by AZAD ESSA
Beinart’s latest book treats Zionism as a given, erases historical Jewish opposition to the racist ideology, and gives credence to a Jewish claim over Palestine
In the summer of 2010, the prominent Jewish American writer Peter Beinart dropped a bombshell on America’s liberal elite.
He observed, as Israel continued to build illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and completed the first round of what it called “mowing the lawn” – the name given to the periodic bombing of Gaza – that attitudes towards Israel were dramatically shifting among young American Jews.
The winds were changing, Beinart noted in the New York Review of Books.
“Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral,” he wrote.
He cautioned that the American Jewish establishment’s refusal to change track on Israel’s brutal occupation of the occupied territories would alienate young Jewish Americans from the Israeli state.
The noted Jewish American scholar Norman Finkelstein wrote in his book Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End that as an observant Orthodox New York Jew and renowned establishment liberal with deep ties to both the mainstream media (he was the former editor of The New Republic) as well as the Democratic Party elite, “Beinart’s high profile defection signalled the further decomposition of American Zionism, this time at its hard core.”
A few years later, Beinart would expand on his views with the book The Crisis of Zionism (Picador), in which he described Israeli policies against the Palestinians as threatening to “destroy the dream of a state that safeguards the Jewish people and cherishes democratic ideals”.
He called on American Jews “to defend the dream of a democratic Jewish state before it is too late.”
But as Israel repeatedly bombed Gaza, settlements in the occupied West Bank expanded, and normalisation deals in the form of the Abraham Accords occurred, Beinart was forced to conclude in 2020 that democracy was incongruous with Jewish supremacy.
Instead, he began advocating the idea of a one-state solution in which the Jews and Palestinians would live together in a bi-national state.
“Now liberal Zionists must make our decision, too. It’s time to abandon the traditional two-state solution and embrace the goal of equal rights for Jews and Palestinians,” he wrote in The New York Times, another harbinger of mainstream liberal opinion.
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