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Jewish teens, led by Ezra Beinart, are gathering on Zoom to meet prominent Palestinians
(JTA) — When Rep. Rashida Tlaib joined a Zoom with 40 teenagers, she soon found herself talking about the kinds of topics — academic and otherwise — that tend to take up their days.
There was discussion of the stress of AP exams, embarrassing dads and social media memes. She showed them pictures on Instagram of her dog at the U.S. Capitol. Everyone was on a first-name basis.
“My son is a [high school] junior,” she said, responding to a message in the Zoom chat from one of the teen participants. “Oh my God, the SAT — I was stressed out. I’m stressed because he’s stressed. He had to take all his AP exams and stuff.”
Tlaib got personal too — talking about her grandmother, with whom she last spoke on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
But the conversation also turned to a question many of the teens had encountered at high school, camp, youth groups or elsewhere in their lives: Is anti-Zionism antisemitism?
As the only Palestinian-American in Congress — and perhaps the chamber’s most prominent anti-Zionist — Tlaib was in a unique position to answer. And the students on the call had a particular interest in the question as well: They were all Jewish.
The teens are all participants in a new initiative, launched last year, to expose young American Jews to Palestinian voices through video chats. Founded by Ezra Beinart, a junior at a Jewish day school in New York City, the project’s goal is to bring Palestinian perspectives to a demographic that, he says, sorely lacks them.
“I live in a very Jewish community and most of the people around me are very educated on the Israeli perspective, but not as knowledgeable about the Palestinian side,” Beinart said in an interview. “And that’s why I decided to create the group to inform young Jews about the other side of the story, which I don’t think most Jewish students know much about.”
In her response to the question about antisemitism and anti-Zionism, Tlaib again turned to her grandmother, Muftieh, whom she refers to with the Arabic term “Sity” and whom she has portrayed as the face of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. She said people were “weaponizing antisemitism” in order to chill criticism of Israel.
“My grandmother, literally solely based on the fact that she was born Palestinian, she just doesn’t have equality,” Tlaib told the teens. “Her life would be completely different if that wasn’t the case. And so, you know, for me criticizing that, if anything, is more chipping away at this form of government that does that to my Sity.”
Michigan House Rep. Rashida Tlaib speaks on stage at a concert in Detroit, July 16, 2022. (Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images)
Beinart said he wants to increase opportunities for Jewish-Palestinian interaction. So he said he has reached out to “very Jewish” communities around the country, through chat groups and progressive synagogues, to get the word out. He started out with just a handful of teens, but his numbers are growing: His session with Tlaib drew 40 viewers.
Such interest comes at a time of political flux in Israel, and as young Jewish adults in the United States view the country less favorably than their elders. A 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center found that Jews aged 18-30 were less emotionally attached to Israel than older generations, more skeptical of its efforts toward peace and likelier to support efforts to boycott it. In recent years, activist groups founded by young Jews have pushed institutions such as campus Hillels and the Conservative movement’s Camp Ramah network to be more inclusive of Palestinian or anti-Zionist perspectives.
The initiative’s format has speakers introduce themselves for five minutes or so and then take questions, which Beinart selects, for another 30 minutes. It has held about half a dozen sessions with speakers like Ayman Mohyeldin, a journalist at MSNBC, and Amahl Bishara, a professor at Tufts University. Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, is its most prominent guest so far. (Her office did not respond to multiple requests for an interview or for comment.)
Beinart wanted his peers to have their minds opened, as he said his was when he interned last summer at the Jerusalem Fund, a pro-Palestinian think tank and advocacy organization in Washington D.C. He noticed that a friend of his who worked there used “Palestine” as readily as he used “Israel,” and described to him how fraught traveling to the region was for her, whereas he took his ability to enter the country for granted.
“It made it much more tangible to have friends explain how Israel’s actions affect them in everyday life,” he said. “It’s different from just reading about it or seeing a video.”
If Beinart’s name is familiar, it’s because his father is Peter Beinart, the writer who was once an outspoken advocate for an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, and now is a prominent Jewish voice supporting a single, binational Israeli-Palestinian state. The elder Beinart declined to comment for this article, as the initiative is his son’s project rather than his. But for a decade, Peter Beinart has been making the case that American Jews need to spend more time listening to Palestinian voices.
Resistance to hearing from Palestinians, the elder Beinart wrote in 2013 in the New York Review of Books, “make[s] the organized American Jewish community a closed intellectual space, isolated from the experiences and perspectives of roughly half the people under Israeli control. And the result is that American Jewish leaders, even those who harbor no animosity toward Palestinians, know little about the reality of their lives.”
Ezra acknowledges his father’s influence, albeit reluctantly. The first speaker in the series was Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist Ezra met when he accompanied Peter on a West Bank tour.
“Yeah, obviously, but I’m going my own way with it,” Ezra Beinart said, asked about his father’s influence. “I’m connecting Israel-Palestine to what I see going on with my peers, my friends.”
In the Zoom session, Tlaib intuited Ezra’s ambivalence about bringing his father into the conversation, so she trod carefully when she quoted the elder Beinart to make a point.
“Ezra, your dad said something once — I know you don’t want me to mention your dad, you’re like my son,” she said. But she then brought up a quote by Peter Beinart to explain why she had chosen, despite considerable backlash, to host an event in the U.S. Capitol commemorating the Nakba, the word meaning “catastrophe” which Palestinians use to describe their displacement during and after Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.
Peter Beinart’s quote was, “When you tell a people to forget its past, you are not proposing peace, you are proposing extinction.”
Tlaib said, “I used [Beinart’s quote] today when I got interviewed because I love this, but when Peter says it, it’s like okay, look at this is, this is a Jewish American man speaking up about the importance of understanding history.”
After the meeting, Ezra Beinart told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he chose questions that reflected the narrative Jewish youth were exposed to in their communities. In addition to discussing anti-Zionism and antisemitism, one question was, “What is your response to those who believe that using the word ‘occupation’ is harmful?” (Avoiding accurate terminology inhibits the advance of peace and human rights, Tlaib said.)
“Jewish people, when they think about Palestinians, they think of terror, most of them,” Beinart said. “So that’s something they should hear about from Palestinians.”
Teaneck, the northern New Jersey suburb that would qualify as a “very Jewish” community by nearly any standard, is where one of the participants, Liora Pelavin, 15, lives. Her mother, who is a rabbi, saw a post about Beinart’s Zoom meetings on Facebook and thought her daughter might be interested.
“Hearing from Palestinians really humanizes them,” Pelavin, who attended a Jewish day school through eighth grade and now goes to a public high school, said in an interview. “It makes me learn and also realize that they all have different opinions, too.”
Yehuda Kurtzer, the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, an organization whose programs include facilitating dialogue between American Jews, Israelis and Palestinians, said any interaction would be welcome.
However, he was concerned that most of the Palestinians Ezra Beinart had selected were political or advocacy leaders, instead of ordinary Palestinians who might be better suited to explain everyday realities to high school students.
“There’s probably a version of a way to do this like Encounter,” a long-running program that brings American Jews to the West Bank for dialogue with Palestinians, “where you are hearing from people and learn their stories, and you are free to come to the political conclusions you want,” Kurtzer said. “But you humanize their experience. That’s one way of doing any of this work. There’s another way to do this work, which is, ‘I want to influence the politics of your own community.’”
Jonathan Kessler — a former senior official at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who now leads Heart of a Nation, a group that facilitates dialogue among Jewish American, Palestinian and Israeli teens — said he was aware of Beinart’s initiative, and that it is an example of how Gen Z may be better able to break down barriers than their elders.
“A generation that does not think of gender and sexuality in binary terms is uniquely well positioned to approach a conflict, which has for too long been defined in a binary way,” Kessler said.
Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian political scientist who has spoken to Beinart’s group, said it was particularly important for Palestinian speakers to reach Jewish teens.
“Within the Jewish community, particularly in the organized Jewish community, there may be a lot of pro-Israel perspectives represented and not a whole lot of Palestinian perspectives represented,” he said. “I’m always inspired when I speak to younger people about this issue who have an interest in learning more.”
For Tlaib, it was also a forum where she had expressed views that she hasn’t otherwise voiced publicly — saying that she felt conflicted about evacuating Israeli settlers because they had lived in the West Bank for so long.
“Just the idea around taking families that — that’s been their home — it’s just completely uprooting, forcibly displacing,” Tlaib said. “It’s something I struggle with because, like, we’re doing it all over again, right? This happened during the Nakba.”
Beinart said he and others on the call, including Pelavin, were moved by her sentiments.
“A lot of the Jewish community thinks like, ‘Palestinians hate us, and don’t think we’re people too,’” Pelavin said. “I think that’s so wrong, and being on these calls has just confirmed that for me.”
Ezra Beinart favors a single binational state — Tlaib is the only elected lawmaker who also takes that position — and Pelavin said her views on Israel trended left. But while much of the organized American Jewish community has historically bristled at criticism of Israel, neither teen said that they were made to feel like a pariah in their Jewish milieus.
“They think it’s cool that I do these types of things, but I think a lot of their goal is to just stay away from this topic around me, because they don’t really want to get into an argument about it,” Pelavin said of her peers.
And Beinart said holding a minority viewpoint hasn’t been a problem for him, either. “The kids in my school know who I am,” Ezra Beinart said. “No one’s mean to me. There are kids who share my views — a few, but not many.”
Despite the weighty subject matter, the conversation had an informal, friendly feel. Tlaib also wanted to learn more about the participants, but when she asked what colleges they were planning to attend, no one spoke up — until she noticed answers to her question piling up in the Zoom chat.
“Oh look there — you guys looove the chat!” she said. She then attempted to get her dog to hop on screen, but settled for showing the teens photos.
Ezra Beinart said he was fine with Tlaib’s cooing and kvelling about the college plans.
“I’m not going to pretend that this is a group of well-educated adults,” he said. “This is a group of kids who don’t know about this stuff as well. And that’s why that’s why I’m doing it — it’s not supposed to be for people who are experts, right?”
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NATO’s Rutte Praises US, Israeli Military Action Against Iran but Says Alliance Won’t Be Involved
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte attends a press conference at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Nicholson
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday praised US and Israeli military action against Iran, saying it was degrading Tehran’s ability to get its hands on nuclear and ballistic missile capability, but he said NATO itself would not be involved.
“It’s really important what the US is doing here, together with Israel, because it is taking out, degrading the capacity of Iran to get its hands on nuclear capability, the ballistic missile capability,” he told Germany’s ARD television in Brussels.
“There are absolutely no plans whatever for NATO to get dragged into this or being part of it, other than individual allies doing what they can to enable what the Americans are doing together with Israel,” he added.
Rutte’s comments came on the same day that US President Donald Trump said he ordered the attack on Iran to thwart its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, vowing to pursue the war for as long as necessary.
Trump claimed the threat from Iran had been imminent when he made the decision to order the strikes. The attacks have killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sunk Iranian warships, and hit more than 1,000 targets so far.
“This was our last best chance to strike … and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime,” he said at an event in the White House East Room.
Trump added that the US military campaign in Iran was going ahead of schedule, without providing details. He said the campaign had been projected to last four to five weeks but could go longer.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon played down concerns on Monday that the US attack on Iran risked plunging the United States into a new, open-ended conflict in the Middle East, even as officials declined to offer a timeline and cautioned that they expected more US casualties.
In the first Pentagon briefing since the conflict began, US General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters it would take time to achieve US military objectives in Iran.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listed those objectives in primarily military terms, saying the Pentagon sought to destroy Iran’s navy and expansive missile capabilities that could shield any covert attempts by Tehran to later build a nuclear weapon. Iran denies it wants nuclear weapons.
“To the media outlets and political left screaming ‘ENDLESS WARS’ – stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless,” said Hegseth, a former Fox News host and Army veteran who served in Iraq from 2005 to 2006 and deployed to Afghanistan in 2012.
However, Hegseth noted that Trump would not be pinned down by any timeline.
The US and Israeli attacks have triggered a massive Iranian retaliatory response but many of the most dangerous drones and missiles have been intercepted by US military forces and US allies in the region.
Still, some of the attacks succeeded in inflicting US losses. The US military said a fourth US service member died on Monday as a result of injuries in the Iran operations.
Six US service members were also injured on Monday when Kuwaiti air defenses shot down their three F-15 fighter jets by mistake.
“We expect to take additional losses,” Caine told the briefing, adding the United States would work to minimize US losses but “this is major combat operations.”
Hegseth said there were no US troops on the ground but also declined to rule that possibility out.
“We are not going into the exercise of [saying] what we will or will not do,” Hegseth said. “President Trump ensures that our enemies understand we’ll go as far as we need to go to advance American interests.”
“But we’re not dumb about it. You don’t have to roll 200,000 people in there and stay 20 years,” he added.
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Iran Conflict Widens to Lebanon, Kuwait Mistakenly Downs US Jets
Smoke billows after an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, following an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, Lebanon, March 2, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
The US and Israeli air war against Iran widened on Monday, with no end in sight as Israel attacked Lebanon in response to strikes by Hezbollah and Tehran kept up its missile and drone attacks on Gulf states.
President Donald Trump said a “big wave” of further attacks was imminent, without giving details, and said it was unclear who was in charge in Iran, following the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at the weekend.
The attack on Iran has pitched the Gulf into war, thrown global air transport into chaos, and shut down shipping traffic through the vital Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices surging.
Underlining the risks, Kuwait mistakenly shot down three American F-15E fighter jets during an Iranian attack, US Central Command said. All six crew members ejected and were safely recovered. Video, filmed at a location verified by Reuters, showed one of the planes spiraling out of the sky, an engine on fire.
For Trump, facing growing discontent at home over bread-and-butter economic issues, the weekend strikes against a foe that had tormented the US and its allies for generations amount to the biggest US foreign policy gamble in decades.
Trump urged Americans to grieve the four US service personnel killed so far. The campaign could pose a major political risk for Trump’s Republican Party in this year’s midterm elections, with only one in four Americans supporting the operation, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll at the weekend.
“WE HAVEN’T EVEN STARTED,’ TRUMP SAYS
Trump said he had ordered the attack to thwart Tehran’s nuclear program and a ballistic missile program that he said was growing rapidly. He said the war could go on past a four-to-five-week projection he made earlier.
“We haven’t even started hitting them hard,” he told CNN in an interview. “The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon.”
In the first formal Pentagon briefing since the campaign began, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, described a campaign that included hitting more than 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours. He said more forces were still on their way to the region.
“This is not a single overnight operation. The military objectives that CENTCOM and the Joint Force have been tasked with will take some time to achieve, and in some cases will be difficult and gritty work,” Caine said.
Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon and says it was offering to curb its nuclear program at talks when the United States launched an unprovoked assault.
Trump repeated his call to Iranians to rise up and overthrow their leaders.
Within Iran, where residents have jammed highways to flee the bombing, there was uncertainty about the future and emotion ranging from euphoria to apprehension and rage.
Many have openly celebrated the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, who had ruled since 1989 and directed security forces that killed thousands of anti-government protesters at the start of this year.
But the conservative clerical leaders have shown no sign of yielding power. Military experts say that US and Israeli air power, with no armed force on the ground, may not be enough to drive them out. Meanwhile, scores of Iranians have been reported killed in strikes, including several that hit apparent civilian targets.
WAR SPREADS TO LEBANON
In a sign that Iran‘s rulers are still reaching out to the outside world, a senior Iranian security official contacted Reuters to say Iran was defending itself against aggressors and would continue to do so.
A new front in the war opened on Monday when the Lebanese armed terrorist group Hezbollah, one of Tehran’s principal allies in the Middle East, launched missiles and drones toward Israel.
Israel responded with sweeping airstrikes, which it said targeted the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut and struck senior militants. The Lebanese state news agency NNA said an initial tally showed 31 people had been killed and 149 injured.
An Iranian Shahed missile that Cypriot officials said was most likely fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon also hit the British air force base at Akrotiri in Cyprus, the first strike to reach US allies in Europe.
Israel declared Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem a “target for elimination.” Officials said they were not for now considering a ground invasion of Lebanon, whose government on Monday banned military activities by Hezbollah.
As Washington’s allies in the Gulf came under renewed attack from Iranian missiles and drones, black smoke rose above the area around the US embassy in Kuwait. There were loud blasts in Dubai and Samha in the United Arab Emirates, and in the Qatari capital Doha.
Qatar, one of the world’s biggest exporters of liquefied natural gas, halted production, with no prospect of being able to ship safely through the chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz.
Saudi Arabia shut its biggest refinery after drone strikes caused a fire there, one of a number of energy installations that became targets.
European allies, which distanced themselves from Trump’s initial decision to go to war, have since said they could help suppress Iran‘s ability to retaliate.
In an X post on Monday, Ali Larijani, a powerful adviser to Khamenei, said Iran would not negotiate with Trump, who had “delusional ambitions” and was now worried about US casualties.
OIL SUPPLIES INTERRUPTED
The interruption to oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz – where around a fifth of the world’s oil trade skirts the Iranian coast – jolted global economies. Oil prices leapt by double-digit percentages when trade opened on Monday, but later gave up half those gains. Shares fell and the dollar surged.
Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday they had hit three US and British oil tankers in the Gulf and the Strait. Shipping data showed hundreds of vessels including oil and gas tankers dropping anchor in nearby waters.
Global air travel was also heavily disrupted as airstrikes kept major Middle Eastern airports closed.
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The Palestinian Authority Condemns Iran’s Attacks on Arab States — But Not Israel
Emergency personnel work at the site of an Iranian strike, after Iran launched missile barrages following attacks by the US and Israel on Saturday, in Beit Shemesh, Israel, March 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Other than a few informative reports, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is almost silent about the Israeli-American war with Iran.
So far, the PA has limited itself to condemning Iran’s attacks on other Arab states and requesting “an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers and for a session of the UN Security Council.”
The PA has neither condemned the Israeli-American attack on Iran, nor has it said anything positive about the Iranian missiles launched against Israel:
The State of Palestine strongly condemned the Iranian attacks on several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq, stressing its full rejection of any violation of their sovereignty or aggression against them by any party.
It described the attacks as a blatant violation of the UN Charter and principles of international law…
It also reaffirmed its consistent position against resorting to violence and war, calling for dialogue as the means to resolve disputes … and for adherence to international law to strengthen regional and international peace and security.
President Mahmoud Abbas called for an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers and for a session of the UN Security Council to address the serious challenges facing the region, its countries, and their sovereignty. [emphasis added]
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Feb. 28, 2026]
Vice President of the State of Palestine Hussein Al-Sheikh on Saturday reaffirmed Palestine’s rejection and condemnation of the Iranian attacks on several Arab sister states … and conveyed Palestine’s solidarity with the Arab states and support for any measures they deem appropriate in response.
Al-Sheikh stressed that the State of Palestine and its leadership firmly reject any violation of the sovereignty of Arab states or aggression against them by any party, describing the attacks as a blatant violation of the UN Charter and the principles of international law.
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Feb. 28, 2026]
Although the PA has not openly applauded the joint US and Israeli attack on Iran, there is reason to believe they silently appreciate the development.
Palestinian Media Watch has exposed that the PA blamed Iran for making Hamas launch the devastating Oct. 7 war to “serve its Iranian masters” and accused Iran of supporting Hamas to “destroy the Palestinian national project,” thereby enabling it to replace the PLO as “the sole representative of the Palestinian people”:
PLO National Council member Muwaffaq Matar: “There is no clearer proof [than Iranian leader Khamenei’s speech] of Hamas’ subordination to this Iranian regime. In this speech there is nothing new for us, because we have already understood how much this regime controls Hamas, has given it its blessing, supported it, and aided it to destroy the Palestinian national project completely, so that it [Hamas] and also its partners who follow Iran will be the artificial alternative to the PLO.”
[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, June 3, 2024]
This claim was reiterated recently by PLO Central Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily, Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul:
[Hamas] began to move according to the direction of the wind, based on the Muslim Brotherhood’s principle of taqiyya. Nothing is constant for [Hamas] except to continue serving as a paid pawn in the hands of the enemies, in order to sabotage the national project, dissolve it, incite against the legitimate leadership. [emphasis added]
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 18, 2026]
Following the Israeli-American attack, former spokesman of the PA Security Forces Adnan Al-Damiri even mocked both Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Iran.
Al-Damiri prophesized that the Iranian people won’t reach for their freedom made possible by Netanyahu (and Trump) but will continue to “support the regime.” Iran’s attack on several neighboring Arab states, many of which host US military bases, was ridiculed by Al-Damiri as “stupidity and malice”:
Posted text: “The Iranian people are not a plaything to accede to [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu, even if it is against the regime. Netanyahu’s appeal to the Iranian people will fail, and the people will set out to support the regime. The war will last a long time to complete the mission of toppling the [Iranian] fundamentalist regime…
Iran, out of stupidity and malice, attacked its [Arab] neighbors who opposed the war. It weakened itself by directly involving its neighbors.
This will open the possibility of ground military activity from the territories of its neighbors and with their participation. The war will last weeks, perhaps months.”
[Former Official Spokesman of the PA Security Forces Adnan Al-Damiri, Facebook page, Feb. 28, 2026]
So far, only the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has openly mourned the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with a poster and text calling the Israeli-American attack “a cowardly assassination operation committed by the Zionist and American treachery.”
Note: On June 3, 2024, then Iranian leader Khamenei gave a speech in which he praised Hamas’ terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, stating that:
An army that claimed to be one of the strongest armies in the world has been defeated inside its own land. Who has defeated it? Was it a powerful government? No, it was defeated by Resistance groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. It was defeated by these [groups]. This is what Al-Aqsa Flood did.
He neither mentioned the PA nor the PLO at all but only the “Resistance” and the “Palestinian people.”
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this story first appeared.