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Weinstein approached me ‘Jew to Jew’: Jodi Kantor opens up on the ‘She Said’ movie’s Jewish moments
(JTA) — When the New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor was reporting the 2017 Harvey Weinstein sexual assault story that earned her a Pulitzer prize, the powerful Hollywood producer and his team tried to influence her by using something they had in common: They are both Jewish.
“Weinstein put [Jewishness] on the table and seemed to expect that I was going to have some sort of tribal loyalty to him,” Kantor told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on a video call from the New York Times newsroom. “And that was just not going to be the case.”
Now, that exchange has been immortalized in “She Said,” a new film adaptation of the nonfiction book of the same name by Kantor and her collaborator Megan Twohey that details their investigation into Weinstein’s conduct, which helped launch the #MeToo movement.
The film, directed by Maria Schrader with stars Zoe Kazan as Kantor and Carey Mulligan as Twohey, is an understated thriller that has drawn comparisons to “All the President’s Men” — and multiple subtle but powerful Jewish-themed subplots reveal the way Kantor’s Jewishness arose during and at times intersected with the investigation.
In one scene, the Kantor character notes that a Jewish member of Weinstein’s team tried to appeal to her “Jew to Jew.” In another, Kantor shares a moving moment with Weinstein’s longtime accountant, the child of Holocaust survivors, as they discuss the importance of speaking up about wrongdoing.
Kantor, 47, grew up between New York and New Jersey, the first grandchild of Holocaust survivors — born “almost 30 years to the day after my grandparents were liberated,” she notes. She calls her grandmother Hana Kantor, a 99-year-old Holocaust survivor, her “lodestar.” Kantor — who doesn’t often speak publicly about her personal life, including her Jewish background, which involved some education in Jewish schools — led a segment for CBS in May 2021 on her grandmother and their relationship. Before her journalism career, she spent a year in Israel on a Dorot Fellowship, working with Israeli and Palestinian organizations. She’s now a “proud member” of a Reform synagogue in Brooklyn.
Kantor spoke with JTA about the film’s Jewish threads, the portrayal of the New York Times newsroom and what Zoe Kazan’s performance captures about journalism.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
JTA: How did you feel having Zoe Kazan, who is not Jewish, play you? Kazan has played some notably Jewish characters before, for example in the HBO miniseries “The Plot Against America.”
JK: I feel Zoe’s performance is so sensitive and so layered. What I really appreciate about her performance is that she captures so many of the emotions I was feeling under the surface in the investigation. You know, when you’re a reporter and especially a reporter handling that sensitive a story, it’s your responsibility to present a really smooth professional exterior to the world. At the end of the investigation, I had the job of reading Harvey Weinstein some of the allegations and really confronting him. And in dealing with the victims, I wanted to be a rock for them and it was my job to get them to believe in the investigation. And so on the one hand, you have that smooth, professional exterior, but then below that, of course you’re feeling all the feelings. You’re feeling the power of the material, you’re feeling the urgency of getting the story, you’re feeling the fear that Weinstein could hurt somebody else. You’re feeling the loss that these women are expressing, including over their careers. And so I think Zoe’s performance just communicates that so beautifully.
What Zoe says about the character is that there are elements of me, there are elements of herself, and then there are elements of pure invention because she’s an artist, and that’s what she does.
I think the screenplay gets at a small but significant line of Jewish sub-drama that ran through the investigation. It went like this: Harvey Weinstein and his representatives were constantly trying to approach me as a Jew. And they’ve done this more recently, as well. There have been times when Harvey Weinstein was trying to approach me “Jew to Jew,” like almost in a tone of “you and I are the same, we understand each other.” We found dossiers later that they had compiled on me and it was clear that they knew that I was the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, and they tried to sort of deploy that. So speaking of keeping things under the surface, I privately thought that was offensive, that he was citing that. But your job as a reporter is to be completely professional. And I wasn’t looking to get into a fight with Weinstein. I just wanted to find out the truth and I actually wanted to be fair to the guy. Anyway, even as he was approaching me “Jew to Jew” in private, he was hiring Black Cube — sort of Israeli private intelligence agents — to try to dupe me. And they actually sent an agent to me, and she posed as a women’s rights advocate. And she was intimating that they were going to pay me a lot of money to appear at a conference in London. Luckily I shooed her away.
To some degree I can’t explain why private Israeli intelligence agents were hired to try to dupe the Hebrew speaking, yeshiva-educated, granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. But it’s not my job to explain that! It’s their job to explain why they did that.
Then the theme reappeared with Irwin Reiter, Weinstein’s accountant of 30 years, who kind of became the Deep Throat of the investigation. I quickly figured out that Irwin and I were from the same small world. He was the child of survivors, and had also spent his summers at bungalow colonies in the Catskills just down the road from mine. I don’t bring up the Holocaust a lot. It’s a sacred matter for me, and I didn’t do it lightly. But once I discovered that we did in fact have this really powerful connection in our backgrounds, I did gently sound it with him – I felt that was sincere and real. Because he was making such a critical decision: Weinstein’s accountant of 30 years is still working for the guy by day and he’s meeting with me at night. And I felt like I did need to go to that place with him, saying, “Okay, Irwin, we both know that there are people who talk and there are people who don’t. And we both grew up around that mix of people and what do we think is the difference? And also if you know if you have the chance to act and intervene in a bad situation, are you going to take it?”
We didn’t talk a lot about it, because I raised it and he didn’t want to fully engage. But I always felt like that was under the surface of our conversations, and he made a very brave decision to help us.
That was a very powerful scene in the film, and it felt like a turning point in the movie that kind of got at the ethical core of what was motivating your character. Was that a scene that was important to you personally to include in the film?
What Megan and I want people to know overall is that a small number of brave sources can make an extraordinary difference. When you really look at the number of people who gave us the essential information about Weinstein, it’s a small conference room’s worth of people. Most of them are incredibly brave women, some of whom are depicted, I think, quite beautifully in the film. But there was also Irwin, Weinstein’s accountant of all these years, among them. It’s Megan and my job to build people’s confidence in telling the truth. And as we become custodians of this story for the long term, one of the things we really want people to know is that a tiny group of brave sources, sometimes one source, can make a massive difference. Look at the impact that these people had all around the world.
Did you feel the film captured the New York Times newsroom? There’s a kind of great reverence to the toughness and professionalism in the newspaper business that really came through.
Megan and I are so grateful for the sincerity and professionalism with which the journalism is displayed. There are a lot of on screen depictions of journalists in which we’re depicted as manipulative or doing things for the wrong reasons or sleeping with our sources!
We [as journalists] feel incredible drama in what we do every day. And we’re so grateful to the filmmakers for finding it and sharing it with people. And I know the New York Times can look intimidating or remote as an institution. I hope people really consider this an invitation into the building and into our meetings, and into our way of working and our value system.
And we’re also proud that it’s a vision of a really female New York Times, which was not traditionally the case at this institution for a long time. This is a book and a movie about women as narrators.
“Harvey Weinstein and his representatives were constantly trying to approach me as a Jew,” Kantor said. (The New York Times)
There have been comparisons made between this movie and “All the President’s Men.” One of the striking differences is that those journalists are two male bachelors running around D.C. And this film has scenes of motherhood, of the Shabbat table, of making lunches. What was it like seeing your personal lives reflected on screen?
It’s really true that the Weinstein investigation was kind of born in the crucible of motherhood and Megan and my attempt to combine work with parenting. On the one hand, it’s the most everyday thing in the world, but on the other hand, you don’t see it actually portrayed on screen that much. We’re really honored by the way that throughout the film you see motherhood and work mixing, I think in a way that is so natural despite our obviously pretty stressful circumstances.
I started out alone on the Weinstein investigation, and I called Megan because movie stars were telling me their secrets but they were very reluctant to go on the record. So I had gone some way in persuading and engaging them, but I was looking to make the absolute strongest case for them. So I called Megan. We had both done years of reporting on women and children. Mine involved the workplace more and hers involved sex crimes more, which is part of why everything melded together so well eventually. I wanted to talk to her about what she had said to female victims in the past. But when I reached her, I could hear that something was wrong. And she had just had a baby, and I had had postpartum depression myself. So we talked about it and I gave her the name of my doctor, who I had seen. Then she got treatment. And she not only gave very good advice on that [initial] phone call, but she joined me in the investigation.
I think the theme is responsibility. Our relationship was forged in a sense of shared responsibility, primarily for the work – once we began to understand the truths about Weinstein, we couldn’t allow ourselves to fail. But also Megan was learning to shoulder the responsibility of being a parent, and I had two kids. And so we started this joint dialogue that was mostly about work, but also about motherhood. And I think throughout the film and throughout the real investigation, we felt those themes melding. It’s totally true that my daughter Tali was asking me about what I was doing. It’s very hard to keep secrets from your kid in a New York City apartment, even though I didn’t tell her everything. And Megan and I would go from discussing really critical matters with the investigation to talking about her daughter’s evolving nap schedule. It really felt like we had to get the story and get home to the kids.
And also, we were reporting on our own cohort. A lot of Weinstein victims were and are women in their 40s. And so even though we were very professional with this and we tried to be very professional with the sources, there was an aspect of looking in the mirror. For example, with Laura Madden, who was so brave about going on the record, it was conversations with her own teenage daughters that helped her make her decision.
We didn’t write about this in our book because it was hard to mix the motherhood stuff with this sort of serious reporter-detective story and all the important facts. And we didn’t want to talk about ourselves too much in the book. But the filmmakers captured something that I think is very true. It feels particular to us but also universal. When Zoe [Kazan] is pushing a stroller and taking a phone call at the same time, I suspect lots of people will identify with that. And what I also really like is the grace and dignity with which that’s portrayed.
It must have been surreal, seeing a Hollywood movie about your investigation of Hollywood.
I think part of the power of the film is that it returns the Weinstein investigation to the producer’s medium, but on vastly different terms, with the women in charge. Megan and I are particularly moved by the portrayals of Zelda Perkins, Laura Madden and Rowena Chiu — these former Weinstein assistants are in many ways at the core of the story. They’re everyday people who made the incredibly brave decision to help us, in spite of everything from breast cancer to legal barriers.
Working with the filmmakers was really interesting. They were really committed to the integrity of the story, and they asked a ton of questions, both large and small. Ranging from the really big things about the investigation to these tiny details. Like in the scene where we go to Gwyneth Paltrow’s house and Megan and I discover we’re practically wearing the same dress — those were the actual white dresses that we wore that day. We had to send them in an envelope to the costume department, and they copied the dresses in Zoe and Carey’s sizes and that’s what they’re wearing. There was a strand of extreme fidelity, but they needed some artistic license because it’s a movie. And the movie plays out in the key of emotion.
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Is This Really a ‘Peace’ Agreement? History Says No
An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
Whatever else is offered under the Israel-Hamas agreement, offering Palestinian statehood would undermine authoritative international law. To wit, beyond any reasonable doubt, both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas have been responsible for decades of barbarous anti-Israel terrorism. Moreover, the entities that operate this continuous criminality have never sought a Palestinian Arab state that would co-exist with the existing Jewish State. Always, its unhidden objective is to destroy Israel.
Corroborative evidence of this is abundant. In this “One-State Solution,” all of Israel would become part of “Palestine.” Already, on official PA and Hamas maps, all of Israel, not just Judea/Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza, is identified as “Occupied Palestine.” Cartographically, therefore, Israel has already been removed.
The PA and Hamas both remain clear about their commitment to terror-violence as the sole path to Palestinian “self-determination.” It follows that Palestinian prisoners now being exchanged for Israeli hostages will escalate criminal harms against the innocent. In all likelihood, the Trump-brokered agreement will set the stage for a force-multiplying encore of October 7 defilements. Significantly, previous prisoner releases by Israel produced new waves of anti-Israel terrorism.
In the future, what should Jerusalem say to new victim families of agreement-generated crimes?
Plausibly, over time, some freed terrorists will likely plan calibrated escalations to chemical, biological, or nuclear (radiation dispersal) terrorism. Also likely will be variously coordinated rocket attacks on Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona. Though generally forgotten, Hamas already launched such an attack in the past, but was not yet technically able to inflict serious levels of destruction. This earlier terrorist incapacity is rapidly disappearing.
Terrorism is a codified and customary crime under binding international law. Its explicit criminalization can be discovered at all listed sources of the UN’s Statute of the International Court of Justice. This signifies that whenever Palestinian jihadists claim the right to use “any means necessary” against an Israeli “occupation,” their arguments are unsupportable in relevant law.
After the “peace agreement,” the PA and Hamas will mirror their long-bloodied past. From the beginning, all supporters of Palestinian terror-violence against Israelis have maintained that the “sacred” end of Palestinian insurgency justifies the means. Leaving aside the everyday and ordinary ethical standards by which any such argument must be unacceptable, ends can never justify means under conventional or customary international law
Empty Palestinian witticisms notwithstanding, one person’s terrorist can never be another’s freedom-fighter.
While it is true that certain insurgencies can be lawful (for prominent example, “just cause” is at the heart of the US Declaration of Independence), even residually permissible resorts to force must conform to humanitarian international law. These resorts are distinction, proportionality, and military necessity — standards that were made applicable to insurgent armed forces by Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1977 Protocols to these Conventions.
Regarding the rule of “proportionality,” this does not demand equivalent or symmetrical force, only force that is measured against clearly-stated and legitimate goals.
Whenever an insurgent force resorts to unjust means, its actions become terroristic ipso facto. Even if ritualistic Palestinian claims of an Israeli “occupation” were reasonable, any corresponding right to oppose Israel “by any means necessary” would be false. Specifically, any openly unjust means would be an expression of criminal terrorism.
These unchallengeable or “peremptory” legal standards are also binding on all combatants by virtue of customary and conventional international law, including Article 1 of the Preamble to the Fourth Hague Convention (1907). This foundational rule, called the “Martens Clause,” makes all persons responsible for upholding the “laws of humanity” and the “dictates of public conscience.”
History deserves some pride of place. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964, three years before there were any “occupied territories.” What, therefore, was the PLO attempting to “liberate” between 1964 and 1967? There can be only one logical answer.
In law, terrorist crimes mandate universal cooperation in apprehension and punishment. As punishers of “grave breaches” under our decentralized system of international law, a system created after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, all states are required to search out and prosecute, or to extradite, individual terrorist perpetrators. In no circumstances are states permitted to treat terrorists as “freedom fighters.”
There is more. States are never authorized to support terror-violence against other states, whether by direct action or by acting within protective terms of an international agreement. This is emphatically true for the United States, which identifies international law as the “supreme law of the land” at Article 6 of the Constitution and at assorted Supreme Court decisions. The American nation was formed by its Founding Fathers according to timeless legal principles of Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries and the Hebrew Bible.
If the Trump-brokered Israel-Hamas agreement leads to Palestinian statehood, Israel could expect tangible enlargements of terror violence. And because some of the new state’s assaults on Israel would be ones of direct military action rather than insurgency, international law would identify these actions as “crimes of war.” Here, the only decipherable changes would be linguistic.
There is one final observation. As the Israel-Hamas agreement coincides with President Trump’s new mutual security pact with Doha, Palestinian terrorists and war criminals who flee to Qatar would be granted immunity from law-based punishments. Very quickly, such immunization could lead Hamas and other jihadi fighters to implement new and more insidious cycles of terrorist assault. None of these agreement outcomes could reasonably be called “peace.”
Prof. Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and scholarly articles dealing with international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. In Israel, Prof. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon). His 12th and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018).
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Mamdani Parrots Hamas Talking Points — Where Is the Outrage?
Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
On the second anniversary of the October 7 massacre, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani published a post describing Israel’s actions as “genocidal,” recycling Hamas talking points and unverified casualty figures.
Mamdani also emphasized Palestinian suffering while downplaying and even erasing Hamas’ role as aggressor, its torture of Israeli hostages, and its vow to strike Israeli civilians “again and again” until the Jewish State is destroyed.
This is far more than political rhetoric. It is a dangerous rewriting of reality that legitimizes antisemitism and endangers Jewish lives.
When a politician poised to lead America’s largest city repeats Hamas propaganda and cloaks lies in moral language, the harm reverberates far beyond New York.
The Anatomy of Distortion
Minimizing the aggressor
Mamdani acknowledged Hamas’ attack but quickly pivoted to the “scale” of Israel’s response — as if the size of a defensive response is the sole moral measure –and to the supposed illegitimacy of Israel itself.
Mamdani spent most of the statement attacking Israel, and implied that the Jewish State somehow “deserved” October 7. This framing turns deliberate mass murder into an abstract policy debate, concealing the fact that Israel defended itself against an openly fascist theocracy with a genocidal mandate.
Moral inversion
Calling Israel’s defensive war “genocide” isn’t an exaggeration — it’s a lie with a purpose. It turns the attacker into the victim and the defender into the villain, echoing ancient antisemitic tropes: Jews as aggressors, Jews as bloodthirsty, and Jews as deserving their own destruction.
In truth, Israel has maintained one of the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios in modern warfare — lower than that of the United States in Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet Mamdani brands this restraint and effort to avoid civilian casualties as “genocide.” Such rhetoric inflames ignorance and hate; it does not inform.
The “apartheid” libel
Mamdani also invokes another favorite fiction of the far-left — accusing Israel of “apartheid.” The charge is as false as it is cynical.
Israel’s Arab citizens vote, serve in parliament, sit on its Supreme Court, and hold senior roles in medicine, academia, the military, and business. There is no apartheid in a country where Jews and Arabs share city councils, courtrooms, universities, and hospitals.
The term wasn’t coined to describe reality but to delegitimize Israel’s existence — to brand the Jewish State as irredeemable. Mamdani’s repetition of this libel isn’t human-rights advocacy; it’s moral warfare.
Refusal to confront extremism
Despite repeated calls, Mamdani has never condemned violent slogans like “Globalize the Intifada.” On the streets, that phrase isn’t a metaphor — it’s a call for violence against Jews everywhere. His silence, in a city home to 1.6 million Jews, is not neutrality; it’s perilous complicity.
When Lies Inspire Violence
On October 7, 2025 — the second anniversary of Hamas’ barbaric invasion, a day when terrorists and mobs of invading Gazans murdered more than 1,200 people and kidnapped over 250 — major cities from New York to London, and Paris to Melbourne hosted demonstrations steeped in rage and antisemitism. Protesters waved terror flags, vandalized synagogues, and taunted Jews with chants glorifying the massacre.
At the very moment of these rallies, Hamas was weighing President Trump’s proposed deal to end the war — the same deal it would soon accept after sustained US pressure and Israel’s advances in Gaza City forced its hand.
If those protesters — and Mamdani — truly believed a “genocide” was taking place, they should have been the loudest voices demanding Hamas accept the ceasefire and free the hostages. Instead, they were silent. Their outrage was never about protecting life, but about vilifying the Jewish State. Mamdani’s refusal to urge Hamas to accept the 21-point peace plan shows his alignment with this moral inversion. If he genuinely believed a genocide was unfolding, how could he not welcome the very agreement that stopped the war and freed the captives?
This Is More Than Local Politics
When a leading mayoral candidate declares the world’s only Jewish State evil and illegitimate, he sends a message to those who already hate Jews: your narrative is valid.
The training ground for violence is narrative. Extremists start with slogans and lies long before they pick up weapons. Once those narratives are mainstreamed by politicians and pundits, the path from speech to violence becomes terrifyingly short.
In New York — home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel — synagogues, schools, and Jewish community centers are part of the city’s fabric. When people in power frame Jews as oppressors and the Jewish state as uniquely monstrous, that visibility becomes vulnerability.
The Historical Pattern
Jewish history records what happens when racist lies go unchecked. Lies about Jewish power, guilt, or collective blame have never stayed theoretical; they’ve always ended in blood. The pattern is consistent: lies take root, the public grows numb to it or mainstreams it, and violence follows.
In the 20th century, that pattern didn’t protect Jews — it empowered fascism. Today, rebranding old antisemitism in the language of “social justice” won’t protect anyone either. Moral confusion doesn’t end violence; it guarantees it.
Bottom Line
Zohran Mamdani isn’t merely expressing a bad opinion about Israel. He’s advancing a worldview where truth is expendable, terror is excusable, and Jews are once again cast as villains in their own story.
Mamdani’s post became even more grotesque in hindsight, coming just hours before Hamas finally accepted a ceasefire that freed the hostages and required it to cede power in Gaza — terms he still hasn’t endorsed.
When power protects falsehood, safety is the first casualty. When truth is sacrificed for ideology, history always repeats itself. And for the Jewish people, those echoes are never far behind.
Micha Danzig is a current attorney, former IDF soldier & NYPD police officer. He currently writes for numerous publications on matters related to Israel, antisemitism & Jewish identity & is the immediate past President of StandWithUs in San Diego and a national board member of Herut.
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UN Human Rights Experts Want More War in Gaza
Illustrative: Members of the United Nations Security Council vote against a resolution by Russia and China to delay by six months the reimposition of sanctions on Iran during the 80th UN General Assembly in New York City, US, Sept. 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
Political leaders around the globe, including the United Nations’ Secretary-General, have enthusiastically endorsed President Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan. But there is one UN affiliated group, at the pinnacle of the international law and human rights movement, that is bitterly opposed. These are thirty-odd Special Rapporteurs — experts appointed by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council to investigate specific areas of human rights.
They released a statement detailing no less than 15 ways that they claim the ceasefire agreement violates international law. Their main objection is that it doesn’t create a Palestinian state right away, which in their view must happen no matter what.
Having foreigners as part of a temporary Gaza government, they say, “is regrettably reminiscent of colonial practices and must be rejected.” They claim that the international stabilization force “would replace Israeli occupation with a US-led occupation.” They simply ignore the harm a Palestinian state in Gaza with Hamas back in charge would cause Israel, let alone the further oppression it would bring to Gaza residents.
The UN experts also add purported international law violations that go much further. They object to Gaza being demilitarized, claiming that doing so could leave it vulnerable to future Israeli aggression. There is no worry about how if Gaza was to rearm with rockets and tunnels, Hamas or other Palestinian factions might launch a repeat of the Oct. 7 massacre.
On the other hand, according to the UN officials, since Israel “has committed international crimes against the Palestinians and threatened peace and security in the region through aggression against other countries,” Israel should be demilitarized instead.
Even setting aside whether those accusations against Israel are true, the rapporteurs express no concern for how a demilitarized Israel would be liable to destruction at the hands of Iran or Hezbollah, and of course also be vulnerable to future Hamas massacres.
They are also upset that President Trump’s plan does not order Israel to pay Gaza reparations for the recent war. They ignore that paragraph 10 calls for Gaza investment and redevelopment. Perhaps they are disappointed because their true aim in reparations is not to find resources to rebuild Gaza, but rather to pose ruinous demands they can use to punish Israel and sabotage its economy. The group conveniently leaves out reparations that Gaza should pay to Israel for the Oct. 7 attack, and their thousands of illegal missile strikes targeting civilians going back years.
The rapporteurs solemnly note that, “Imposing an immediate peace at any price, regardless of or brazenly against law and justice, is a recipe for further injustice, future violence and instability.” This statement aims to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The statement itself lays the groundwork for future violence by claiming that the current ceasefire is illegal and unjust.
And sure enough, the rapporteurs’ statement is being quoted extensively in the anti-Israel press to claim that in spite of the ceasefire, Palestinians are still aggrieved victims entitled to resist. For example, Israel-Palestine News used the rapporteurs’ statement as a basis for an article blasting the peace plan. Middle East Eye did the same, along with the Oman Observer and the Pakistani website Jamaat-E-Islami Foreign Affairs.
It’s inevitable that Palestinian or human rights advocates may be concerned or disappointed with the terms of the ceasefire, just as many Israelis have concerns and misgivings as well. But the agreement has received nearly unanimous international acceptance because it represents the reality of what is militarily, politically, and economically attainable. Outrageous demands such as that Israel give up its army or bankrupt itself through reparations only serve to undermine negotiations and prolong the conflict.
Anyone who clings to maximal, impossible demands and refuses to make reasonable compromises becomes an enemy of peace. That’s true even if they believe those demands are based on justice.
Now is the time to tell protestors and activists around the world to tone down their rhetoric, turn towards building a better future, and accept that in order to do so, both sides will have to let go of many past grievances and accept that some wrongs will never be righted. It’s appalling that some of the world’s most esteemed human rights experts are trying to perpetuate the conflict, using unreasonable demands to justify more violence instead.
Shlomo Levin is the author of the Human Rights Haggadah, and he uses short fiction and questions to explore human rights at https://shalzed.com/