Jerusalem is a journalist and entrepreneur. She’s a former staff writer at The Atlantic and a former policy writer and podcaster at Vox. Last year she founded The Argument, a liberal magazine on Substack, where she serves as CEO and editor-in-chief. Subscribe! We went at it on liberalism and how to reform the Democrats.
An auto-transcript is available above (just click “Transcript” while logged into Substack). For two clips of the episode — on Biden’s biggest mistakes, and how DEI went off the rails — head to our YouTube page.
Other topics: born in Ethiopia as an Eritrean Christian; why her father became an atheist then converted back to Christianity; growing up in suburban Maryland and becoming a citizen at age 14; the formative influence of Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian; being a Christian in a secular-left bubble; the stagnation in England before Thatcher; imposing liberalism on Iraq; torture under Bush; the long Great Recession; the American Rescue Plan and inflation; Biden ceding order on immigration; Greg Abbott exporting migrants to liberal cities; rural and retired voters most against immigration but least affected; cancel culture; the race card on immigration; the antisemite card on Israel; US aid to Israel; Hormuz and oil prices; Jerome Powell; DEI and the NYT lawsuit; diversity vs quotas; trans issues; the suicide canard; orgasm loss and FGM; opposition to bathroom bills reversed; Bostock; housing policy and abundance; ICE in Minneapolis; JD Vance; Kamala and Hillary; Jon Ossoff; and Keir’s cautionary tale for moderate liberals.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. We have some real stars coming up: Ben Rhodes on Iran and speech-writing, Harvey Mansfield on modernity, HW Brands on the life of George Washington, John Gray on Trump’s new world, Bob Wright on the evolutionary force of AI, Tiffany Jenkins on privacy in a liberal democracy, Daniel McCarthy on conservatism, Stephen Grosz on the struggles of love, and Robby George on all our disagreements. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
From a returning paid subscriber:
I had decided to let my paid membership lapse because I thought conversations were too often Trump-centric and similar to one another, but that Tom Junod interview reminded me how uniquely excellent and weirdly individualistic your discussions can be. I lasted two days away from the paid subscription, and then you earned my support once again — you thoughtful, occasionally aggravating old bear.
I’m so grateful, especially considering the wave of cancellations over criticism of Israel. Over 25 years of this, I find I often purge a subset of Dish readers every time I take on a contentious issue, and take it as a sign I’m not off-track. Sometimes, of course, they have a point, and I adjust. But the woke cancellations — from right and left — are badges of honor here. If you want to support sites that piss off readers on a regular basis, you know how to help:
Here’s a fan of last week’s pod with Adrian Wooldridge on the genius of liberalism:
This conversation and framework for understanding today’s moronic inferno is fantastic! Will classic liberalism survive? It’s a toss-up right now. More conversations like these please!
Here’s a recommendation for a future guest:
I’m another reader who thinks you have a strange blind spot regarding Israel. Where is the conservative in you — prepared to acknowledge that the reality of a situation requires selecting between two bad choices? I see your criticism of what Israel has decided to do, but never an explanation of what you think Israel should do under the circumstances. (But I will continue to subscribe to the Dish.)
I think you should interview Corey Gil-Shuster, the gay liberal Canadian-Israeli academic at Tel Aviv University who runs the “Ask Project” on YouTube, which interviews Jews and Arabs in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The videos are always fascinating and informative, and he is a very good interview.
I need to find more Palestinian voices first I think, since we haven’t had one on the pod yet. A reader writes, “I’ve been following your engagement with the Nicholas Kristof piece in the NYT, and it sparked some thoughts related to the nature of the ongoing dialog surrounding Israel and its actions”:
A couple of weeks ago, you were kind enough to say that a dissent of mine on the ongoing Israel debate had “some very sharp insights.” In it, I was skeptical of a proposed Sullivan/Sam Harris debate and was attempting to honestly reckon with the depth of the problems that both Israel faces through no fault of its own and the problems that Israel’s government has caused. I mention that prior dissent in the hopes of quickly establishing bona fides as a fair-minded skeptic of all parties involved.
Now I’d like to bring that skepticism to bear on your favorable reaction to and amplification of Kristof’s piece, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.” I can’t hold you responsible for NYT columnists, and I know you’ve taken a lot of unfair claims of anti-semitism, which I don’t make here. But there is a point at which honest criticism seemingly becomes a pathology, and I think to promote and defend the piece as you have puts you closer to the latter.
In the aforementioned dissent, I referenced the recently dismissed charges against IDF officers, and there are elements of the Kristof piece that we know are true. I make no claims that Israel is wholly innocent. However, the breadth and depth of Kristof’s accusations are staggering and, most crucially, under-supported.
I don’t need to rehash it all. You’re no doubt familiar with many of the criticisms, and it’s better to just link to National Review’s critique. My concern is that his piece, your “restack” of it, and the entire Internet dialogue around it thickens rather than clears the fog of war. Kristof takes a nugget of what we know to be true and builds upon it with testimony from less-than-reputable sources, including claims that, without more evidence, border on conspiracism.
Indeed, for all his allegations to be true, how many hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers and officials must be aware of and helping to hide all the sexual assault, the procurement of carrots for assault, the training of animals for rape, the use of such torture techniques across multiple facilities? Executing that level of malevolence and keeping secrets of that magnitude under wraps for multiple years is damn near impossible, especially in the 21st century. Yet Kristof presents no new evidence beyond personal testimony.
Conversely, to build on the National Review, one Kristof’s chief sources, Euro-Med, is a group that’s been decidedly anti-Israel years prior to October 7 (e.g. systematic training of Gazans to edit Wikipedia to disparage Israel, or the head of the organization tweeting that a map of rocket attacks was actually “a map of registered sex offenders in Israel”). How likely is Euro-Med to vet Gazan witnesses with integrity?
Euro-Med, Kristof, and others suggest, then, that the IDF went from giving Yahya Sinwar free brain surgery to systematic and widespread rape of prisoners, including employing dogs in their cruelty? Best bring a stack of itemized receipts for that kind of claim. And Kristof didn’t.
I have absolutely no problem believing that some of these incidents have occurred or that Netanyahu’s government is happy to ignore some of it, since we already know that that has happened — for which there is evidence and reporting. And further, the US should be making Israel pay for its own weapons; the Iran war was a mistake made largely at the behest of Israel; Netanyahu has aligned himself with bad actors; what’s happening in the West Bank is a form of ethnic cleansing; et cetera.
So my complaint is not with you or Kristof critiquing Israel’s government. Rather, my complaint is with anything that adds to the emotional turmoil and confusion of our (inter)national dialogue.
All decent points. I hope I was able to answer some of them in today’s column. My only general quibble is that in wartime, you’d be surprised how things can be suppressed. No one wants them exposed. If it hadn’t been for the gruesome photos, you think we’d have ever heard about Abu Ghraib? Or the prisoners we tortured to death?
But the right response to a piece like Kristof’s is not to sue the NYT, but to open Ben-Gvir’s prisons to the Red Cross, open them to journalists, let reporters into Gaza.
Another writes, “I think a future Dishcast with you and Nick Kristof would be quite fascinating, covering this topic or any other.” I’ve known Nick, believe it or not, since we overlapped at Oxford. We don’t see eye to eye on many things, but I’ve never seen any reason to doubt his decency and sincerity as a journalist. Of course he may have fucked up. But we don’t know that.
Another is crestfallen:
Like you, I read Kristof’s piece; and like you, it leaves me with deep conflict. I have sources whom I trust — people on the ground in the conflict zone — who confirm the overall escalating pattern of serious Israeli abuse (although not the specifics of Kristof’s piece, and I do agree with some commenters that some allegations do seem less credible).
I’ve been a lifelong supporter of Israel. I traveled there as part of a congressional staff delegation more than 20 years ago. I’ve been to Yad Vashem. And I’m Jewish. The idea that things like this could be done in the name of the Jewish people is beyond heartbreaking.
Where does that leave me?
