Below are lightly edited excerpts from the conversation.
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Shadi Hamid: I think what concerns me is not just the policy of not applying pressure. [Prime Minister Benjamin] Why not detain Prime Minister Netanyahu or the Israelis?it is [President] Biden and other US officials seem to speak less sympathetically of the Palestinians, as if they were completely equal human beings.
I think there are things I say for the sake of appearance. Even if we’re going to support Israel with all our might, I want us to at least pretend to be somewhat balanced, to perform just a little bit. America has always been good at taking action, even when its policies are terrible. And there’s something positive about that. If you’re doing something wrong, you should at least feel guilty about it, and you shouldn’t be too open about it. What’s strange here is that the US isn’t even pretending like I would expect.
Alyssa Rosenberg: I lost my sense of direction. Much of what I write is about children and families.Such [this war], rather than necessarily changing my feelings about America, I found myself thinking of my child’s world as a kind of stateless people. I think a lot about how children are included in policy, but how their needs are not prioritized.
As a parent of young children (my kids are 5 and 2), when I read about babies who have had traumatic amputations, or when I read about a 5-year-old who came home without a bath in 50 days. When you’re there. Covered in lice…I feel this — just this suffering for it.
Jason Rezaian: The Hamas attack on October 7th…the attack…the barbarity is indefensible. It is also true that the scale of the response is completely indefensible. What scares me about how this has changed America, or how we’re changing, is that we really can’t afford to have these two contradictory ideas anymore. .And that’s a big problem for democracy. we all love it. Both of these things are true, and there needs to be room for those in power to stand up and say it.
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