The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table
The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table
Comedy Cellar Network
"An Agenda Dressed Up in Violins?" - Debating Peter Beinart on the Right of Return and Other Matters
1 hour 25 minutes Posted Jul 16, 2026 at 10:05 am.
Intro four nice things about Peter Beinart
Will God punish Israel? Jeremiah, tradition, and belief
The critical-mass hypothetical: a 49% Hasidic America
Quebec, Czechoslovakia, South Africa why not divorce?
The right of return: "You can cherry-pick anything"
1948: They were closer to the Holocaust than we are to COVID
Day one of a one-state solution: the list
"An agenda dressed up in violins"
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Show notes
CHAPTERS
Claude Says:
Peter Beinart - editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, New York Times opinion writer, and author of "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza" - joins Noam Dworman and Dan Naturman for an honest, occasionally heated conversation about the questions underneath the Israel-Palestine debate. Does Jewish tradition teach that Israel's survival depends on its ethics - and does Beinart, an observant Jew, mean that literally? Is there such a thing as demographic critical mass? Why is secession the answer everywhere from Quebec to Czechoslovakia, but one shared state the answer here? Is the Palestinian right of return a sacred principle, a practical question, or - as Noam puts it - "an agenda dressed up in violins"? Plus: South Africa and Mandela, Iran, the Olmert-Abbas offers, what Benny Morris actually wrote about 1948, Robert Jackson's "suicide pact," and what day one of a one-state solution would look like for a gay couple in Tel Aviv. Two people who disagree about almost everything - except the settlements - actually talk to each other.
Peter's book: Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza https://bit.ly/4ygbHH8
Peter's Substack: The Beinart Notebook https://peterbeinart.substack.com/