FACING MORAL WRECKAGE
For decades, many Jews believed they could reconcile liberal values with unwavering support for the State of Israel. That consensus is now at risk of being undermined as Jews confront questions once considered unthinkable: What does solidarity mean in the face of mass civilian suffering? And what happens when a government enacts policies that violate ethical ideals that lie at the core of a people’s identity?
Journalist Beinart explores the crisis tearing through Jewish identity – with its wider implications for liberalism and the moral imagination of the West. He argues that the debate over the actions of the Netanyahu government and its allies, in the occupied territories of Palestine and in its wars in Gaza and further abroad, is no longer just a question of geopolitics. It touches on matters spiritual, generational and existential – not least for Jewish people around the world.
Peter Beinart [USA]
Peter Beinart is Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. His fourth book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, which was published by Knopf in 2025, won the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. He is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, Editor-at-Large of Jewish Currents, an MSNOW political commentator and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He writes the Beinart Notebook newsletter on Substack.
Geraldine Doogue
Long career in various arms of Australian journalism. Now co-presenter, with Hamish Macdonald, of the podcast/RN program Global Roaming, which focusses each week on international developments that influence Australia’s place in the world. For the previous 18 years Geraldine presented RN’s
Saturday Extra, which specialised in foreign policy, regional issues, good books, good travel. She started her journalistic life in her hometown of Perth, as a reporter for The West Australian, moving onto The Australian, 2UE, Channel Ten News and she covered Gulf War One for ABC News in 1991, receiving a United National Media Peace Prize and two Penguin awards. Career highlights are setting up the influential social affairs programme Life Matters on Radio National (now RN) in 1993 hosting ABC TV’s Nationwide in the 1980s and presenting Australia’s long-standing religious affairs
programme Compass, on ABC TV, for almost 20 years until 2019. Geraldine was awarded a Churchill Fellowship for social and cultural reporting in 2000.
She coauthored “Tomorrow’s Islam: Uniting Age-Old Beliefs and A Modern World (2005); in August 2014, she released a Text Publishing book “The Climb: Conversations with Australian Women In Power”. She also co-produces a podcast called The Big Tent, focussing on the future of the Catholic Church in Australia and internationally. She was awarded a Walkley Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism in 2023 and was admitted
to the Australian Media Hall of Fame in 2018. In 2023 she became an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) recognising her distinguished service on ethics, values, religion and social change. Plus, she been honoured with several Honorary Doctorates of Letters from various Australian Universities (UWA, Sydney, ANU, Macquarie, ACU).
We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation - the custodians of the country on which we meet - and acknowledge their Elders, past and present.
The views and opinions expressed by the Festival participants are not necessarily the views of The Ethics Centre and our partners.