory seized in 1967 during a war that the international community had hoped would form the basis for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Carter was a liberal Christian Zionist who believed passionately in Israel’s right to exist as a secure homeland for the Jewish people. Like many left and liberal Jewish Zionists, however, he argued that the continued occupation and colonization of the West Bank would make a viable two-state solution impossible, and that Israel would be forced to choose between allowing for democratic governance in all the areas they controlled—meaning Jews would thereby be a minority, and Israel would no longer be a Jewish state—or imposing an apartheid system akin to the one instituted in South Africa prior to its democratic transition in 1994.
Carter was falsely accused of referring to Israel as an apartheid state, when he had explicitly stated otherwise. He was referring only to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the establishment of Jewish-only roads, Jewish-only settlements, and other strict segregation policies do resemble the old South African system.
Since Carter wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid 18 years ago, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories has more than doubled, most of them surrounding Palestinian cities and towns in a manner that would make the establishment of a viable contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
In reality, the main objection of Carter’s critics was that he dared criticize the Israeli government, a recipient of tens of billions of dollars’ worth of unconditional taxpayer-funded military equipment from U.S. arms manufacturers.
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid received overwhelmingly negative media coverage following its release. The Washington Post accused Carter of harboring a “hostility to Israel” in part for allegedly failing to note, according to reviewer Jeffrey Goldberg, that the Israeli government “dearly wants to give up the bulk of its West Bank settlements.” In reality, the illegal settlements have continued to expand since 2006, and the Israeli government has reiterated that they are there to stay.
An article in The New York Times about the reaction to the book included a number of quotes from pro-Israel organizations attacking it, while failing to quote a single Palestinian or Palestinian-American source.
The Democratic Party leadership was also hostile to the book. In a rare rebuke by another former president of the same party, Bill Clinton, ignoring Carter’s frequent trips to and extensive knowledge of Israel and Palestine, wrote, “I don’t know where his information (or conclusions) came from” and insisted, “It’s not factually correct, and it’s not fair.”
Howard Dean, then chair of the Democratic National Committee, also voiced his disagreement with Carter’s analysis. Representative Nancy Pelosi, who was about to become Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, declared, “It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.” She added, “We stand with Israel now and we stand with Israel forever.”
Former presidents have almost always been granted an opportunity to speak at their party’s subsequent conventions, but in apparent reaction to the book, Carter’s appearance at the 2008 Democratic National Convention was limited to a video clip speaking in praise of nominee Barack Obama and interviewing survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Carter also only appeared in short video clips at the 2012 and 2016 conventions.
In 2022, Joe Biden named Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt to be the U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism. Lipstadt had previously accused Carter of engaging in “traditional antisemitic canards” and compared him to the notorious antisemite and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
But while the Democratic Party has mostly maintained its pro-Israel stance since the publication of the book, Carter’s words now appear quite prescient and reflect a growing international consensus. In 2022, Amnesty International published a 281-page report making a compelling case that Israel practices a form of apartheid toward the Palestinians. Human Rights Watch published a similarly detailed study the previous year reaching the same conclusion. B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights organization, also released an extensive report documenting the Israeli government’s imposition of apartheid. Similar conclusions have been reached by the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. This past July, the International Court of Justice, in an advisory opinion, also found that Israel’s ongoing and multiple violations of international humanitarian law constitute apartheid.
A number of Carter’s former critics, including a board member of the Carter Center who resigned in protest following the publication of the book, have since apologized and acknowledged that the former president was correct. No one in the Democratic Party leadership has yet done so.
Indeed, very few of Carter’s critics have been willing to demand an end to Israel’s settlements and segregation policies in the West Bank or acknowledge that these colonial outposts in the occupied territories constitute a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a series of unanimous U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Since Carter wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid 18 years ago, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories has more than doubled, most of them surrounding Palestinian cities and towns in a manner that would make the establishment of a viable contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
As a result, many Palestinians and others who once supported a two-state solution have concluded it is too late and are now demanding a single democratic state with equal rights for both peoples between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Similarly, increasing numbers of Jewish people in the United States and elsewhere now believe that the Zionist movement has become hopelessly dominated by overt racists, and have renounced Zionism altogether.
Carter warned that the choice before Israel was “peace or apartheid.” The Israeli government and its backers in Washington have chosen apartheid—but people across the world have not given up on the peace Carter envisioned.
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Carter’s Legacy Will Live on to Inspire Future Generations
He nourished the norms of personal and civic decency, dialogue, truth-telling, and working for a just society, expressing his Christian faith in action.
Jan 01, 2025
Jimmy Carter was the last president to actively open the government for engagement by citizen groups. Right after his November 1976 election, he agreed to address a huge hotel ballroom in D.C. full of local and national citizen advocates. It was a great success never again repeated by succeeding president-elects.
Mr. Carter then chose civic leaders and other solid progressives to head regulatory agencies such as National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Federal Trade Commission, and for other high positions in government. He chose the formidable longtime consumer-labor advocate Esther Peterson to be his consumer protection special assistant in the White House. He also supported an independent consumer protection agency which Congress, after a fierce struggle between corporate lobbies and consumer groups, narrowly defeated in 1978. Starting in 1981, Ronald Reagan undermined many Carter Administration health and safety initiatives.
Compare Jimmy Carter’s life with the rancid, corrupt, cowardly politicians spoiling today’s Washington landscapes.
Mr. Carter was also the last president to authentically recognize Palestinian rights and charge the Israeli government with imposing a system of apartheid (“worse than in South Africa,” he said) over Palestine. However, he failed to get Israel to agree to a comprehensive peace settlement, including the creation of a Palestinian state, and had to settle for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
Citizen Carter was easily our greatest former president. For over 40 years his indefatigable work ethic was applied to advancing peace efforts, initiating health programs in developing countries, supervising fair elections overseas and, with Rosalynn, joining Habitat for Humanity as a manual laborer (he was an expert woodworker, among his many skills) to build houses around the country for needy families.
The range of interests expressed through his 32 books and conferences revealed a practical, results-oriented, humble Renaissance man. His compassion and honesty infuse the Carter Center to this day.
He nourished the norms of personal and civic decency, dialogue, truth-telling, and working for a just society, expressing his Christian faith in action.
Compare Jimmy Carter’s life with the rancid, corrupt, cowardly politicians spoiling today’s Washington landscapes.
There are legitimate criticisms of Carter’s foreign and domestic policies that others will examine. But overall, his legacy will live on to inspire future generations of Americans to elevate their expectations and strive toward them with civic dedication and commitment.
I was always in awe of how efficiently he used his time every day—and truly amazed by his relentless productivity. This alone would have been a worthy book by Mr. Carter were it not for his genuine humility.
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Beyond the Myths: Reflecting on Jimmy Carter’s Israel-Palestine Legacy
More than any other U.S. president, he tried to create a better future for Palestinians and for Israeli Jews.
Dec 30, 2024
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, is a man whose legacy will forever be inextricably linked to Israel and Palestine. Yet that legacy will be built as much on myth as on reality, as with so many other aspects of the history and politics of the “Holy Land.”
Carter is remembered fondly by many on the left, and for good reason. In many areas, he tried to govern with humanity, decency, and with regard to people’s rights. Whether due to his own shortcomings or the limitations of the system, he was not always successful, as citizens of Cambodia and East Timor can attest. Still, if he was far from perfect, Carter did still bring principles of human rights into his policy thinking more than any other U.S. president in living memory, and quite possibly in all of American history.
There can be little doubt that Carter’s heart was in the right place when it came to his ambition to resolve what he referred to as the “Israel-Palestine conflict.” Carter spoke often about the need for Palestinian rights to be recognized, but he also repeatedly noted that he was motivated by his affection for Israel and his desire to see it survive, something he did not believe it could do if it continued to oppress the Palestinians.
The most striking thing I recall about Carter—aside from the oppressive feeling his Secret Service guards projected—was the depth of his feeling when he talked about both Jewish history and the Palestinian present, at that time.
Carter had, and often expressed, boundless sympathy for the Jewish people and what they had endured throughout history. But he recognized both that this history did not justify the oppression of another people and that establishing an ethnocentric apartheid state would not end the scourge of antisemitism or the harm that caused to Jews. This was the ethos he expressed in his book, even while it was less visible in his policies as president.
Carter’s view of the issue was, inevitably, shaped by his evangelical Christian background and his thorough immersion in the view of Israel that dominated the United States throughout the Cold War years after World War II. It was a view of Israel that few Palestinians would recognize, but it was also a view that, in the 1970s and 1980s, was still more critical of Israeli actions than the overwhelming majority of Americans.
Carter’s view evolved over the years, as we can see from the two major points of Carter’s engagement with the issue: the Camp David agreement and Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1978 and 1979, respectively; and the publication of his controversial book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in 2006.
Meeting Carter
I had the privilege of meeting President Carter a few years before his book was published. The meeting was attended by about half a dozen progressive leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area, on the UC Berkeley campus.
The most striking thing I recall about Carter—aside from the oppressive feeling his Secret Service guards projected—was the depth of his feeling when he talked about both Jewish history and the Palestinian present, at that time. I’ve met many political leaders, and I’m used to the air of phoniness they project. There was none of that with Carter. If he wasn’t genuinely affected by the suffering he was talking about, he was a much better actor than he ever was a politician.
Carter spoke with pride of the work he put in to get Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat to an agreement at Camp David, and with immense regret that he didn’t do more to secure a better future for the Palestinian people. One can debate the politics and strategy of his actions, and even find considerable fault with them, but it is clear that his intentions toward both peoples were positive.
Carter is seen by much of the Jewish community and many other supporters of Israel as an enemy, the man who forced then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to accept compromises that he and the pro-Israel community wished to reject. But as it played out, Carter did more for Israel’s security than any other U.S. president, while unwittingly setting the stage for the steady erosion of Palestinian rights that the Oslo process represented.
Camp David
The result of the Camp David summit and the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement that emerged from it was that Israel has not faced a credible military threat since the agreement was put in place. Carter understood, as any observer would, that if Israel made peace with Egypt, it would remove the single biggest military challenger in the region and the remaining Arab states would no longer be able to mount a credible threat against Israel. He understood as well that by bringing Egypt firmly into the United States’ sphere of influence, the Cold War balance of power in the Middle East shifted significantly.
Carter, in that case, acted not only in the interests of Israel, but also had a clear American interest in the outcome. The regime of annual aid that has flowed ever since to both Israel and Egypt locked both countries into an alliance, and into a certain degree of dependence on the U.S., a factor that was of great importance in Cold War strategy.
All of this was lost on Israel’s supporters in the United States. In his book, We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel, historian Eric Alterman described the reaction to Carter mentioning the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” citing Carter’s Press Secretary Jody Powell describing the reaction as “bonkers.” Alterman elaborated:
Democratic fundraising events were cancelled. Representatives of the administration to Jewish groups were shunned. Hyman Bookbinder, the outspokenly liberal Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, lectured the Carter people, “Obviously you apparently do not really understand what these words mean…‘Palestinian rights’ means the destruction of Israel.” A Harris poll taken at the time found 60% of Jews agreeing with the statement that “the president and his people have abandoned Israel.”
Alterman further noted that the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations at the time, Alexander Schindler, leaked the contents of a private meeting with Carter to the press, a highly unusual betrayal of trust. That generated even more intense controversy and American Jewish anger at Carter, as it was intended to do.
All of this, it must be noted, was in response to Carter’s vision of Palestine being a sort of autonomous adjunct of Jordan, a position not far removed from that of most of the Israeli political spectrum. He was not advocating an independent Palestinian state, an idea which was completely out of bounds in American political discourse of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Indeed, Carter, in March 1977, said that “the first prerequisite of a lasting peace is the recognition of Israel by her neighbors, Israel’s right to exist, Israel’s right to exist permanently.” Carter never wavered from that position, despite the invective hurled at him by Israelis and Israel’s American boosters for the rest of his life.
When the historic agreement emerged from Camp David, parts of the Jewish community saw Carter in a better light, but this soon faded amid controversy over the sale of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Jewish leadership got even more enraged when, due to a miscommunication, the U.S. voted in favor of a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlement in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Though Carter said that the U.S. was supposed to abstain and only voted “yes” by mistake, the Jewish leadership, already hostile to him, was not mollified. It’s worth noting, however, that at that time, opposition to settlements was a much stronger U.S. policy, so much so that even the staunchest pro-Israel advocates didn’t expect the U.S. to vote “no” on the resolution. Times have certainly changed.
While the Jewish community was nowhere near large or powerful enough to cause the defeat of an incumbent president, it was a factor in Edward Kennedy’s strong, if ultimately unsuccessful, challenge for the Democratic nomination in 1980 which weakened Carter. Carter had the poorest showing among Jews of any Democratic presidential candidate since 1920, although he still won a plurality of the vote (John Anderson, who ran as an Independent, got 15% of the Jewish vote to Carter’s 45% and Ronald Reagan’s 39%).
Yet, after all of that, and with some continued grumbling and foot-stomping, Israel did manage to make a peace with Egypt; withdraw its settlements from the Sinai Peninsula; secure the annual funding that has stabilized and grown its economy and helped it become the dominant military power in the region; and kept Egypt as a cold ally ever since. Israel has Jimmy Carter to thank for all of that.
Reagan did little but press forward on Carter’s actions until the end of his second term. Ironically, Reagan would, only a few months after taking office, have his own run-ins with Israel’s domestic U.S. lobby, over the sale of the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to Saudi Arabia.
Yet Reagan remained beloved among the pro-Israel forces, despite selling a state-of-the-art military system to the Saudis, whom Israel was still extremely unfriendly with at that point; despite his frequent criticism of Israel’s behavior in Lebanon; and despite rebuking Israel for its dangerous attack on the Osirak nuclear site in Iraq in 1981. The difference was that Reagan rarely mentioned the Palestinians and often said nice things about Israel.
Apartheid
“And the word ‘apartheid’ is exactly accurate,” Carter told journalist Amy Goodman in 2007. “Within Palestinian territory, they are absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they were in South Africa, by the way. And the other thing is, the other definition of ‘apartheid’ is, one side dominates the other. And the Israelis completely dominate the life of the Palestinian people.”
Carter was responding to the resounding criticism of his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. The book itself was far less remarkable than the title, which drew an avalanche of criticism to Carter, including accusations of antisemitism. Then-ADL leader Abraham Foxman said, “The title is to de-legitimize Israel, because if Israel is like South Africa, it doesn’t really deserve to be a democratic state. He’s provoking, he’s outrageous, and he’s bigoted.”
Foxman’s statement is bizarre. States, of course, do not “deserve” to be democratic, it is something they either are to a significant degree or they are not. Foxman could not even utter the possibility that Israel was not a democratic state, which, interestingly, was certainly not what Carter was saying either in his book or his subsequent statements and writing.
Jimmy Carter, for all of his missteps, was, at heart, the decent man that Joe Biden liked to claim to be and couldn’t be farther away from actually being.
Carter was trying to warn Israel that it would become an apartheid state if it didn’t change course. This stood in sharp contrast to the claims of Palestinians, who, by 2007, had already been accusing Israel of apartheid for many years. Worse for Foxman was that Carter made the argument that legitimate Palestinian views were rarely heard in the media. Although Carter neither stated, nor even implied, that this demonstrable statement of fact had anything to do with a nefarious conspiracy of Jewish control, Foxman said, “The reason he gives for why he wrote this book is this shameless, shameful canard that the Jews control the debate in this country, especially when it comes to the media.”
Carter knew he was going to get hit for the title of his book. The substance, however, made it clear that he was trying to steer Israel away from its own self-immolation on the altar of its occupation. At the end of his book, he wrote, “The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law... It will be a tragedy—for the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world—if peace is rejected and a system of oppression, apartheid, and sustained violence is permitted to prevail.”
The woman in Joe Biden’s administration who currently, and undeservedly, holds the position of Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, said Carter’s book “ignores a legacy of mistreatment, expulsion, and murder committed against Jews. It trivializes the murder of Israelis. Now, facing a storm of criticism, he has relied on antisemitic stereotypes in defense.” The scurrilous accusation is backed up with the same sleight of hand Foxman used.
Carter continued to advocate for Palestinian rights while also, contrary to the assertion of Lipstadt and Foxman, repeatedly asserting that Israel must be afforded a secure existence within recognized and clear borders.
In November 2016, as Barack Obama was preparing to leave office, Carter urged the outgoing president to recognize a Palestinian state, arguing, “The combined weight of United States recognition, United Nations membership, and a Security Council resolution solidly grounded in international law would lay the foundation for future diplomacy. These steps would bolster moderate Palestinian leadership, while sending a clear assurance to the Israeli public of the worldwide recognition of Israel and its security.” It was not the first time he had promoted such recognition.
This was the theme of Carter’s efforts from the 1970s to the end of his days. He was willing to take risks to see that vision come true. Over the years, he and the Carter Center he started made many efforts to heal the breach between Fatah and Hamas, ignoring criticism over talking with Hamas.
Carter’s legacy should be scrutinized carefully and honestly, with the same critical eye as any other president. He made his mistakes, and, as with any president, innocent people suffered as a result. But more than any other U.S. president, Jimmy Carter tried to create a better future for Palestinians and for Israeli Jews. No president before or since has tried as hard or has placed peace ahead of political concerns to the extent he did.
Jimmy Carter, for all of his missteps, was, at heart, the decent man that Joe Biden liked to claim to be and couldn’t be farther away from actually being. The hateful comments that came his way for many years, mostly from the Jewish community but also from the Christian Zionists who share his evangelical beliefs but not his understanding of what those beliefs mean, were horribly misplaced. He cared deeply and tried to do what he could to create a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike. For that, he’s been called an antisemite. Every person who ever uttered that slur against him owes him an apology. Now would be a good time to send it.
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Jimmy Carter, Middle East Peace, and The Man Who Killed My Dog
On how I ended up having more affection for Jimmy Carter than for any president before or since in my lifetime.
Dec 30, 2024
In January 1977 the nuns where we used to attend church in Lebanon gifted me the only dog I ever owned, a mutt they’d called Jimmy, after the newly elected American president. American politics was the world’s most accessible entertainment even then, so Jimmy Carter was big news in Lebanon. To those Antonine nuns Carter was something of a sex symbol. He wore his Christianity on his sleeve with a leer worthy of Mary Magdalene, allowing them to lust for him in their heart. In consequence they delivered me a Jimmy more frisky than pious.
Not being a registered Democrat I promptly renamed my new dog to something more presidential (King). Little did I know that I’d end up having more affection for Jimmy Carter than for any president before or since in my lifetime, which began a year to the day after JFK’s assassination. Maybe it’s because Carter was still president when I landed in the United States as a permanent resident in 1979. Inflation meant nothing to me. Gas lines were way shorter than they’d been in Lebanon. No one was shooting at me even in New York City, where we lived at what was to be the height of its post-Prohibition crime wave. It was a great time.
I’d come to admire Carter from another memory in 1978. This was the president who’d managed what no other president before or since has managed. He’d gotten Egypt and Israel to sign a peace treaty and Israel to give up the Sinai, the biggest and last real achievement in Middle East peacemaking since France and Britain turned that region into a hellhole on time-release after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.
Egypt’s Anwar Sadat thought he was a latter-day pharaoh, but he’d started the impossible by going to Jerusalem and daring the Israelis to the peace table. Israel’s Menahem Begin was (and remained) a terrorist, his hatred for Arabs overmatching in weaponry and violence Arabs’ berserk hatred for Jews. Carter’s skill and smarts, and a self-righteousness almost as distressing as Woodrow Wilson’s, looked past all that in those famous 13 days at Camp David.
Opinion polls told Carter he was nuts. He looked past them. He ignored the imperious convention that presidents should not personally engage in negotiations. Mostly, he looked past the bigoted Kissinger doctrine–that Israel is always right, that nothing in Middle East initiatives ought to be done without Israel’s approval first. The approach had prevailed since Kennedy (Eisenhower, the last president to stand up to Israel, had no use for it) and would prevail again after Carter, as it does to Biden-bloodied day.
Camp David was the exception.
Of course neither Begin nor Sadat gave a shit about Palestinians. No Arabs and no Israelis ever have. They just wanted to remove their militaries from each other’s faces so Sadat could go back to repressing his people and Begin could go back to repressing Palestinians in the rest of the occupied territories. Peace with Egypt was to be the recalibration of repression in the West bank and Gaza. Carter, so often naive, looked past that, too, thinking Camp David was a start, not an end. (Clinton repeated the mistake with the deservedly doomed Oslo accords a decade and a half later.) He took at face value both men’s promises that they’d turn to the Palestinian problem some other time. Maybe Sadat meant it. It’s doubtful. It’s certain Begin, who called Palestinians “beasts walking on two legs” while Rafael Eitan, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, called them “drugged roaches in a bottle,” didn’t mean it.
Sadat was assassinated for signing the Camp David accords. Reagan was elected. The Middle East bored him once he vaguely learned it wasn’t to the right of the Midwest. He cleared the way for more unlawful Israeli colonization of the West Bank.
Begin took advantage, going on an orgy of “settlements”–a sanitizing euphemism that reduces land theft to something like summer camp and that the servile American press uses still. The orgy accelerated under Sharon and Netanyahu, with American money. Begin and Sharon in 1982 invaded Lebanon (with American weaponry) in the deadliest of all Israeli invasions until then, kicking off a 20-year occupation. Begin thought he was getting rid of the PLO. The invasion inseminated the more brutal and indigenous Hezbollah, provoking yet more wars–1996, 2006, 2024–with America turning a blind eye and thousands of Lebanese civilians paying the price, as always.
The 1994 peace between Israel and Jordan gave Israel still freer rein in the West Bank, once the brief hopes of the Oslo accords–which were supposed to lead to an autonomous Palestinian state–were discarded with Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination by an Israeli terrorist a year later–a Jewish ultra-nationalist, but really the twin of Sadat’s assassins. The so-called two-state solution to which every American president paid lip service and Israel never took seriously died about then, reinforcing what Carter called, with unfortunate restraint, Israeli apartheid.
At home, Carter’s presidency is remembered as a failure. Carter biographer Kai Bird has discredited the myth, documenting too many accomplishments to count. Not that this amnesiac country is interested in fact. The two crises that overwhelmed Carter’s legacy were the oil shock of 1979 and its subsequent inflation, and the Iranian hostage crisis, when 53 Americans were held hostage for 444 days in Tehran after the fall of the Shah. The oil shock was not Carter’s doing. The hostage crisis was.
The Shah was one of the most vain and mass-murdering leaders of the 20th century, a sort of dandy Idi Amin. He was the mutant child of an abominable union between Winston Churchill and the CIA in 1953. He’d been flattered, financed and fellated by every American president since Eisenhower on the cynical calculation that tyrannizing over 40 million Iranians in exchange for blocking Soviet control of the Persian Gulf was ok with them. We finally paid the price. The Shah was ousted by the identically reprehensible but also vengeful Khomeini.
Carter despised the Shah and initially resisted for most of a year letting him into the United States. The Shah was now himself battling what he’d been to his country: cancer. Carter’s aides and Henry Kissinger (as always) kept up the pressure. Kissinger threatened to undermine Carter’s arms control treaty with the Soviets by condemning SALT II before the Senate.
Just as Carter was building what seemed like constructive relations with the new Iranian regime, he gave in and let the Shah check into New York Hospital, despite warnings from the American embassy in Tehran that it would endanger the staff there. It was the single worst decision of Carter’s presidency. Nine days after the Shah entered the United States, Iranian militants took the Americans hostage.
But for one more error–again giving in to hawks with an attempted rescue that ended in disaster in the Iranian desert, with the death of eight Americans–Carter handled the crisis with admirable diplomacy, refusing escalations to safeguard the life of the hostages even at the cost of his plummeting poll numbers.
He might have won their release but for the Reagan campaign repeating the Nixon campaign’s treachery against Johnson in 1968. Nixon go-betweens carried out secret negotiations with the enemy for electoral gain. So did Reagan’s with Iran. It was a preview of Oliver North’s secret negotiations and illegal arms deals with the regime a few years later as Reagan secretly siphoned millions of dollars and weapons to Nicaraguan terrorists he called “freedom fighters.”
As Kai Bird wrote, “now we have good evidence that Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager Bill Casey made a secret trip to Madrid in the summer of 1980, where he may have met with a representative of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and thus prolonged the hostage crisis. If this is true, such interference in the hostage negotiations sought to deny the Carter administration an October surprise, a release of the hostages late in the campaign, and it was dirty politics and a raw deal for the American hostages.”
Of course it’s true: Khomeini released the hostages minutes after Reagan was inaugurated, the day the most scandal-free administration of the 20th century gave way to the most scandal-ridden. It was Fantasyland again in (white) America.
Americans like their country to be run as a theme park. Annoyances like reality, responsibility and malaise have no place. Neither did Carter. The fantasists have been taking their revenge on him ever since, even as Carter’s legend grew in the 43 years since his presidency. He became the busiest ex-president in history, if still the least celebrated and the most shunned. The great conciliator out-hustled some of his predecessors’ actual presidencies (notably the senescent Reagan, Trump and all those zeros between Wilson and FDR), and of course out-living two of those who followed him. I thought he had a good chance of outliving Biden and Trump II. He’s decided otherwise. His one hundred years of solitude are over.
As for King, my dog, I’m glad I renamed him. A year after I left Lebanon he, too, was assassinated. I wouldn’t have wanted to have Jimmy’s death on my conscience. My poor dog was running after a neighbor’s chickens. The neighbor, Khalil, shot him dead. The same neighbor who not long afterward shot his own son, Munir–who had been one of my closest friends–dead. Khalil was finally imprisoned.
Lebanon, like the rest of the Middle East, could have used a few dozen Carter Centers: “Waging peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope.” So could the United States, a nation proudly and vindictively becoming more Begin than Sadat, more Khalil than Carter, by the day.
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Lights! Camera! Activism! The Film That’s Rooting for Change in Palestine—Literally
If a film like Where Olive Trees Weep can inspire thousands to plant olive trees in a conflict zone, what else might this model achieve when applied to other global challenges?
Dec 08, 2024
We’ve all seen movies that tug at our heartstrings, maybe even prompt a tear or two. But every so often, a film does more than just make us feel—it makes us act. From saving dolphins to battling climate change, certain films have ignited movements that leap from the screen into the real world. The latest addition to this unexpected genre? Olive trees.
Yes, olive trees. In the West Bank, no less.
Where Olive Trees Weep is a recent documentary that delves into the hardships and resilience of the Palestinian people. It has captivated viewers around the world—not just emotionally, but in a way that has moved them to action. This isn’t just a story on screen. With the help of everyday people, it has mobilized a movement that’s planting 1,500 olive trees in one of the most contested regions on the planet.
The Intersection of Art, Activism, and Agriculture
The filmmakers behind Where Olive Trees Weep didn’t just want to connect with audiences emotionally—they wanted to inspire real change. Before the film even started rolling, viewers were invited to donate to plant an olive tree in the West Bank. What began as a cinematic experience became a grassroots movement, turning passive viewership into direct action.
Every tree cut down is a blow to the Palestinian people, but every tree planted is a defiant stand for their heritage, their survival, and their future.
These trees—planted by thousands of people around the world—are doing more than taking root. They’re providing Palestinian farmers with a sustainable source of income in a region where food security and land ownership are perpetually under siege. The trees will generate $200,000 annually in olive oil sales, creating economic stability for communities that desperately need it.
But more than that, the olive trees are a symbol of defiance. In a place where Israeli settlers destroyed 4,000 trees this year alone, planting an olive tree is an act of resistance—a stand against oppression, colonialism, and environmental degradation. Like Kenya’s Green Belt Movement, where tree planting became a form of resistance against both environmental destruction and political oppression, these olive trees are symbols of resilience and survival in the face of adversity.
The Olive Branch Strikes Back
Since the movement began, six new Freedom Farms, each home to 250 olive trees, have sprung up in the West Bank. These trees, which will live for up to 500 years, will support 15 generations of farmers, provide food and economic stability, and scrub 54 million pounds of carbon from the air. That’s the long-term vision. For now, they’re putting down roots where few dare to dig.
In Palestinian culture, olive trees are more than just crops—they’re living legacies. They represent peace, wisdom, and deep-rooted connections to the land. Every tree cut down is a blow to the Palestinian people, but every tree planted is a defiant stand for their heritage, their survival, and their future.
As settler violence escalates, this year’s olive harvest was the most dangerous in recent memory. The Palestinian Farmers Union documented over 700 attacks on farmers during the harvest. The union met with diplomats from around the world, urging them to pressure the occupation. Yet it’s the viewers of this movie, not the politicians, who have replanted a third of the olive trees lost to settler violence. (When was the last time a speech planted anything?)
And Palestinian farmers, supported by this global tree-planting movement, are standing their ground. “Protecting the olive harvest is more than safeguarding crops; it’s about defending our culture, our heritage, and the roots of our existence,” says Abbas Milhem, president of the Palestinian Farmers Union and one of the key figures in this initiative.
From Reel to Real: How Films Are Planting More Than Ideas
Where Olive Trees Weep isn’t the first film to make waves beyond the cinema. The Cove shone a harsh light on dolphin hunting in Japan, sparking global efforts to end the practice. An Inconvenient Truth made climate change impossible to ignore. And Blood Diamond made us rethink where our jewelry comes from. But what makes Where Olive Trees Weep stand out is how it transformed viewers into activists before they even pressed play. By inviting people to plant trees in real time, the film didn’t just tell a story—it became part of the story.
As the world faces relentless crises—from Sudan to Ukraine to Gaza—storytelling has never been more critical. If a film can inspire thousands to plant olive trees in a conflict zone, what else might this model achieve when applied to other global challenges?
Moviegoers have shown that even the smallest acts—like donating $20 to plant a tree—can have profound ripple effects. When stories are paired with action, they become blueprints for real change.
As for the Palestinian olive trees standing tall in the face of destruction? They’re living proof that sometimes the most powerful act of resistance is just putting down roots.
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