‘They’re moving the debate’

Joining me now is Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times and author of the forthcoming book Chasing Hope, A Reporter’s Life. Peter Beinart joins us as well. He’s editor at large for the magazine Jewish Currents, and he’s an MSNBC political analyst and the author of the 2012 book The Crisis of Zionism. Good morning to you gentlemen. Nick, I want to just ask you a little bit more about a a very thoughtful column that I quoted a little bit from that you wrote about. This is not the typical stuff that we’re hearing these days. It’s either critical of or in support of one side of the protests or the counter protests on campus. You’re speaking specifically to the effectiveness of the protests and the dangers of allowing your protests to be either overtaken or influenced by unsavory matters, including and specifically anti-Semitism. That’s right. I mean, look, I agree with the aim of the protesters and that I’m deeply critical of the Israeli prosecution of the war in Gaza and President Biden’s support for it. I admire student protests. I think that’s an impulse to make a better world, to get engaged with, with suffering abroad. But at the end of the day, the metric that matters is, are you actually helping Gazans? And I’m afraid that the way many of the protests, not all of them, many of the protests around the country have been conducted, undermines their own goal. And, you know, I’m shaped a little bit by my memories as a kid of the Vietnam War, where I think the protesters were fundamentally right about the Vietnam War. But I think there was a backlash that ended up actually making that war longer in ways that certainly did not help the Vietnamese. Peter, I’m interested in your take on this because both of you are not people who historically would have been defined by a dichotomy of being pro Israel or pro Palestinian, because both of you existed in a world where I’ve known you both for years. You’re both pro pro Israel and pro Palestinian at the same time. Talk to me about what you think the effect of some of the the most photo worthy parts of some of these these demonstrations have been. Look, there is definitely a rise in anti-Semitism. Tragically, there’s always a rise in anti-Semitism when there’s more conflict in Israel, Palestine. And there are also slogans coming out of this, some of these protests that I really dislike. But I think I am more optimistic than Nick about the positive effect they’re having. Because what we’re seeing is that at quite a number of universities now, they have made a deal to have a vote on divestment. And what that means is that in the fall we are going to be having a public debate that we have not really had in this country before about university complicity in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, just as we’re also starting to have a debate about conditioning U.S. military aid, which also was not something we were doing before these protest movements. So while I agree that there are parts of the slogans and some of the rhetoric I don’t like, and I agree that there are people sometimes around these movements who may even cross the line into anti-Semitism, which is terrible, I actually think that they’re moving the debate in a way that’s important. Let’s talk about how that could happen, Nick. And I don’t know if you agree with Peter on that. If you don’t, that’s I’d like to hear about that. But is there a way that these protests can pivot so that when you, when you compare it to the experience of the, the Vietnam protests, it doesn’t end up pushing public opinion in the wrong direction, but in fact does do what Peter is describing, bringing things into the debate that deserve to be in the debate? I think it’s possible that there would be that pivot. I think I’m, you know, I I would like to believe that as Peter says, there will be this debate in the fall about the underlying issues of the American relationship with Israel. But you know, I right now we’re not talking about the World Food Program warning that there is full blown famine in Gaza. We’re not talking about the impending perhaps invasion of Rafa. We’re talking about what’s happening on American campuses and anti-Semitism. And I do think that there is that element of distraction from you know, the the real crisis there. I also, I think I’m a little more skeptical about the how divestment would help. And I think a lot depends there on the mechanism of divestment and what companies are you divesting from. But you know, I’m in Oregon right now. Portland State protesters were demanding cutting all relations with Boeing because of course Boeing makes fighter planes that Israel uses. And then it turned out that PS Portland State does not have any Boeing stock and the only relationship is that Boeing funds scholarships for needy PSU students and you know does that help if if that relationship is cut. So I’m I’m generally I would like to believe that there will be that you know that fuller debate and maybe there will be in that you know to that extent it would help but I’m I’m not so optimistic Peter let’s talk about this there there there was for a long time this this BDS movement that that did talk about about curtailing investment in in Israeli companies and and it was a it was an economic protest movement. It was an entirely nonviolent movement. And the opposition to that movement was not only fierce, but it was the beginnings of the allegation that criticism of Israeli policy, Israeli government policy by Americans and by American students was anti-Semitic. And I remember having this debate with people years ago to say this is an economic protest. They’re basically saying don’t buy the stuff. If you don’t want to buy the stuff or if you don’t think you’re supporting it, why are we shutting that discussion down? What’s the line between the the objection to BDS and what we’re seeing today? Well, I think one way this may go is that people may not actually craft these divestment proposals purely vis a vis Israel. They may find ways of crafting them and some of the students have done this to talk about companies that are involved in military acts of with that involve military human rights abuses that don’t specifically single Israel out but actually include Israel. You know, along with other countries, the the, you know, you know, there are aspects of the BDS movement that I would not support. But I do think that it is important, especially in the wake of this horrifying act of armed resistance against civilians that we saw on October 7th by Hamas, to recognize that Palestinians as a people under oppression are going to resist oppression. And that it’s important that we give people avenues for ethical and particularly nonviolent protests. And if you shut those down, you shut down efforts at the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and the UN, and you shut down efforts at boycotting, which is a long American tradition, then you are giving people, you are not giving people avenues. And you are empowering people like the people who did the terrible massacre on October 7th, because they will say, well, the other efforts didn’t work. So I think that’s important to keep in mind when we think about this question of boycotts and sanctions and conditioning military aid. Nick, I want to warn our viewers that I’m going to put up a photo that you published as part of your column. And it’s a difficult photo to see, but you wrote about a photo that was taken by your friend who was a surgeon at a hospital in northern Gaza. I’m going to quote from you, you say Doctor Samatar was preparing to go into the operating room one day when a woman called him over and asked him to photograph her young son Karam, in his bed in the ICU. Sam went over and only then realized that the boy was dead. Every time staff wanted to cover him fully with a blanket, she would flip it back and say no, Sam told me. And she would start talking to him, asking him where he went. Here’s a better look at the photo. Tell me why this was important to you, what it clarified to you about the war, and why you chose to make a photo so central to your column. You know, I’ve just been frustrated by the lack of efficacy of my writing about Gaza and in general, the writing about Gaza as a whole. Look, you know, more than 14,000 children are believed to have been killed in Gaza. United Nations says that a child is killed or injured there every 10 minutes, but that’s the number. And I think it’s easier for us to tune that out. And at the end of the day, I wanted to remind people of the stakes of this as it goes on. And the stakes are little kids like that, families like that, a mom mourning for a child. You multiply the grief in that Photo by 14,000 and you begin to understand the devastation in Gaza and our complicity in it. Gentlemen, I appreciate the nuance and complexity that you both outlined in this conversation this morning, because the things that are going on over there and in this country do require a great deal of complex thinking. So thank you to both of you. Nick Kristof is a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times. Peter Beinart is the editor at large of Jewish Currents and an MSNBC political analyst and the author of the book The Crisis of Zionism.