Category: Activism

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Gratitude, language, Mindset, People Helping People, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,
I went through a course from Pachamama Alliance called “Awakening the Dreamer,” a prerequisite for an activist training course I signed up for.
Near the end, I was asked, “Identify and write down the actions you will take to express your commitment to creating a thriving, just, and sustainable future.
And, for added effectiveness, include the date by which you will complete the action.”
My response has a lot to do with who I am, who I have been, who I hope to become, and why I do what I do. I’m sharing it in full:
  • Continue to work on immigration justice through Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice (ongoing since 2019).
  • Continue my career path of showing business that meaningfully addressing climate change, hunger/poverty, racism/otherism, war, etc. through core products, services, and mindset can be a success path (ongoing since 2003).
  • Continue to nurture democratic impulses in my own town/region and help some of them run for local office (ongoing since 1983).
  • Continue using my writing, speaking, and organizing skills to spotlight important issues locally, regionally, nationally, and globally (ongoing since 1972)–and strengthening these skills through continuous learning (which is why I signed up for this training).
  • Continue to be an activist who shows up to make a difference and be counted whenever practical (and sometimes when it’s not).
  • Continue to act on my belief that each of us can make a difference, and that difference is greatly amplified by working with others.
  • Continue to celebrate the victories I help achieve or passively support.
  • Continue to find ways to evolve as a person: to be more supportive of others, to recognize barriers others may face, and to face new experiences with gratitude and enjoyment.
None of these have completed-by dates. Most will not be completed in my lifetime.. I will do this work as long as I can.
<End of my response>
Three quick takeaways I want to leave you with:
  1. Each of us can have an impact, especially if we go about our work with focus and determination
  2. That work is amplified when we collaborate with others in an organized way
  3. We are all growing and changing and evolving–ideally, into our best selves; that journey never stops

For the past few years, I’ve been doing Chris Brogan’s exercise of picking three words to guide my year. In 2020, they were Clarity (20/20 vision), Justice, and (perhaps presciently) Healing. Last year, Rethink, Pivot, Transform.

This year, I’ve picked a single word after reading this article by my friend and mentor Sam Horn. My Word for the Year is EVOLVE–and it’s an acronym:

Enthusiasm

Vision

Optimism

Leverage (getting my message in front of more influencers, and more people generally)

Victories along the way (which we achieve through both small and large steps toward a more just, eco-friendly society)

Evolution (a better world)

 

And how are you framing YOUR 2022? May it be a blessed one for you your loved ones, and all of us.

 

 

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Environment, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
George Lakey, nonviolent theorist, author, and activist, speaks on “How We Win, 2018

I listened to a great 2018 talk, “How We Win,” by one of my many mentors, nonviolence theorist George Lakey (that’s the first chunk. You’ll see a link on that page to Part 2.). How We Win is also the name of his latest book at the time.

Lakey sees the increasing polarization of modern US society as a forge: a way of generating the heat necessary to create lasting social change (toward freedom and equality or toward authoritarianism—“the forge doesn’t care”).

This is not a new trend. The Scandinavian countries had their huge social revolution of the 1930s in times of great polarization (something he chronicled in his earlier book, Viking Economics). The trick is to harness that energy and channel it toward gaining mass support. He walks his talk, too; in the summer and fall of 2020, he led or co-led numerous workshops on what to do if the Trumpists tried to seize power after losing the election, training thousands of people.

He charges us to express our best concepts—not just what’s wrong with the system but the vision to make it better—in ways that feel like common sense to working-class people who want the system to work for them, too. After all, most of us actually do want a system that promotes equal access, a fair economy, and real democracy. We have to show them that our vision “has a spot for you,” even if that “you” finds the movement’s tactics disruptive and uncomfortable.

But he says progressives have largely lost that vision since the 1970s; we need to get it back. If we can get the diverse movements working together to confront their common opponents, we foster an intersectional “movement of movements” capable of creating real change—as the Scandinavians did then, with farmers, unionists, and students joining together to drive the moneyed elite from power. He warns us that polarization will get worse, because economic inequality is built so strongly into the culture. He says that we should consider organizing campaigns as “training for [nonviolent] combat.”

And we should expect those campaigns to take a while. Campaigns are well-planned (but adaptable) and sustained over time. It might take years, but you can win. One-offs (like the Women’s March at Trump’s inauguration) don’t typically accomplish change on their own. Traffic disruptions don’t make change; they just piss potential allies off. Disrupting banking operations is much more strategic because the bank is the perpetrator of the evil. How is the specific goal of the campaign advanced by this action? If it doesn’t advance the cause, don’t do it. A campaign he was involved with moved $5 million into credit unions and cooperative enterprises in one campaign that started in a living room and grew to encompass 13 states.

Oppression is only one lens we can look at things through—there are many others (he didn’t elaborate). The elite seeks to divide us (by color, gender, values, etc.)—but canny organizers look for the cracks in those divisions, and expand them. And stays optimistic, not getting stuck in “can’t be done” but figuring out how to do it.

Campaigns often start small. We can build our skills when the stakes are lower and make our mistakes then. Later, as the big challenges arise, we know how to handle them. You can lose a lot of battles and still win the campaign (eventually). And any tactic will be greeted with “this will never work” skepticism. But “Anyone who is arguing for impossibility” should remember the Mississippi Summer volunteers. When news got out of the abduction of Goodman, Schwerner, and Cheney, Lakey (a trainer of volunteers for trhat movement) expected most of the next volunteer wave to abandon their commitments—but nearly all of them stayed, mentored by Black SNCC activists who had been living with the overt racism for decades.

The best-known antidote to terror is social solidarity. Get close to people. Organize campaigns not just with those who share your goals but those who are “willing to be human with you.” Make your peace with the personal risk, face it head-on. We risk by driving on the highway, we risk by NOT meaningfully addressing climate change. Accepting the possibility that you might die in service of the common good is liberating (and it’s not the worst way to die).

SNCC survived in the Deep South without guns; they would not have survived with them. Erica Chenoweth shows us that nonviolent movements have twice the success rate of violent ones.

Framing is crucial. The Movement for Black Lives put out a mission statement that was so well framed, even American Friends Service Committee signed on [I think it might be this one].

If you want innovation, conflict helps to get you there. Yet, conflict resolution is a crucial skill, and it’s expanded enormously in recent decadesWe need those tools and people who will jump into the fray (to use them). But if our tools are too highly structured, you need to add interventions in informal settings.

Lakey expects surveillance and isn’t worried about it: “I think it’s a wonderful thing. We take that as pride: we are so important that they put staff time and energy into knowing what we’re up to—so we’re making a difference. Gandhi told India, if you gave up fear of them, the British would be gone. If people spread fears about Trump, invoice him for the hours because you’re doing his work.”

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, poverty, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , ,

At a recent conference, Jane Goodall said,

We are repeatedly told to ‘think globally, act locally’ but it should be the other way around. If you think globally first, you’ll get depressed. But if you think about what you can do locally, if you take action with friends and find that you’re making a difference, that’ll give you more hope and make you to take more action.

I love the idea of acting locally and have done it (and written and spoken about it) for decades. My biggest success in 50 years as an activist was a local campaign that saved a threatened mountain. Your chances of winning are often higher, it’s easy to reach those most affected, and you can parley your success into much greater influence on the future direction of your community. And yes, it can be empowering.

BUT…we also have to do the long, hard work on the big-picture stuff. It took 100 years of hard organizing to end legalized slavery for non-criminals in the US (and by the way, the exemption for convicted criminals has been used shamefully in too many instances). It took decades to get national civil rights legislation, the right of women and people of color to vote, the right of same-sex couples to marry…pretty much anything worth fighting for. And sometimes, even large-scale victories happen surprisingly quickly. As an example, the safe energy movement took only five or six years to make nuclear power unbuildable.

And those local victories can inspire the national and international work–which often gets done most effectively at the local level, by existing organizations and coalitions.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Entrepreneurship, Environment, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Mindset, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , ,

I love this post from the Changemaker Institute, How to Change The World By Meeting People Where They Care. I love it because it approaches social change through a marketing lens. It starts by revisiting the famous Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court Case of 1967, which struck down longstanding bans on marrying across the color line. Pointing out how Richard and Mildred Loving got people to care, the post goes on to ask how to get people to care about what you’re doing–and answers with a business-oriented focus on outcomes of your social change action, which you arrive at through these questions (quoting directly from the post):

  • What does it take to get an investor to believe in your business and invest in your mission?
  • What does it take to get customers to believe in your product or service and invest in it?
  • What does it take to get your employees to believe in your company’s mission and invest time and energy in supporting it?
  • What does it take to get people to support your vision for a better world? [end of quote]
Seet spot and 3 words posters in Shel's office, where he sees them every day
Shel’s inspirational posters describing his “sweet spot” institutional mission and his 2020 and 2021 sets of three words to inspire his year

This intersection is so important to me that on the wall behind my computer monitor, where I see it many times a day, I have a poster that reminds me, “I help businesses find their unique sweet spot where profitability meets environmental and social progress.” It’s important enough that I’ve written four books making the profitability case for business to deeply embrace social change and planetary healing, and have also written about the success lessons activists can take from business. It’s the basis for much of my consulting and speaking.

To take it a step further: I see getting out of the silo, rubbing shoulders with people who are not like you and examining different ideas from different industries or different sectors of the same industry as crucial is testing your own ideas, sharpening them enough to really get inside someone’s head and cause enough discomfort with the status quo to embrace the brighter future you propose. Whether you’re marketing a business or a movement, that’s a pretty important thing to do.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Gratitude, language, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

I wish I’d written this wonderful piece, “Ten Ways to Confront the Climate Crisis Without Losing Hope” by Rebecca Solnit. It’s part of a new series in The Guardian called “Reconstruction After Covid” (thus the UK spellings on a piece by an American author).

It covers a lot of ground: optimism, hope, organizing mass movements, climate justice, the role of indigenous people in todays struggles, and much more. I found it well-worth the 15 minutes or so it took to read the whole thing.
 
Three short excerpts from this long article:
1] I have often met people who think the time I have spent around progressive movements was pure dutifulness or dues-paying, when in fact it was a reward in itself – because to find idealism amid indifference and cynicism is that good.
 
2] [Halting the Keystone XL pipeline] was not a gift from Biden; it was a debt being paid to the climate activists who had made it an important goal. Patience counts, and change is not linear. It radiates outward like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond. It matters in ways no one anticipates. Indirect consequences can be some of the most important ones. [She goes on to trace the Standing Rock movement and AOC’s decision to run for Congress to earlier struggles that appeared, in the moment, to fail. These types of indirect sparks to deep change are something I’ve often written and spoken about, including this post about how one environmental justice action changed the world.]
 
3] We have victories. Some of them are very large, and are why your life is the shape it is. The victories are reminders that we are not powerless, and our work is not futile. The future is not yet written, but by reading the past, we see patterns that can help us shape that future.
One small quibble: while I agree with Solnit that individual lifestyle changes are far less consequential than mass organizing, and that the solutions have to really reinvent the entire worlds of business and government–I do think the lifestyle choices, the changes we make in the ways we are on this planet, should not be trivialized or dismissed. 
 
Via Robert Hubbell’s always-optimistic Today’s Edition newsletter, which I read before breakfast every weekday morning. Hubbell is a champion of the Democrats and far more centrist than I am. But I love that he is always a cheerleader for what went right and a strong advocate of the need to keep organizing and working for change when things don’t go according to our wishes.
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Business-general, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Green Marketing, Greenwashing, Innovation, localism/locavore, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Talking to the Other Side, Technology Tagged with , , , , ,

While searching “electric lawn service near me,” I found this CNN story from 2000 miles away that describes an eco-village sold down the river by the new owner of the land.

It is very unfortunate that the original developer didn’t get any guarantees that a buyer would maintain the fossil-free commitment written into the sale documents. Nonetheless, I think a creative and skilled attorney could make a number of different legal arguments that could force the developer to honor the agreement. Could the Environmental Defense Fund? perhaps take this on? It would be a great precedent to say that a community developed specifically as an eco-community could not then be put at the mercy of eco-hostile development.

As a non-lawyer, all I can do is speculate about the arguments a lawyer might use to block the conversion of the acquired parcels to fossil fuels (I have no idea if any of these would hold up in court and I am not presenting this as legal advice). Arguments could be made about such harms as

  • Introducing new health risks (especially to children)
  • Negative progress on climate that goes against International, US,Colorado, and neighborhood climate goals
  • Adverse possession (a doctrine that gives rights to squatters in certain circumstances)
  • The deliberate destruction of a cohesive intentional community
  • And of course, about consumers’ rights: this could clearly be seen as bait-and-switch: buying into a community with a stated purpose, and having that purpose violated, even shredded.

After all, a group of children have sued for climate justice, and the US Supreme Court recognized that their suit had validity (there have been many conflicting decisions on this case, however).

But the courts aren’t the only recourse. I do know something about organizing movements, and these neighbors should be organizing a movement. To list a few among many possibilities, they could be:

  • Organizing mass protests outside the developer’s office
  • Saturating the local paper with letters to the editor and op-eds
  • Enlisting allies in powerful environmental organizations, of which Colorado has no shortage
  • Protesting at the capital in Denver that their rights are being taken away
  • Contacting the press ahead of and after all of these events
  • Physically but nonviolently blocking attempts to connect the pipelines (note: this is illegal civil disobedience and participants might be subject to arrest)
  • Researching obscure laws that might provide tools that can successfully block the connection
  • Organizing boycotts and other public shamings of the developer

Plus, I really have to wonder what the developer is thinking. Eco-friendly homes are in high demand, can often sell for more than the price of comparable fossil-powered homes, and prove a skill set that many homeowners want. After all, people moved from other states just to participate in this community. And forcing eco-hostile housing development into an eco-friendly community is a recipe for public relations disaster and a bad, bad reputation.

Why not simply stop, think about the benefits of keeping this community identity, and use it as a marketing tool? That would make so much more sense than risking ongoing hostility, a ruined reputation and possibly much worse.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Diversity, language, Politics, Psychology, Talking to the Other Side

Can a liberal and a conservative survive in a long-term marriage? Rick Hotchner and Barbara Thomas have managed to make it work for more than a decade, and discuss their relationship in some deep sharing on this interview.

Here are some of my takeaways from their conversation:

  • “Have the conversation about HOW you talk to each other about big disagreements.”
  • “Try to understand people, not to change them”
  • “Toxicity is NOT inevitable” and you don’t have to engage with “snipers” who try to bait you.

Not surprisingly, the two are involved in Braver Angels, a group that exists to foster dialogue across the political divide.

This is an issue important enough to me that I have a category in this blog called “Talking to the Other Side.” If you click on the tab with that label, you’ll see all my posts on that topic. You’ll also see a whole lot of discourse between liberals/progressives and conservatives over the last many years of my Facebook feed. And yes, I go to as many Braver Angels events as I can.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Environment, Innovation, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Joel Makower, Executive Director of GreenBiz.com, posted a thoughtful article about creating systemic change–and actively requested the wisdom of the collective mind. And Gil Friend of Natural Logic devoted an hour and a half to an open discussion of the same topic (It will probably be called “Living Between Worlds #2.5 and it isn’t posted yet as I write this the day the conversation took place).

This is not a coincidence; Gil sent the link to Joel’s article around before the call to everyone who registered for it.

I found the article provocative enough that I posted this comment (and the Living Between Worlds open discussion was so fascinating that I plan to listen again once the video is available):

 

Good piece, Joel. You’ll be glad to know Gil Friend @gfriend kept his promise to discuss this topic in the monthly “Living Between Worlds” brain trust Zoom.

I come at systemic change through a lifetime of weaving together my two “split personalities” as both a marketer specializing in green and social change companies/products/services and as an environmental, social justice, and peace activist whose credits include starting the movement that saved a threatened local mountain.

Through the nonviolent social change lens of people like George Lakey and Erica Chenoweth, I look at institutional structures: how they prop up the system, create major barriers to change, and ultimately fail because they fail to change–and where they are weak and shaky and vulnerable. Sometimes they collapse with surprising speed (think about the Arab Spring a decade ago, or the government of Afghanistan just in the last ten days. Sometimes, it takes decades. The Quakers targeted slavery for about a century before it was illegalized.

But the marketer in me says systemic change is far more likely to succeed if the effort was made to change popular opinion first. The US civil rights movement created the opinion shift that made civil rights legislation not only possible but enforceable. Opposition to the Vietnam war was strong enough that LBJ felt a need to withdraw from his re-election campaign, years before the troops finally came home. And when we did Save the Mountain here in Western Massachusetts 21 years ago, our first task was to change the “this is terrible, but there’s nothing we can do” mentality. Once we shifted that, the victory was very quick.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Ethics in Government, localism/locavore, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Open letter to the government of the City of Northampton, Massachusetts

Context: Residents of a tiny one-block street called Warfield Place have been fighting to preserve a line of beautiful cherry trees planted several decades ago. The city (pop. 28,726) has claimed  that the street needed to be redone and these trees are at the end of their useful life, while residents said the trees could easily survive for a few more years–and that many other streets with more traffic and worse infrastructure conditions deserved higher priority. Both sides have brought in arborists who support their positions. The residents recently brought in support from national leaders in the Buddhist community, and ordained the trees as Buddhist priests. Neighbors were actively negotiating with the city, as well as seeking help in the courts. Thursday morning, the city brought in heavy equipment and a large police presence and destroyed the trees.

For the numerous stories chronicling the controversy over the past several months, visit http://gazettenet.com and use the search tool at the top to look for “warfield place cherry trees” (nonsubscribers get five free articles per month). See more pictures of the trees in bloom taken by Shel Horowtiz (author of this open letter and owner of this blog) and protest signs at (20+) Facebook

A Warfield Place cherry tree in bloom, May 2, 2021. Photo by Shel Horowitz.

A Warfield Place cherry tree--close-up of flower, May 2, 2021. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
A Warfield Place cherry tree–close-up of flower, May 2, 2021. Photo by Shel Horowitz.

It was shocking to read in yesterday morning’s Daily Hampshire Gazette that the sacred cherry trees the community has fought so hard to preserve that it actually ordained them as Buddhist priests–the trees that hundreds of local residents and many others from farther afield, including several of national stature, signed petitions and joined protests and wrote letters to the editor to save–were torn down with no warning, even while the city was aware that a judge was considering a restraining order, and even while the city and the residents of the street were still negotiating.
The trees were murdered at 9:00 a.m. and the restraining order that would have prevented their untimely death was given at noon.
Why the rush? Why the need to act unilaterally when many people were willing to work out a solution that made sense for all parties: the city, the residents, and of course, the trees?
This is the legacy of Public Works Director Donna LaScaleia and Mayor David Narkewicz. All the considerable good work of the 10-year Narkewicz administration will not sustain its former reputation for progressive policies and fostering democracy. When people remember this adinistration, they will not remember how it stood against racism and for inclusion, how it was a champion of addressing climate change. Their memories will be rooted in this horrible and utterly avoidable incident.
It was an attack not only on these beloved trees, but an attack on democracy–on the ability of people to feel they have influence over their own lives, and their ability to have their concerns listened to, and, hopefully, acted on.
And it was also an attack on separation of powers in government; the city was aware that a judge was considering the injunction that was eventually granted (too late), but couldn’t be bothered to let that process play out.
And of course, removing living trees goes against the Narkewicz administration’s long-stated goals of mitigating climate change locally. Trees are far and away our most effective weapons against climate catastrophe.
I think what may have happened was a felt need to be right at all costs–not to admit that there could have been one of several other ways forward that would have had far more positive outcomes, such as:
  • Harnessing the neighbors’ considerable energy into a working committee that would actively participate WITH the Department of Public Works Director to develop solutions that worked for the city and the residents. Even if the ultimate outcome were the same, the residents would have owned it.
  • Moving Warfield Place off the calendar for a few more years until the trees died naturally, while adding plantings of newer trees so when that day came, the street would have a decent tree-canopy-in-process.
  • Redirecting the construction funds to a city block whose need for repair was undisputed.
This need to be right, to save face, culminated in an extreme wrong. The city engaged in a “process” that not only disenfranchised the Warfield Street residents, ending in a hostile unilateral action–it undermined Northampton’s reputation as a citadel of democracy, a place that values its citizens’ public discourse and involvement. This violation of residents’ real concerns makes it harder for the next administration to get people to even trust–let alone become involved in–city government. And the city has even created a construct where it faces accusations of a hate crime–even though Mayor Narkewicz spent so much of his decade as mayor creating a wonderful climate of acceptance and even embrace of diversity.
It’s very sad. It’s irreversible–the trees are gone, democracy was seriously weakened, and the city’s reputation is in tatters–and it was completely avoidable. I expected better of Northampton and am deeply disappointed.
While we can’t bring the trees back, and this action has done potentially permanent harm to Northampton’s civic virtue, it is still possible to atone. I ask in all seriousness: How, specifically, will the city make restitution? How will this administration restore confidence in the city? How will the city offset the negative climate impacts of the tree destruction? And how will the city make the residents and neighbors of Warfield Place whole again? It won’t be easy, especially this close to the end of this administration, but it has to be done, and done very soon. What exactly is the plan?

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Ethics in Government, Ethics: General, language, Peace and War, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Jews, who were forced away from Israel/Palestine more than 2000 years ago, have the “right of return” automatically. They can come and instantly claim Israeli citizenship, and the government helps them resettle–even offering intensive Hebrew language instruction. But Palestinians, who were only forced off their land in 1948, have no such right–even though some of those people are still alive and no one is more than four generations into the exile. Meanwhile, in many parts of the country, Palestinians can’t get building permits from Israeli authorities. “But they still need places to live. They still have children.” So they build illegally, and when Israel wants to up the repression, the government bulldozes these houses.

That inequity made CNN political commentator and journalist Peter Beinart (latest book: The Crisis of Zionism) very uncomfortable. As he struggled with the ethics of this inequality, he began learning more. Beinart is Jewish, has lived in South Africa, Israel, and the US,  and is very aware of the ethical teachings in classical Judaism about treating the stranger well, doing good deeds, being a good guest when you travel to others’ lands, and treating people fairly.

Over 200 people gathered on Zoom June 8, 2021 to hear Beinart discuss the prospects for peace and justice in the Middle East in a program for Critical Connections entitled “Palestinian Rights, Jewish Responsibility.” At least five rabbis were in the room, as were large contingents from both the mainstream and progressive Jewish communities. A number of Muslims were in the audience, as well.

Originally a supporter of two separate states, Beinart now sees that as impossible because of the ways the Israeli government has carved up the West Bank into “Bantustans” with Jewish settlements separating once-contiguous Palestinian areas. Instead, he has joined many Palestinian thinkers in calling for a single multiethnic state, sharing power, with parallel more-or-less autonomous governments for internal governance within each community, and offering equality for all.

Both Israelis and Palestinians would be safer with this model–just as South Africa is safer for whites as well as blacks, and Northern Ireland is safer for both Protestants and Catholics, he says. Once the dominant group gives up its total control and need to dominate, the oppressed group starts to get less hostile because the repression has eased off.

He says the late Israeli writer Amos Oz is wrong in calling for a “divorce” between Israeli and Palestinian society. “The marriage will not be easy. But it is essential.” And just as activists in the US have begun to make land acknowledgements to the indigenous people who had the land before Europeans, “acknowledgments and apologies [for past wrongs] have great healing power.”

Beinart took many tough questions, particularly from mainstream Jews worried about the security of Israeli Jews under that scenario.

  • On antisemitism from the Left: “We cannot deny that some on the Left are antisemitic–especially in recent weeks [during the exchange of bombs and rockets between Israel and Gaza]. All the Palestinian intellectuals and activists I know condemned those acts. But virtually all Palestinians will be anti-Zionist,” because Israel has dispossessed their families. It didn’t help that major Israeli statesmen made incendiary remarks. Abba Eban, for example, claimed that a return to the 1948-67 frontiers would be “Auschwitz borders.” Beinart made this distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism several times, and pointed out that the Palestinian statesman Edward Said was on record as appreciating the impetus behind Zionism–though not its effects on his people. Beinart also stood unequivocally against antisemitism from any source: “If Jews are being dehumanized, as Jews, we should speak up.”
  • On whether either side had a right to call the other fascist: He did not feel that Palestinians should see Jews as Nazis. But he also recognizes that there is a massive power imbalance and had strong criticism for those Jews who see Palestinians as akin to the Nazis: “If you see Palestinians as Nazis, you erase the moral responsibility of power. You frame it as survival, but the issue is denial of basic rights.
  • On how to negotiate in good faith: Both sides have made offers, but their offers were unacceptable to the other side. NNo matter how many offers have been tendered, they haven’t been able to reach common ground for a meaningful agreement so far.
  • On the safety of Israeli Jews in a single multicultural state and the danger of falling into Lebanon-style permanent civil unrest: Growing up in South Africa, he noted there was great fear among whites about what would happen when apartheid ended and blacks took power. South Africa is only about 10 percent white, while Israel/Palestine would be much more Jewish. Jews, he said, have enough economic privilege and enough political and social organization to protect their interests. He also noted several important differences between Israel/Palestine and Lebanon: Lebanon had a weak economy, a weak government with weak restraints on executive power, low literacy, and multiple invaders (Israel and Syria).Israel/Palestine is in a much stronger position. It has much higher per capita income and literacy levels, including among Palestinians, which according to political science research is correlated with democratic stability. For Jews, it also has strong judicial, parliamentary and media institutions that check executive power—those are a foundation upon to build in a state that offers equality to Palestinians
  • On whether comparisons between Israel and South Africa’s apartheid-era regime are apt. He noted that Israelis and Palestinians have vastly different experiences on a whole range of situations, from border checkpoints to land claims to obtaining various types of permits–and that numerous Israeli groups have described the occupation as apartheid. I didn’t hear him directly take a position–but he did say, “Self-determination does not mean the right for a given ethnic, religious or racial group to have a state that grants it rights that are denied to people of other ethnic, religious or racial groups in that same state.”
    . And “to be stateless is to be under the power of a government but” not to have the rights afforded citizens, or to have any agency in dealing with state power.
  • On why American Jews need to get involved and not see the conflict as an internal matter that only concerns Israeli Jews: US Jews have skin in the game because our government has a long history of supporting and funding even very extreme Israeli government positions.
  • On how to end anti-Jewish terrorism: “You have to show that nonviolence can work. When you respond by criminalizing BDS [boycott-divestment-sanctions] and calling it antisemitic, you doom nonviolence. [PLO President Mahmoud] Abbas has cooperated on security for 15 years. When you continue building [Jewish West Bank] settlements [despite that cooperation], you strengthen Hamas.” He also praised organizations such as Encounter, that provide opportunities for Jews and Palestinians to meet in structured formats, in a society that makes meaningful contact quite difficult, noting that “Israeli media doesn’t do a good job of presenting the reality of Palestinian existence. He does see hope in social media connections, and described a Clubhouse room that attracted many perspectives and was going 24/7 during the Gaza conflict: “Many of the Israelis were exposed to the Palestinian perspective, some for the first time.” This is a bilateral problem, though; he expressed concern about an “antinormalization” movement among Palestinians..

Author’s note: I have done my best to render material within quote marks as accurately as I can, but they are from handwritten notes–and while accurate in substance and meaning, may vary from his exact words. Also, I’ve grouped comments that were thematically related; this article does not attempt to put Beinart’s remarks in the sequence they were presented.

To read or subscribe to Beinart’s blog, visit peterbeinart.substack.com

Shel Horowitz is Editor of Peace and Politics Magazine and a peace activist for over 40 years. His latest book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail