This Aug. 2, 2026, article by CAMERA’s Omri Tubi appeared in JNS.
The New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein has been producing lengthy podcasts and articles on Israel and the Palestinians as part of his “The Ezra Klein Show.”
The obvious problem is that Klein does not know history, which affects his journalism: he asks his interviewees the wrong questions and deprives readers of important knowledge.
On one occasion, Klein interviews activists Rula Hardal and May Pundak of “A Land for All,” an organization that advocates a confederation as a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Klein calls confederation a “new political vision.” But confederation is not a new idea. It has been proposed throughout the years, since 1920. Israelis and Palestinians have been polled about it for years, but the idea has never received popular support.
The idea of confederation has a long history, but it does not come up in Klein’s reporting. As a result, readers do not know what the difference between Hardal and Pundak’s initiative and past ones is, or why they expect their initiative to succeed where others have failed.
On a different occasion, Klein interviews scholars Shibley Telhami and Marc Lynch, who, together with two co-authors, published a book and an article on Israel’s “one-state reality.”
Klein claims this one-state reality argument “might have been a controversial claim when it was made” by the scholars in early 2023, and that U.S. politics must grapple with that reality.
However, scholars have argued about the irreversibility of the occupation since at least the early 1980s. And in politics, Secretary of State John Kerry has warned of a “one-state reality” at least three times in 2015, 2016, and 2017. These warnings came up in other instances as well.
Had Klein been serious about probing this argument, he could have asked the following: Were early analysts wrong when they declared partition was nearing impossibility more than 40 years ago? If so, why? What is the major difference, if any, between the authors’ arguments regarding the one-state reality and prior ones?
These questions do not come up.
(Read the rest of CAMERA’s Aug. 2, 2026, Op-Ed here).