Over decades, political commentator and former The New Republic editor Peter Beinart has evolved (some would say devolved) from a straightforward supporter of Israel to, in the words of New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, “the self-appointed anguished conscience and angry scold of the Jewish state.”
Mr. Beinart, often described as an Orthodox Jew (he tweaks that moniker, stating that he “attends an Orthodox synagogue”) currently favors a “one-state solution,” which is to say, the replacement of Israel with a bi-national Jewish/Arab state.
In that “Israel-Palestine,” Jews and Palestinian Arabs will be able to live in harmony, presumably with lions and lambs frolicking amid the kalaniyot.
The commentator blames Israel and her American supporters for Palestinian attacks on Jews. Although he called the October 7 massacre a “horrifying crime,” he added that “All human beings resist oppression… Israelis are occupying millions of people… If you treat people that way, they are going to fight back.”
Long before “progressive” members of Congress were elected to their offices, Mr. Beinart advocated for a limit on US aid to Israel, writing in 2016 that “it is lunacy for President Obama to give Israel a new military aid package before Netanyahu curtails settlement growth…”
His idealism and vision of Arab/Jewish harmony in Eretz Yisrael is admirable. What his shiny bi-national state vision also is, though, is a delusional fantasy.
Puncturing his dream is the sad fact that, even if Israel successfully neutralizes Hamas’ leadership, the Arab world will, at least for a time, remain rife with hatred for Jews. A menagerie of jihadi groups with assorted grandiloquent titles currently enjoy the support of a large chunk of (if not most) Palestinians. No true “peace movement” has ever emerged from Palestinian society.
And while the haters may glom onto the excuse of “settlements” in Yehudah and Shomron, the animus predates those communities by many decades. Arabs murdered Jews in Eretz Yisrael in the 1920s; the horrific, unprovoked Hebron massacre of scores of Jews took place in 1929. When Israel declared its independence in 1948 (when the “territories” were parts of Jordan and Egypt), pogroms were launched against Jews in Arab lands.
But Mr. Beinart sees villainy only in homes built for Jews in areas conquered by Israel in 1967. He chooses to see Arab (and “pro-Palestinian”) anti-Semitism as the effect of Israel’s existence rather than what is at the root of Israel-hatred.
Last week, in a nearly 4,000-word opinion piece in The New York Times, Mr. Beinart declared that liberalism (i.e., dedication to democracy and freedom) is no longer compatible with “Zionism” (i.e., support of Israel).
Because, he contends, the latter “requires Jewish dominance” and “group supremacy.”
His case is hard to make, in light of some facts: that “supremacist” Israel guarantees her Arab citizens full equal rights, that Israel’s courts—including its highest—have included Arab justices, and have prevented the expropriation of private Palestinian land. Not to mention that Israeli Arab citizens serve as ambassadors, legislators, journalists and academics; or that the Knesset includes an Islamist Arab political party. Or that Arab citizens of Israel have been elected to every Knesset since the state’s founding. Mr. Beinart deals with all that—by ignoring it.
His bugaboo, of course, is that Israel has not annexed the land captured in 1967 and, thus, that its Arab residents are stateless (the PA doesn’t count). That is indeed a problem, one that can be solved by a whole-hearted, sincere embrace by the Palestinian populace of peaceful coexistence with Israel and the subsequent creation of a Palestinian state.
Unfortunately, not only have Palestinian leaders rejected every plan put forth for such a state, but there are no signs whatsoever of the sort of Palestinian good will that could assuage Israelis’ fears that an Arab state in Yehudah and Shomron would duplicate what happened when Israel withdrew from Gaza.
Sadly telling is Mr. Beinart’s invoking of “Palestinian scholars” to make the case that the chant “from the river to the sea…” isn’t really “expulsionist [or] genocidal” but, rather, just an old, benign pining for Palestinian Arab/Jewish coexistence.
Conveniently omitted is that the chant is currently Hamas’ motto. And its chanters know that.
And so, seeing it as innocuous is like regarding a white robe and tall pointed hood as a mere fashion statement.
Mr. Beinart needs to further evolve
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