Published in the Jerusalem Post online, 29 January 2025
Prominent US columnist Peter Beinart justifies Hamas
Peter Beinart’s purpose in writing Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning is encapsulated in its title.
In a foreword, he explains to someone he describes as a “former friend” (former, because they have diverged so sharply in their views) why he rejected the idea of calling his book Being Jewish after October 7. It was not, he writes, because he minimizes the horror of that day. He chose his title, he explains, “because I worry you don’t grapple sufficiently with the terror of the days that followed, and preceded it as well.” In short, he believes mainstream Israeli opinion is unbalanced as regards the rights and wrongs of the Gaza conflict, and his aim is to redress the perspective he sees as mistaken.Beinart is a prominent left-wing
American columnist, journalist, and political commentator. Born and raised in
an Orthodox Jewish family, Beinart began as an ardent liberal Zionist but
slowly moved toward an increasingly extreme left-wing position. Finally,
in July 2020 in an article in The New York Times, he renounced Zionism entirely
and declared himself in favor of a unitary Arab-Jewish state in place of
Israel.
In this new book he writes,
“When I enter a synagogue I am no longer sure who will extend their hand and
who will look away.” He sounds genuinely mystified, if perhaps somewhat
disingenuous, when he writes: “How does someone like me, who still considers
himself a Jewish loyalist, end up being cursed on the street?”
This blinkered understanding of
the movement pays no regard to the absolute need for Zionism in the early-20th century
as a response to millennia of statelessness and the continued persecution of
the Jewish people. So urgent did the need for a Jewish homeland become that at
one point Theodor Herzl and other Zionist leaders toyed with the idea of siting
it in Africa, Argentina, anywhere – a short-lived diversion from Zionism’s
historic purpose, perhaps, but it demonstrates that at the time the alleviation
of Jewish suffering outweighed any other consideration.
In short, Beinart entirely fails
to appreciate that the establishment of Israel was not a political demonstration
of Jewish colonial arrogance but a lifeline for Jews fleeing constant pogroms,
widespread discrimination, and finally the aftermath of the Holocaust. For many
Jews, Zionism represents the affirmation of their right to exist in a hostile
world and determine their own future.
Beinart, who believes that the
State of Israel should be absorbed into some democratic Arab-Jewish entity, also
disregards the historical validation for Israel’s existence.
Beinart’s central thesis is
that Jewish support for Israel’s military actions in Gaza is based on flawed
ideas lodged within the Jewish narrative – the twin concepts of Jewish
victimhood and Jewish supremacy. While Jewish history does indeed include
episodes of both persecution and resilience, they are the lived experiences of
a people who have faced repeated existential threats. He fails to appreciate
that these experiences have a reality that far outweighs their being used as
instruments to justify Israeli policies.
He has, for example, nothing to say about the Hebron massacre in 1929, master-minded by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the then-mufti of Jerusalem. An ardent Nazi, Husseini spent much of World War II in Berlin where he liaised with Hitler about extending his Final Solution to the Middle East.
For Beinart to dismiss the fears
of Jewish communities as outdated or exaggerated undermines their lived
reality. In Israel, October 7 and the random suicide bombings and civilian
deaths during the two Intifadas are only too vividly remembered. Worldwide,
Jews are currently acutely aware of rising antisemitism and threats to their
safety.
Beinart gives full weight to the
suffering of Gazans, which is undeniable and tragic, but in writing about
Israel’s actions in relation to it, he minimizes or omits the context that
makes them valid. For instance, he says little about the malign role of Hamas,
whose brutal pogrom and seizure of hostages on October 7 were in themselves
international crimes. He even goes so far as to justify Hamas’s strategy of
embedding itself within the civilian structure of the Gazan population,
rejecting the claim that this is using them as human shields.
“Under international law,”
he writes, “using civilians as human shields... doesn’t mean fighting in an
area that just happens to have civilians around [which] Hamas certainly does...
It fights from within Gaza’s population and thus puts civilians at risk. But
that’s typical of insurgent groups.”
Nor does he mention the misuse of
the billions of humanitarian dollars donated by nations and global
organizations which Hamas used to construct it, nor the corruption that enabled
Hamas leaders amass huge fortunes and live in luxury in Qatar and elsewhere.
Beinart’s moral critique of Israel
would be more compelling if it acknowledged the challenges posed by an
adversary that rejects Israel’s very existence and openly seeks its
destruction. He says nothing about the steps the IDF took to warn civilians
about forthcoming attacks. By failing to address these, and other relevant
realities adequately, Beinart’s narrative places the onus of blame for the
Gazan tragedy entirely on Israel.
Beinart’s family came to the
States from South Africa, and in the book he compares the Palestinian
experience to South African apartheid, and also to other historical struggles
for justice. While rhetorically powerful, such comparisons fail to capture the
unique nature of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Unlike South Africa, where a
single governing entity oppressed a disenfranchised majority, the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves two national movements with competing
claims to the same land. The historical, religious, and political dimensions of
this conflict make simplistic analogies unhelpful and potentially misleading.
Being Jewish After the Destruction
of Gaza is a provocative work that raises questions about Jewish morality and
identity, and the future of Jewish-Palestinian relations. However, its
arguments fall short of addressing the complexities and challenges inherent in
the situation.
BEINART’S POLITICAL journey has led him to a place where everything he learned in his youth about Judaism, Zionism, and the Jewish people seems false, or at least in need of reinterpretation. He clearly feels an urgent need to reassess everything, and in his first chapter he takes this right back to the Exodus. He challenges Jewish history at every single step from that point, including the festivals. It is a long catalogue.
In his reworked vision of Jewish
morality, Beinart glosses over the hard realities that have shaped the history
of his people, and continue to define the struggle for peace in the Middle
East.
For readers seeking a nuanced and
balanced exploration of these issues, Peter Beinart is not the author of first
choice. Being Jewish after the
destruction of Gaza is a handbook filled with the skewed anti-Israel,
anti-Jewish arguments that demand to be challenged by upholders of truth and
justice.
Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 29 January 2025:
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-839779
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