A convicted criminal who repeatedly quotes Hitler has become the President again. His Vice President, Elon Musk, is the richest man on Earth who just hit his adoring MAGA fans with two Sieg Heils which right-wing media and ADL have spun as an “awkward gesture.”
Meanwhile, the alleged ceasefire in Gaza seems more like a temporary pause for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s life-long goal of taking everything from the river to the sea for Israel. One of Trump’s major donors, billionaire Miriam Adelson, gave him $100 million on the condition that Israel would be allowed to annex the West Bank. Earlier this week, Israel raided Jenin in a “significant military operation” and has so far killed 10 people. This is in addition to the 45,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, that Israel has killed in Gaza over the past 15 months in what Amnesty International calls a “genocide.”
In America, Trump just removed sanctions on violent West Bank settlers and pardoned 1,600 MAGA supporters who participated in a violent insurrection. His nominee for Ambassador to the UN, Rep. Elise Stefanik, just said Jews have a Biblical right to the occupied West Bank, and his Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a white Christian nationalist, said there’s no such thing as an occupation.
What will the embrace of lawlessness, apartheid, and genocide do to the region and the soul of the American Jewish community that is torn with Israel’s advance towards violent ethno-nationalism? What hope is there for Palestinians who remain occupied?
Author and professor Peter Beinart of the excellent Beinart Notebook Substack has written a bold and sobering new book entitled, “Being Jewish After The Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning,” which is releasing next week. He joins me on Chai Talk to unpack what exactly this reckoning will look like both for Palestinians and Jews and how the situation will get much, much worse under a radical Trump Administration.
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