Peter Beinart’s Tall Tales About the Wickedness of the Jewish State

Peter Beinart has just written another book, which Stephen Pollard discusses in a devastating review to be found here: “‘For Peter Beinart, focusing on the right of Jews to be secure from terrorists is immoral,'” The Jewish Chronicle, February 20, 2025:

Actually, that’s not quite it because we are all wrong to have noticed an increase in antisemitism since October 7. It hasn’t happened. We know this because Beinart asserts it, and he is so much wiser than the rest of us. Chants of ‘from the river to the sea’ are “ironic” because “there already is a country that extends from the Mediterranean to the Jordan”. Oh, clever point! It’s not about Jew hate at all but rather is used by those crafty Zionists: “Labelling the slogan antisemitic — even genocidally antisemitic — turns public attention away from how Israel is treating Palestinians now, especially in Gaza, and redirects attention toward how Palestinians might treat Jews were they in charge. It replaces the actual subjugation that Palestinians experience as an oppressed people with the theoretical subjugation that Jews might experience were the shoe on the other foot.”

What is the “actual subjugation” of Palestinians by Israelis? In Gaza, there has not been a single Israeli in the Strip since 2005 — that is, until October 7, 2023. In 2005, every Israeli was pulled out of Gaza. The Israelis left behind fourteen million dollars’ worth of greenhouses, in which fruit and flowers had been grown by Israelis and sold on the European market. The greenhouses were turned over intact by the Israeis to the Palestinians. The hope was that the Gazans would make good use of this turn-key operation. Instead the Palestinians trashed the greenhouses, pulled out the copper pipes, and left what had been a very profitable business in ruins. In Judea and Samaria, the Palestinians are left entirely alone to govern themselves in Area A, and in Area B are left alone by the Israelis except as to security matters, which remain in Israeli hands. Only in Area C are the Palestinians subject to a series of restrictions to prevent them from expanding onto state and waste lands, or even on land owned by Jews. In Israel itself, Israeli Arabs enjoy full civil and political rights. They sit in the Knesset, serve on the Supreme Court go abroad as diplomats representing the state. A recent head of Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi, was an Israeli Arab. Jews and Arabs work in the same offices an on the same farms. They play on the same sports teams and in the same orchestras. They are treated by the same medical personnel — consisting of both Jews and Arabs —in the same hospitals. Jews and Arabs go into business together, in everything from restaurants to high-tech start-ups. There is only one difference: Jews must, while Arabs may, serve in the military. Does any of this support Peter Beinart’s insistence that the Jews now “subjugate” the Palestinians?

Beinart uses the same logic to defend usage of the phrase “intifada” and other slogans such as, “when people are occupied, resistance is justified”. Indeed for Beinart the phrase “Israel has a right to defend itself” is actually worse and more threatening than “intifada” or “resistance is justified.”

Were people “occupied” in Gaza? Not since 2005. And when Beinart approves of the “resistance,” which he claims is “justified,” let us remind him that what both he and Hamas call “resistance” was characterized by the mass rapes, tortures, mutilations (breasts slit off, genitalia cut off, eyes gouged out), and murders of 1,200 innocent Israelis.

Perhaps one should feel sorry for Beinart, who is so consumed in his loathing of Israel that he appears to have lost all sense. He writes that spraying anti-Zionist graffiti on the walls of an Israeli embassy and a synagogue are equally fine because “they are both, in their essence, Zionist institutions.” Despite him insisting that Zionism is entirely separate to Judaism, a synagogue is nonetheless a “Zionist institution”. Go figure.

But in any case, none of this is antisemitic, he maintains, just as nothing we have seen on campus since October 7 is about Jews: “The data is clear: the vast majority of campus progressives distinguish between Jews and Israel.”

The campus pogromshchiks — our homegrown Black Hundreds — did not, pace Beinart, “distinguish between Jews and Israel.” They surrounded Jewish students, holding them prisoner, screaming at them, not because they were Zionists, but simply because they were Jews, identified by their kippahs. On some campuses, these supporters of Hamas ran after Jewish students who were simply trying to make it to class on time. In others, these thugs burst in on classes taught by Jewish professors, trying to disrupt the lectures and discussions that had nothing to do with Israel, and whose instructors’ attitudes toward Zionism were unknown.

Peter Beinart is a johnny-one-note, and that note is the wrongness of Zionism and the wickedness of the Jewish state. He’s a taller version of Wallace Shawn, and just as outrageous.

He and his books are quite — I feel the mot juste coming on — unnecessary.