Peter Beinart, Anti-Zionist Jew, Taken Down Yet Again

Elder of Ziyon has a coruscating account of the latest screed by Peter Beinart, the anti-Zionist Jew who has made a career out of denouncing Israel and those who support the Jewish state. That takedown of Beinart, and of the New York Times that continues to provide Beinart with a platform, can be found here: “Once again, @PeterBeinart in the @NYTimes supports those who violate Jewish rights on campus,” Elder of Ziyon, April 28, 2025:

Peter Beinart writes in the New York Times with an article originally titled “You Want to Protect Jewish Students? What About Jewish Student Protesters? and later “Trump Doesn’t Want to Protect All Jewish Students — Just Those on His Team.”

You can already see where this is going:

On April 29, 2024, Tess Segal, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Florida, joined her fellow activists at a prominent plaza on campus calling on the university to divest from weapons manufacturers and boycott academic institutions in Israel. Some protesters studied or played cards. Later they read obituaries of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip.

Then law enforcement moved in. And although Ms. Segal says she did not resist arrest, she was handcuffed and taken to jail, where she was held overnight.

….In an era in which students without U.S. citizenship are snatched off the street by federal agents, Ms. Segal’s punishment may seem comparatively mild. But her case contains a special irony. Ms. Segal is Jewish.

I didn’t spend any time researching this specific case, but it is obvious from Beinart’s description that Tess Segal was not arrested or discriminate against because of her Jewishness or her support for the Jewish state. On the contrary, she was part of a campus mob protesting against Jewish rights and to make an exception for academic freedom for Jewish Zionist students who may want to study in Israel or collaborate with their Israeli counterparts.

Beinart can argue all he wants for free speech rights for anti-Zionists, but pretending that Jews are being targeted on campus for anti-Zionist speech and require special protection as Jewish Zionist students do is peak Beinart-style deception.

His deceit extends to other examples in the article:

Since Oct. 7, at least four universities have temporarily suspended or placed on probation their chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace.

He doesn’t mention that it was because they violated campus policies. Should Jewish students be allowed to violate policies because they are Jewish? Only if they agree with Beinart’s anti-Zionist politics, it seems….

By selectively presenting facts, omitting crucial context, and portraying violators of others’ rights as victims, Peter Beinart is not merely misleading. He is manufacturing antisemitic propaganda: turning those who seek to destroy Jewish communal life on campus into the new “Jewish victims.” And the New York Times eagerly provides him the platform, without even basic fact-checking.

It’s not just deception. It’s complicity.

Peter Beinart pretends that far-left anti-Zionist Jews on campuses are being specially selected for discipline because they are Jews. It’s nonsense, of course. They are being disciplined for the same reasons as non-Jewish students, whose conduct includes trying to harass, intimidate, and silence pro-Israel students and faculty. Beinart knows perfectly well that the members of Jewish Voices For Peace are not being disciplined because they are Jews, but because they are campus bullies and the enemies of free speech.