Ezra Klein's Genocide Tightrope

There's no nuanced position on whatever-you-want-to-call-this.

After a year and a half of full-throated support for Israel’s military actions, the liberal establishment changed its tune last month after pictures of mass starvation triggered a wave of public outcry. Suddenly, those who’d previously supported Israel’s actions unconditionally were, for the first time, acknowledging that Israel might, possibly, maybe, have done something wrong. AIPAC politicians (Booker, Kloubachar, Buttigieg, etc.) condemned the ‘starvation’ of Gazans without mentioning Israel, as if Palestinians were suffering due to failed crops and not Israel destroying 98.5% of their farmland.¹ Though the substance was slim, rhetorically, it was the first time the Washington, D.C. GroupThink Tank™️ publicly acknowledged that its portrayal of Israel as The Most Brave & Righteous Country Ever might not be entirely accurate.

With a consensus forming that Israel wasn’t acting in pure self-defense, I was curious to see how liberal Zionists would respond. As the name implies, these are liberals who believe there should be a Jewish ethnostate in the land of historic Palestine, a.k.a. Israel. Unlike their rightist colleagues, who make millions shouting slurs all day and hucking anti-woke lead-based toothpaste, liberal Zionists have a unique challenge of selling the illiberal idea of apartheid Israel to a liberal audience. As the median Democratic voter has dramatically shifted to sympathize more with Palestinians than the Israelis over the past few years, swinging 56 points since 2017, liberal Zionists have had to tailor their pro-Israel messaging to match the public’s righteous horror at what they are seeing.

From CNN, July 2nd, 2025.

I’m not saying liberal Zionists are devoid of humanity and unconcerned with dead Palestinians. But what I am saying is that the suffering they claim to want to end is prolonged and exacerbated by their insistence on protecting Israel from public scrutiny or international pressure. Most often, this comes in the form of blaming Palestinians for their deaths, excusing IDF atrocities, and maintaining that, despite what the audience has been told, the state of Israel is morally superior to its adversaries. A great example of this protective purpose can be seen in this October 2024 conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein, who we’ll return to in a bit.

Ezra Klein: Compared to most Outlets, I've had a fairly wide range of opinion about Israel on the show. I've had everyone from right-wing Israeli commentators to actual Hamas apologists. And still I believe that maybe with one exception of people I've had on that, if you got all the people I've had on in a room, they would solve it. And that's because it's not really representative as to —

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Ezra, Ezra, why is one group ‘right-wing Israelis’ and the other group ‘Hamas apologists’?

Klein: What do you mean?

Coates: Why [is the first group] not ‘Israeli right wing apologists’?

Klein: They're right-wing apologists.

Coates: That's just not what you just. You called the Hamas folks, and I'm not saying they're not apologist—

Klein: I have a — compared to — when I say I’ve had right wing Israelis on, I mean people who support Netanyahu, not people who support Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. I do not put — I mean, Hamas is a complicated organization. I’ve tried to treat it on the show as a complicated organization.

Coates: I know you have.

Klein: It did spend many, many years specifically targeting and killing civilians. I take that as different.

Coates: You take that differently than Netanyahu?

Klein: I take that as different than Netanyahu. Yeah.

Coates: Hm.

Klein: Certainly the military wing there. Do you not? What did you think of October 7th?²

Not only did Klein get called out for using undeserved charitable language to describe Itmar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who are both self-avowed fascists, but he attempted to separate them from ‘normal’ Israelis. As Coates called him out for later in the episode, both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are in Netanyahu’s cabinet.³ Additionally, this conversation was recorded a full year into Israel’s onslaught, when the Palestinian death toll had already exceeded 40,000.⁴ So, claiming the Israeli government wasn’t targeting civilians is an insult to everyone’s intelligence. At the end of the exchange, Klein senses Coates might dive into the uncomfortable subject of IDF atrocities, so he changes the topic to October 7th, knowing it will inspire sympathy for Israel.

Back then, the media propaganda was (and in many cases still is) heavily slanted towards Israel, so these defenses were plausible to, if not entirely accepted by, liberal audiences such as Ezra Klein’s. However, today, things are different. Israel’s mass-murdering intent can no longer be ignored. With just 8% of Democrats and 25% of Independents supporting Israel’s occupation of Gaza, blind repetition of the Army's hasbara and denying the objective of ethnic cleansing doesn’t pass muster.⁵ So, whenever Israel is justifiably condemned for its actions, liberal Zionists attempt to reframe the crime as human folly, which can be solved through removing the accused alone, leaving the Zionist project intact. While Palestinian resistance groups are frequently blamed, it’s also common for liberal Zionists to point the finger at ‘the Netanyahu government’ or the Israeli Prime Minister himself. Back in July, The New York Times, which openly admits its Zionist politics, ran a profile on Benjamin Netanyahu that presented the ongoing war as his individual decision.⁶

‘The strategic argument [explaining why the war is still going] was that it gave Israel a better chance of defeating not only Hamas but also Hamas’s regional allies, Hezbollah and Iran. Whether you buy that argument or not, our reporting shows that Netanyahu was clearly often motivated by his personal interest instead of only by these national priorities.’ — Patrick Kingsley, NYT Jerusalem Chief, Netanyahu’s War.

Though they are correct that the Likud Party is directing the slaughter, and the Israeli Prime Minister is more concerned with his personal status than anything else, we cannot pretend Israelis don’t support the colonization of Palestine. Netanyahu and his government are a symptom of Zionism, which is the actual cause of this genocide. A recent poll from Penn State University confirmed this. The poll found 82% of Jewish Israelis want every Gazan ethnically cleansed from the territory, while 56% favor expelling Arab citizens of Israel. Most disturbingly, 47% want the Israeli army to kill every Gazan they can find. While liberal Zionists often frame the Netanyahu government as ‘far right’ and therefore outside the wishes of the Israeli public, this is untrue. 70% of secular Jewish Israelis, the more moderate contingent compared to Israel’s ultra-orthodox right, support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and 38% want Arab Israelis expelled.⁷ A more recent poll from the Israel Democracy Institute found 79% of Israeli Jews were ‘untroubled’ by starvation in Gaza, confirming that the Israeli public widely supports the government’s genocidal policies.⁸ Every member of Netanyahu’s Likud party could be imprisoned in the Hague tomorrow, and Israel would elect a government very similar to its current one. After all, when centrist candidate and former IDF commander Benny Gantz opposed Netanyahu in 2019, he aired television ads with a rising counter bragging about how many ‘terrorists’ he’d killed.

Regardless of where they point the finger, liberal Zionists use human actors, Palestinian or Israeli, as a surface-level scapegoat. By focusing on individuals or organized groups, they impress upon their audiences that the inhumanity they are bearing digital witness to can be ended by changing who’s in charge, and altering the Zionist system that created the crisis is unnecessary. Though they criticize Israel and might accuse it of ‘war crimes’ or ‘crimes against humanity,’ liberal Zionists aggressively police the discourse from reaching a conclusion that Israel should be held to international accountability that could threaten its Jewish supremacist structure. They frequently oppose the non-violent Boycott, Divest, & Sanction movement, fearing the economic strategies that brought down apartheid South Africa would have a similar result in Israel. (Which is why you should support BDS!) When discussing the situation in Gaza, liberal Zionists will criticize Israel aggressively, but stop short of accusing it of genocide, a term with legal implications that would force the international community to act. To understand how the liberal Zionist ideology works currently, we return to the works of Ezra Klein, arguably the most influential liberal Zionist in mass media.

Though known more for his domestic policy work, Klein is a self-avowed liberal Zionist who is not above misrepresenting Israel’s nature to make it more palatable to his audience. In a self-interview episode of his podcast entitled How the Israel-Gaza Conversations Have Shaped My Thinking recorded two months after the start of the ‘Israel-Hamas War’ (Klein’s term), Klein’s disingenuousness is on full display.⁹ Responding to a listener question, he called the right of return (the right of Palestinians expelled by the Nakba and their descendants to return to their original homes) a ‘lie told by international law,’ because ‘you [Palestinians] are not going back there someday. That’s not how these conflicts work.’ The right of return for Palestinians was first affirmed by the U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (1948)¹⁰ and later by General Assembly Resolution 3236 (1974).¹¹ It is established law and not up for debate. Klein uses the voice of a realist to argue that Palestinians should give up on their communal claim, as if a natural phenomenon was preventing Palestinian return. In reality, it’s the deliberate, colonial practices of Zionist Israel stopping refugees from enacting their human right. The solution to this ongoing crime is to change the political landscape of Israel through sustained pressure, not tell Palestinians to get over. But as that would open a Pandora’s Box about what else Israel should do differently, liberal Zionists would rather nip the conversation in the bud than argue for the human rights they claim to uphold.

Continuing with his answer, Klein makes an explicitly religious-Zionist argument, claiming the ideological justification for modern Israel comes from the Torah.

‘Israel was a place where different peoples had settled on that land and had a claim on that land going far back. I dislike the idea that Jews had no relevance to that land, the kind of settler-colonialism idea. When people read [the Torah], it is an account of the Jewish people being expelled violently, repeatedly, from Jerusalem, which was not located at that time in New Jersey; it was there in the same place. There's a very ancient connection for the Jewish people to that land. When did the statute of limitations on Jewish expulsion run out?’

Here we see how liberal Zionists routinely sacrifice their liberalism for Zionism. Klein is arguing that because modern Jews have a religious ‘connection’ in historic Palestine (which is true), they should be allowed to unilaterally rule it with a fascist police state (which is horseshit). Religious arguments are rare from liberal Zionists, mostly because they fail to pass the most elementary test of fundamental reason and liberal society. Yet as Klein’s admission shows, they are very much a part of Zionist philosophy, regardless of place on the ideological spectrum.

It’s also essential to notice the racism in this argument. A moment earlier, Klein argued Palestinians living in refugee camps thirty miles from their ancestral homes have no right to return. Yet in the next breath, he argues Jewish people from around the globe have a right to ‘return’ to Israel based on a religious notion of ancient ancestry. Advocating for different outcomes for different people based on their ethnicity is a clear racial bias that plagues Klein’s work, along with much of the mainstream media.

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While the above statements reveal Klein’s Zionist beliefs, it’s what he says next that shows he’s willing to deceive his audience for the benefit of Zionism.

‘Israel is a state, formed partially in war, like many states have been. It is a state that will protect its borders, and it is a state for the people it has defined itself as, which is true for most states. I think saying it's a Jewish State is weird. I mean, America is a state for Americans. China is a state for the Chinese. Brazil is a state for Brazilians. States are imagined communities. Nationalities are imagined. Now it doesn't mean that you won't get killed trying to cross a border. The fact that something is a story doesn't mean it can't kill you. However, it does mean that it is not unusual for a country to define itself. And then if you are not in that definition, you don't get to go there and have citizenship. Mexicans cannot just come to America and say, “Well, I live here now. I'm a citizen!” Nor can Canadians, for that matter. And I think that if you just look at it as a normal state that is going to act like many other states would in this scenario, a lot of things become clearer.

Israel is a state, so it's going to try to defend itself and maintain its own internal sense of cohesion. And that is what most states do. Most states would not be open to immigration policies that made their current majorities minorities overnight. That is not how most states operate. The people of France would not agree to that policy. The people of Chile would not agree to that policy. This isn’t as weird as people try to make it out to be. The end goal for Israel is not exception, it's normalcy.

The difference between Israel and the other states Klein mentions (Mexico, America, Chile, France, etc.) is that those states act for their citizenry, while Israel acts for an ethnicity. As Ezra puts it, the French government is ‘defined for’ French citizens. It acts in their best interest and would not accept mass Spaniard migration overnight. Israel is uniquely terrible in that it does not claim to act for Israeli citizens, only Jews. The 2018 nation-state law affirms that Israel is the right of ‘the Jewish People,’ excluding the two-million Arab Israeli citizens from determining the course of their nation.¹² Furthermore, under the 1950 Law of Return, Israel expedites citizenship to any Jewish person from around the globe. This creates a scenario in which anyone with a Jewish grandparent can quickly move to Israel, gain citizenship, and achieve full rights, while a Palestinian who has lived in illegally-occupied East Jerusalem for their entire life is regarded as a second-class ‘permanent resident’ with fewer rights.¹³ Because Israel is an explicit ethnostate, it cannot be compared to a liberal state such as France. Two-thirds of French citizens are Catholics, but their religion does not grant them more rights than their non-Catholic countrymen. The French government is run mainly by Catholics, but it’s not expelling Muslims and Protestants and bringing in foreign Catholics to preserve numerical advantage in pursuit of a racial-religious homogeneity. Just like all the other countries Klein listed to, France does not elevate one ethnicity over the others, so comparing Israel to any of them is uneducated a best, deceitful at worse.

Palestinians walk in their designated section of the racially-segregated street in Hebron.

I’m delving into these statements because they clarify two key points. First, Ezra Klein is a Zionist who believes there should be an exclusively Jewish state in historic Palestine. Second, to put it extraordinarily kindly, Ezra Klein is willing to misrepresent basic facts about the Israel-Palestine situation to present Israel in a favorable light to his large audience. There is no world in which this professional political pundit, who frequently discusses this topic, is naive about what separates a liberal state like France from an ethnostate like Israel. Klein 100% knows the difference between a nationality and an ethnicity. He is very far from stupid, so he certainly understands that the French government prioritizing its citizens over foreigners isn’t akin to Israel prioritizing American Jews over Israeli Arabs.¹⁴ And yet, he has no issue saying so to his audience. Though dismaying, the deceit isn’t a surprise. Liberalism and Zionism are mutually exclusive. One cannot advocate for free, pluralistic, and democratic societies, then grant a single exemption and allow a special case of racist hierarchical governance. At least not without looking ridiculous to your audience. Liberal Zionism is a nonsensical position that can’t be honestly justified, so defending it requires lying, such as the above. It’s essential to recognize the contradictory heart of liberal Zionism — which is not exclusive to Ezra Klein — so that we can best understand, navigate, and resolve the domestic political dynamics of the Gaza crisis and save as many surviving Palestinians as possible. Unfortunately, even though Gazans have endured nineteen months of unimaginable horror at the hands of this ideology, Klein is still attempting to ensure solutions don’t go overboard and threaten, to use his words, ‘the meaning of the Jewish state.’

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In a recent episode of his podcast, originally entitled ‘When Is It A Genocide?’ before being changed to ‘Is Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza?, Klein interviews Philippe Sands, an international lawyer who’s prosecuted genocide and once counseled the Palestinian Authority. Before introducing his guest, Klein expresses what I’d call the current liberal Zionist view of the Gaza situation. He acknowledges the suffering of the Palestinian people, which I do believe he’s genuinely concerned about. Then, he explains why he’s hesitant to accuse those responsible of genocide.

‘One reason I have stayed away from the word “genocide” is that there is an imprecision at its heart. When people use the word “genocide,” I think they imagine something like the Holocaust: The attempted extermination of an entire people. But the legal definition of “genocide,” what it means in international court, encompasses much more than that.

At the same time, the word “genocide” has the power it does because it is rooted in the Holocaust. To accuse Israel — to accuse any state or group — of genocide is to tie them in cultural memory to the worst acts human beings have ever committed. If Israel becomes widely seen not just as the state born of a genocide but a state that then perpetrated one, it will forever transform the meaning of the Jewish state.’

Klein is, very openly, sharing his political motivations with us. While I do not doubt the slaughter of innocents tugs at his heart strings, this is a clear-as-day admission that ‘the meaning of the Jewish state’ is of such significance to him that it warrants consideration at this pivotal moment. As a reputable lawyer, Philipe Sands discusses genocide as both a legal definition (what would be necessary to achieve a guilty verdict in an international court) and a colloquial definition, which is commonly understood as industrialized slaughter. Throughout the episode, it becomes clear that Klein’s goal is to implore his audience that:

1. Israel’s acts are atrocious, evil, constitute ‘war crimes’ or ‘crimes against humanity,’ and must end. And,

2. Israel is not guilty of genocide, and therefore international solutions that would end the Zionist project and ‘transform the meaning of the Jewish state’ are unnecessary.

While the episode is structured as an interview, Klein’s attempt to convey his point while appearing neutral creates an awkward conversation. Sands authored East West Street, an account of the men who formed the legal basis of genocide, so Klein frames the conversation as an objective quest to find ‘when’ the situation in Gaza can be called a genocide. However, it’s clear Klein has an ulterior motive. When he asks Sands to defend Israel against the charge of genocide, the lawyer says that Israel doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on, then criticizes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Issac Herzog for replicating behavior akin to the Holocaust. At this point, Klein jumps in to defend the men most responsible for the killing.

Sands: Incidentally, the relevant people concerned are well aware of the history of genocide and the meaning of the genocide convention. There was a profile of Benjamin Netanyahu in Time magazine six years ago. It included a photograph of him reading East West Street. I find this very painful — that the idea that the person who is most responsible for what is going on right now is someone who is well aware of the historical matters. Because he has written himself into them, and frankly, he should know better.

Another thing to note is, who reviewed the book for Haaretz? You might want to pick that up. Isaac Herzog, the current president of Israel. It’s very difficult for me to comprehend how individuals — who have themselves, through their own family stories, lived through in a historical sense the kinds of things that happened to their forebears — can find a justification for this kind of behavior.

Klein: Let me try to put myself in their shoes to create fairness here. One is that their view is that the actor here was Hamas. Hamas attacked on Oct. 7. Hamas has held the hostages since. And the way you know that it is not genocidal in intent is if Hamas had laid down its arms, given itself up as an organization, and released the hostages, this would have ended long before now. What this is analogous to is a war fought through siege. And they’re besieging Gaza until what used to be its government gives up the hostages and the war.

Notice how Klein claims his words are the thoughts of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and President Issac Herzog, creating a level of plausible deniability that his subsequent statements aren’t his own, but rather ‘theirs.’ (He’ll do this repeatedly throughout the conversation.) This is a rhetorical device common in politics known as ‘weasel words.’ By claiming to speak on behalf of an ambiguous authority, the speaker can introduce a morally dubious argument that they sympathize with to the audience, while having the ability to claim, ‘Actually I never said that. I said other people were saying that.’ It’s the same tactic as Donald Trump’s ‘Many people are saying…’ which enables him to scream the most batshit-insane stuff you’ve ever heard while leaving space for his media mouthpieces to defend him by claiming ‘he was speaking for someone else.’ Klein is no stranger to this tactic. He used it in a recent interview to push back on Mahmoud Khalil’s critique that Columbia University should have recognized Palestinian pain as much as Jewish pain at the start of the hostilities. Which is a weird thing to argue against, to say the least.

I’ve heard some interpretations of this conversation that Klein wasn’t defending Israel, but was steel-manning Israel’s case so Sands could refute it and convince the audience that this is a genocide needing a proper international response. I find this theory baffling, as neither Sands nor Klein calls this a genocide, which is what they’d do if they wanted their convince their audience anti-genocide solutions were necessary. While this theory is already a ginormous stretch, the claim of ‘steel-manning’ falls apart under inspection of what Ezra Klein actually said. For example, Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers have repeatedly stated they will not leave Gaza even if the hostages are released.

‘Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says there is “no way” Israel will halt its war in Gaza, even if a deal is reached to release more hostages.’ — PBS News, 5/13/25¹⁵

Yet Klein, claiming to speak for Netanyahu, presents an argument that Israel officials are actin in self-defense to try and save the hostages. This is not ‘steel-manning’ Israel’s case, but misrepresenting it. Klein is making his own, more palatable case for Israel, separate from the clear intentions and statements of the Israeli government. While Netanyahu’s actual case would be met with horror by liberal listeners, Klein’s sanitized version is a repetition of what media has been saying for almost two years, which makes it sound worthy of consideration to the listeners. When Sands refutes this self-defense argument, Klein doubles down and defends Israel a second time. At first, he shares his personal opinion, before returning to putting his words in the mouth of imaginary speakers, this time ‘Israeli and American Jews.’ To portray American Jews as a monolith is absurd. To present Israeli and American Jewry as having one unified view of the charge of Israeli genocide is outside the limits of reason.

Sands: ‘This is not self-defense. [Israel’s] acts are not preventing attacks.’

Klein: I do not see a defense that Israel is not, at this point, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But the debate has centered around this question of genocide. And to be fair to that debate, there was not a surrender the Jews could make in 1940 that would have ended the Holocaust or stopped the Holocaust.

This is the view I hear from Israeli Jews, and for many Jewish people here: There are conditions Israel has laid out. If Hamas capitulated — they have rejected many cease-fire agreements or broken cease-fires. But to call this a genocide is flatly untrue, even under any colloquial definition of genocide. Because this would — at least they believe — stop if Hamas surrendered and gave up the hostages. The fact that Israel has endangered the hostages further by continuing the war, I think, is also undeniable. But in terms of intent, is that not an argument?

When Klein says ‘intent,’ he is referring to the need to establish the genocidal intent of the perpetrators to reach an affirmative a genocide verdict. Sands has previously argued Israel had no self-defense claim, indicating that their purpose is to destroy Palestinians entirely. Klein, again, argues that Israel’s intent could be to defeat Hamas and rescue the hostages, something Israel has never had an interest in doing. To be clear, Ezra Klein is repeating the exact same argument he made before, only this time he’s talking for ‘Israeli and American Jews’ instead of Netanyahu and Herzog. Remember, this conversation began by establishing the differences between the legal definition of genocide and its colloquial meaning. At this point, Ezra Klein is explicitly arguing that neither term is appropriate. When Sands, yet again, refutes the case put forth by ‘American and Israeli Jews’ through Ezra Klein’s mouth that Israel is defending itself, Klein, for a third time, argues the Israeli government could be acting in self defense.

Sands: The more difficult it becomes to answer that question, the more likely it is that a group of judges at the International Court of Justice will conclude there is no military justification. The only intention is to destroy large parts of this group.

Klein: Here’s, I think, how they argue this. I think this argument also goes to your point that the longer this goes on, the harder this argument becomes to sustain. Which is to say: Hamas is interwoven into civilian life in Gaza, both inextricably and strategically. It operates out of mosques, hospitals, and universities. And that for all these things that the rest of the world is condemning Israel for destroying, it is Hamas’s fault because it hides among the population.

Israel has argued that Hamas has been diverting food aid, which is why Israel had to stop the food aid and then rebuild this absolutely horrific structure of food assistance, which has led to so many deaths now.

I’m not saying I buy this argument. I do want to say that the investigations have found that Hamas has not diverted food aid systematically. But that has been their argument — that the targeting of what looks like civilian infrastructure is necessary because Hamas hides among civilians and inside civilian infrastructure.

Sands: Even if it’s true, it doesn’t justify what’s going on under international law in terms of international humanitarian law, war crimes law, and crimes against humanity — and perhaps even crossing the line in due course, whatever the judges decide.

On three consecutive occasions, Ezra Klein felt compelled to offer a defense of not just Israel, but the masterminds of what is globally considered a genocide. While doing so, he claimed to speak for Israeli officials, American Jews, Israeli Jews, himself, and future potential defense attorney for Israelis tried at the International Criminal Court (fingers crossed). Though he uses the language and tone of someone who wants to end the slaughter, and frequently cushions his statements to avoid direct blame, his goal is to sow doubt in his audience’s mind, if not convince them entirely, that there’s not enough evidence to convict Israel of genocide, either in an international court of law or the court of public opinion. While the former might sound more consequential, it is the latter concern that Ezra Klein cares about most, as he tells us towards the end of the conversation:

‘I do think the distinction between the political and the legal (understandings of genocide) is important. Because on some level, I don’t understand all of this to really be about a court case that will happen at some point in the future.

I understand it to be about a cultural understanding: that the real damage here — the real demand here, the real effort here — is to attach to Israel, to Israel’s current leadership, to the Jewish state — the charge of genocide, and make it stick in cultural memory. To change the meaning of the Jewish state.’

With this being the second time he uses this exact framing, it’s clear this passage holds Ezra Klein’s primary goal. He views Israel as a Jewish state inextricably linked to the Holocaust. If Israel was believed to have conducted a genocide, it would, in his opening words, ‘transform the meaning of the Jewish state’ from ‘the state born of a genocide’ to ‘a state that then perpetrated one.’ For a multitude of reasons, that’s something he doesn’t want. So he contests that Israel is conducting a genocide (colloquially or legally) to preserve what he sees as the meaning of the Jewish state. While one man’s personal belief might seem trivial, genocide denial is not limited to the past. Not only are there Gazans who could be saved by concerted international effort, but accurately labelling this assault as a genocide empowers the international community to save Israel’s future would-be-victims. By pretending to ‘just ask questions,’ Ezra Klein — and the many other prominent liberal Zionists — is directly hampering the efforts we need to save as many lives as possible.

Later this month, the Democratic National Committee will vote on two competing resolutions during their annual summer meeting. The first calls for a ‘suspension of military aid to Israel’ and immediate recognition of Palestinian statehood.¹⁶ If passed, it would be a notable change for the Democratic Party and set the tenor for the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election. The second, introduced by DNC leadership to counter the first, is a mirror of the 2024 platform: something something ceasefire, something two-state solution, something only democracy in the Middle East yada yada.¹⁷ There’s no question Democratic voters want the more serious option. Only 8% approve of Israel’s actions, while 71% want restrictions on military aid, according to

Prem Thakker

. Whether due to old age, donor demand, or sheer stubbornness, the politicians who control the Democratic Party are refusing to listen to their voters. Ezra Klein is one of the few voices who could directly influence party politicians. His book, Abundance, is their gospel, and he was the guest of honor at their one-day issue retreat.¹⁸ Would a full-throated declaration that he believes Israel is conducting a genocide change the Democratic Party overnight? No. But it would significantly raise the pressure on the Democratic establishment to face reality, alter course, and promote solutions that save lives — and not just in Gaza.

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It’s difficult to say, but I don’t believe the murder of Palestine will stop once Gazans are gone. Israel has been very clear it plans to turn its guns on the second Palestinian Occupied Territory after it completes the current campaign. It likely doesn’t have the military capacity to attack immediately, but it is announcing loud and clear it will not be stopped from doing so. The Knesset voted 71-13 for a symbolic motion calling to annex the West Bank, and House Speaker Mike Johnston recently visited the occupied West Bank to declare American support for the conquest.¹⁹ To start the process, Israeli settlers armed and protected by the Israeli Army have been attacking West Bank residents at the highest monthly average since the U.N. began tracking attacks in 2006.²⁰ There were 750 violent settler attacks in the first half of 2025 alone. That’s 130 a month, or over four attacks a day.²¹ It’s is chillingly obvious that, absent international intervention, the horrors we’re witnessing in Gaza will be recreated upon the West Bank population.

This is why I find Klein’s decision to contest the charge of genocide grossly irresponsible, if not complicit. I do not doubt liberal Zionists are saddened by the loss of life, and I’d wager the vast majority of them want it to stop. But as evidenced here, they are also very concerned with protecting Israel’s image and ensuring there’s no international oversight of the state. Israel and the United States are both signatories of the 1948 Genocide Convention, which obligates them to prevent genocide, and affords them an ‘extraterritorial scope’ to do so.²² Not only would public recognition of Israel’s genocide steer American politics towards halting support for apartheid Israel, which would bring about its end, but, under the U.S.’s own law, it would compel the U.S. to participate in international oversight of a new, post-genocide Israel, likely stripping it of its Jewish supremacist nature. Though the chances of that are slim today, if disapproval of Israel keeps continues at its current rate, it’s inevitable that in twenty, thirty, or fifty years, distaste will reach a critical mass and sever the U.S.-Israel ‘special relationship,’ ending Jewish supremacist Israel and replacing it with something better. To that I say — good.

Ezra Klein and his fellow liberal Zionists believe there’s a tightrope that can be walked between ending the killing in Gaza and preserving Israel’s Jewish supremacist nature. Putting aside that no nation should have an ‘anything supremacist nature,’ this is false. There is no way to balance building mass support for a ceasefire while refusing to recognize the unmistakable reality of what we’re witnessing. No one will join you. Israel’s sympathizers will accuse you of hating Israel. Palestine’s allies will distrust your ulterior motives. You won’t get the comprise you want. The compromise doesn’t exist. Because this is a genocide. That’s reality. Israel is trying to destroy the Palestinians. There’s no middle-ground here. You’re either focused on stopping the killing, or you’re not. And that requires facing hard truths.

The principle cause of this genocide is not Benjamin Netanyahu, Hamas, Palestinian civilians, college campus protestors, or any other immediate actor. It’s Zionism. How could it not be? A segregated population is a sick population. It sours into racism, xenophobia, and other hatreds, which we’re witnessing manifest in the desire of too many Jewish Israelis to enact unspeakable horror among their Semitic brethren. This has nothing to do with being Jewish. The same patterns occurred in the Jim Crowe South, Nazi Germany, and apartheid South Africa. Across continents and centuries, segregation brings terror. As is the case with these societies, the only solution is to root up the Zionist belief, root and stem: full democratization and equal rights for everyone who lives between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Even if Ezra Klein could walk the tightrope and stop the whatever-we-want-to-call-it while preserving Zionism, it would only be a matter of time before there was another tightrope to walk, teetering above the mass graves of whichever oppressed population Israel decided to bomb, starve, or destroy — perhaps one of the five nations it has already bombed this year.²³ It’s time for everyone to face hard truths and admit that Zionism is a failed, dead idea. It resulted in genocide, which should be the ultimate end of any political theory. The longer we entertain the reanimation of its corpse, the more blood we’ll all have on our hands.

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Much of the above essay is my interpretation and understanding of Ezra Klein’s (and other peoples’) unknowable intents, thoughts, and motivations. I’d happily be proven wrong.

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Damn, that was a long one. Thanks for sticking with me all the way through. If you could tap the ❤️ before you go, it helps my work rise in the Substack algorithm. If you’re new here, subscribe (free or paid) to support my work and ensure you never miss an essay. Take care of yourselves!

In Solidarity — Joe

1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/israel-gaza-war-palestinian-cropland-starvation

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/11/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-ta-nehisi-coates.html

3. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/10/who-are-bezalel-smotrich-and-itamar-ben-gvir-the-israeli-ministers-facing-sanctions

4. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/gaza-40000deaths-turk-ohchr-15aug24/

5. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/31/politics/us-support-israel-gaza-republicans-democrats

6. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/briefing/benjamin-netanyahu-israel.html

7. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-28/ty-article-magazine/.premium/yes-to-transfer-82-of-jewish-israelis-back-expelling-gazans/00000197-12a4-df22-a9d7-9ef6af930000

8. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-05/ty-article/.premium/large-majority-of-israeli-jews-untroubled-by-reports-of-famine-in-gaza-poll-finds/00000198-7ab3-d0ce-a5de-fbb374f30000

9. The Ezra Klein Show, “How the Israel-Gaza Conversations Have Shaped My Thinking,” December 19th, 2023

10. https://www.hrw.org/legacy/campaigns/israel/return/un194-rtr.htm

11. https://www.un.org/unispal/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ARES3236XXIX.pdf

12. https://main.knesset.gov.il/EN/activity/documents/BasicLawsPDF/BasicLawNationState.pdf

13. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-know-about-arab-citizens-israel

14. If he doesn’t, then he shouldn’t be working in political media.

15. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/netanyahu-says-no-way-israel-ends-gaza-war-until-hamas-is-defeated

16. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/3498524/democrats-gaza-resolutions-dnc-summer-meeting/

17. https://theintercept.com/2025/08/15/dnc-chair-israel-arms-weapons-gaza/

18. https://www.axios.com/2025/05/06/senate-democrats-ezra-klein-david-shor

19. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-863278

20. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/23/israeli-parliament-approves-symbolic-motion-on-west-bank-annexation

21. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/world/middleeast/west-bank-israel-settler-attacks.html

22. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide%20Convention-FactSheet-ENG.pdf

23. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/25/mapping-israels-expanding-battlefronts-across-the-middle-east