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The Crisis of Zionism
Israel's next great crisis may come not with the Palestinians or Iran but with young American Jews A dramatic shift is taking place in Israel and America. In Israel, the deepening occupation of the West Bank is putting Israeli democracy at risk. In the United States, the refusal of major Jewish organizations to defend democracy in the Jewish state is alienating many young liberal Jews from Zionism itself. In the next generation, the liberal Zionist dream--the dream of a state that safeguards the Jewish people and cherishes democratic ideals--may die. In The Crisis of Zionism , Peter Beinart lays out in chilling detail the looming danger to Israeli democracy and the American Jewish establishment's refusal to confront it. And he offers a fascinating, groundbreaking portrait of the two leaders at the center of the Barack Obama, America's first "Jewish president," a man steeped in the liberalism he learned from his many Jewish friends and mentors in Chicago; and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who considers liberalism the Jewish people's special curse. These two men embody fundamentally different visions not just of American and Israeli national interests but of the mission of the Jewish people itself. Beinart concludes with provocative proposals for how the relationship between American Jews and Israel must change, and with an eloquent and moving appeal for American Jews to defend the dream of a democratic Jewish state before it is too late.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published March 27, 2012
About the author
Peter Beinart
10 books32 followersPeter Beinart is the author of The Crisis of Zionism and The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris and The Good Fight. A former editor of The New Republic, he is an associate professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and the senior political writer for The Daily Beast. He lives with his family in New York City.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/peterb...
http://us.macmillan.com/author/peterb...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews
May 24, 2013
I wanted to like this book more, but my issue is more an issue with myself than with the author. It's clear from the first page that this author supports Israel, in spite of some of the negative things it has done over the past three decades. Beinart is reasonable the entire book, but in his conclusion he comes back to the emphasis of Jewish education as a way to make younger Jews identify more with Israel. I can't help but feel that's ignoring the problem. We (and I'm adding myself to this group for the sake of argument) aren't moving away from Israel because we don't emphasize with things like the Holocaust or the fact that the need for a Jewish state was once a serious issue, it's because we're increasingly liberal on all things and see the oppression of Palestinians as a hypocritical act in the light of these things.
The author also fails to address the growing trend of Israel's movement away from democracy and into more theocratic statutes like those of its neighbors that it active denounces. Settlements are only half the issue - it's the people settling and why they're settling that's the other half. The Messianic aspect of these settlers, the Americans who fund them, and their belief of what could (and in their minds, will) happen is ignored. This may be due to the fact that Beinart has chosen to focus exclusively on the geopolitical relationship of Israel and the US, but Christian donors only donate to Israel for one reason, and that reason involves a lot of blood.
The real reason I've been reading things like this, The Brothers Emmanuel, and The War Within is I've been debating internally whether or not going on Birthright is something I'd like to do. I have 2 more years of eligibility. On one hand, I know it's a free trip to Israel, politics be damned. Free travel is free travel. I just don't want to have to sit on my hands and gag myself while listening to a Sheldon Adelson speech or keep from stabbing any of my fellow tour-mates.
Israel was founded by a bunch of non-religious Socialist jews. Isn't there a Birthright program for them? To visit the place that 100 years ago their ancestors tried to create a home in, to which now their seriously fucked-up grandchildren return?
That's something I still need to figure out. And books like this will hopefully help.
The author also fails to address the growing trend of Israel's movement away from democracy and into more theocratic statutes like those of its neighbors that it active denounces. Settlements are only half the issue - it's the people settling and why they're settling that's the other half. The Messianic aspect of these settlers, the Americans who fund them, and their belief of what could (and in their minds, will) happen is ignored. This may be due to the fact that Beinart has chosen to focus exclusively on the geopolitical relationship of Israel and the US, but Christian donors only donate to Israel for one reason, and that reason involves a lot of blood.
The real reason I've been reading things like this, The Brothers Emmanuel, and The War Within is I've been debating internally whether or not going on Birthright is something I'd like to do. I have 2 more years of eligibility. On one hand, I know it's a free trip to Israel, politics be damned. Free travel is free travel. I just don't want to have to sit on my hands and gag myself while listening to a Sheldon Adelson speech or keep from stabbing any of my fellow tour-mates.
Israel was founded by a bunch of non-religious Socialist jews. Isn't there a Birthright program for them? To visit the place that 100 years ago their ancestors tried to create a home in, to which now their seriously fucked-up grandchildren return?
That's something I still need to figure out. And books like this will hopefully help.
October 9, 2012
With his usual sharp analysis, Peter Beinart identifies several reasons why young American Jews tend to avoid pro-Israel activism. They may not be deeply committed to or involved in Judaism in the first place, and they may resent being expected to express agreement with every policy of the Israeli government. In The Crisis of Zionism, Beinart gives special elucidation to one interesting reason: for people born 30, 40, or 50 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, who have grown up in a United States where Jews have a higher level of social integration than ever before, a "victimhood narrative" about Judaism does not personally resonate. This means they are confused or put off by much of the discussion of Israel that depicts Jews as victims - including within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This is not solely a generational gap. As American Jews of all ages increasingly avail themselves of new opportunities to express their political and moral values through organizations that are not specifically or exclusively Jewish, Beinart argues, the demographic that remains active in traditional Jewish organizations increasingly subscribes to the old narrative of Jewish victimhood and survival against all odds. It is an establishment that, he writes, "forces today's realities onto the procrustean bed of 1939 or 1967," is increasingly "indifferent to whether democratic values" are maintained in the US and in Israel, and is out of touch with the political opinions of the majority of American Jews.
What are these realities around which today's "crisis of Zionism" orbits? They are Israel's continued occupation of the Palestinian territories and the decades of violent conflict between the two peoples. The consequences are felt not just by the stateless people in Gaza or the West Bank, but all over Israel. In 2010 opinion polls, about half of Jewish Israelis said that they wouldn't befriend an Arab, that they believe Jews should avoid renting to Arabs, and that they think the government should encourage Arab citizens to leave the country, while over two-thirds of Jewish Israelis said that Arab citizens should not be appointed to cabinet posts. If these attitudes toward fellow citizens are common, what of the attitudes toward Palestinians, with whom Jewish Israelis are even less likely to interact? Former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert have raised the specter of the possibility of Israel becoming an "apartheid" state if the status quo continues.
The solution, as Beinart and many others see it, is the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. "Binationalism barely works in placid countries like Canada and Belgium," he writes. In Israel, he says, a binational, one-state solution would soon lead to civil war. A two-state solution stands a better chance of success: it has been the subject of Israeli/Palestinian negotiations before and has been endorsed by many external parties, including the current U.S. President and the Arab League.
For American Jews who wish to help Israel, there is a need to acknowledge that power is not only something that can be used to survive victimization, but unfortunately is something that can be abused. The rich tradition of Jewish ethics can be embraced as a guide for a Jewish nation that has now achieved its own power. Beinart points out Netanyahu's problematic claims that the use of force has a salubrious effect on the Jewish national spirit and that force is conveniently a "language" well understood by Arabs. Those Jews who prefer to keep the use of military power in check will inevitably criticize Israeli policy under a hawkish Israeli government. And if Jews disproportionately criticize Israel more than they criticize other countries, Beinart says, maybe it is not due to unfairness, but is because they care about Israel and feel that they have a measure of influence there. He convincingly argues that, for the future of Zionism - understood by diaspora Jews, at least in part, as the feeling that they, too, have a stake in Israel's destiny - such willingness to criticize Israeli policy is a good thing.
This is not solely a generational gap. As American Jews of all ages increasingly avail themselves of new opportunities to express their political and moral values through organizations that are not specifically or exclusively Jewish, Beinart argues, the demographic that remains active in traditional Jewish organizations increasingly subscribes to the old narrative of Jewish victimhood and survival against all odds. It is an establishment that, he writes, "forces today's realities onto the procrustean bed of 1939 or 1967," is increasingly "indifferent to whether democratic values" are maintained in the US and in Israel, and is out of touch with the political opinions of the majority of American Jews.
What are these realities around which today's "crisis of Zionism" orbits? They are Israel's continued occupation of the Palestinian territories and the decades of violent conflict between the two peoples. The consequences are felt not just by the stateless people in Gaza or the West Bank, but all over Israel. In 2010 opinion polls, about half of Jewish Israelis said that they wouldn't befriend an Arab, that they believe Jews should avoid renting to Arabs, and that they think the government should encourage Arab citizens to leave the country, while over two-thirds of Jewish Israelis said that Arab citizens should not be appointed to cabinet posts. If these attitudes toward fellow citizens are common, what of the attitudes toward Palestinians, with whom Jewish Israelis are even less likely to interact? Former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert have raised the specter of the possibility of Israel becoming an "apartheid" state if the status quo continues.
The solution, as Beinart and many others see it, is the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. "Binationalism barely works in placid countries like Canada and Belgium," he writes. In Israel, he says, a binational, one-state solution would soon lead to civil war. A two-state solution stands a better chance of success: it has been the subject of Israeli/Palestinian negotiations before and has been endorsed by many external parties, including the current U.S. President and the Arab League.
For American Jews who wish to help Israel, there is a need to acknowledge that power is not only something that can be used to survive victimization, but unfortunately is something that can be abused. The rich tradition of Jewish ethics can be embraced as a guide for a Jewish nation that has now achieved its own power. Beinart points out Netanyahu's problematic claims that the use of force has a salubrious effect on the Jewish national spirit and that force is conveniently a "language" well understood by Arabs. Those Jews who prefer to keep the use of military power in check will inevitably criticize Israeli policy under a hawkish Israeli government. And if Jews disproportionately criticize Israel more than they criticize other countries, Beinart says, maybe it is not due to unfairness, but is because they care about Israel and feel that they have a measure of influence there. He convincingly argues that, for the future of Zionism - understood by diaspora Jews, at least in part, as the feeling that they, too, have a stake in Israel's destiny - such willingness to criticize Israeli policy is a good thing.
June 1, 2012
Of the dozens of books I have read about the Middle East and the problems between Israel and Palestine, this is by far the best. I am stunned by Beinart's ability to write with passion and with clarity. He marshals an enormous amount of information, organizes it brilliantly, and tells a complex story with great insight.
The book's central theme is how can Israel be saved as a democracy? Time is running out, Beinart argues, because the settlements continue to expand, and this will leave Israel with no choices left but to ethnically cleanse the West Bank or create a single binational state. He is not the first to point this out. Experts have long pointed out that Israel aspires to be large (ie, holding onto huge chunks of the West Bank), democratic, and Jewish, but it can only be two of three at best. But what is new, at least to me, is the tracery of Netanyahu's intellectual origins, via his father, and back to Jabotinsky. It is a compelling case, cunningly made, and it dovetails perfectly with every move Netanyahu has made.
While I have done some prior reading on the Irgun and the neo-fascist right in Israel's early years, this was the best linkage between it and the current political situation. I also saw (although Beinart does not make this point) a remarkable similarity between Nietzsche's characterization of Jewish morality in the Genealogy of Morals and Jabotinsky's critique of liberal Jewish morality. Both saw it as a weakening of the Old Testament warrior strength, although Nietzsche ultimately saw its apotheosis in Christianity, while Jabotinsky does not. But given that, and given the strong endorsement of the most radical Jabotinsky heirs by Netanyahu's father, it helps explain why Israel, home to so many deeply moral individuals and institutions, can nevertheless widely and continually practice such brutalities against the Palestinians. It is a civil war within Jewish ideology and within Zionism itself, and the side I would hope would win is badly losing.
Another enormous strength of this book is its detailed and revealing account of how Obama lost every time he sat down to negotiate with Binny Netanyahu. Failure piles upon failure so rapidly that one almost throws the book across the room in frustration. The remarkable spinelessness of the Republican Party in betraying their own country, and allowing a foreign government to repeatedly humiliate a great nation. Israel under Netanyahu treats the United States as if it were a dependent ally, rather than the other way around. For all the talk of how Obama has "apologized" to the world, the only nation that I would contend has pushed America's face in the dirt during the Obama years is Israel. And this, from a president who has spent his adult life surrounded by Jews who wished to see a better Israel, and a better US-Israeli relationship.
Finally, Beinert ends, as few books do these days, with concrete suggestions for how to ameliorate or solve the problems he brilliantly outlines. He calls for a rapid increase in Jewish schools in the US, particularly those aimed at non-Orthodox children. He radically advocates government support for religious schools, and points out that this has not harmed religious freedom in other western democracies. Many will recoil in horror on the left at the thought. But the right wing of Jewish opinion are even angrier about this book, which ends by endorsing, reluctantly and at great pain, the boycott of settlement products, while strongly opposing any boycott of '67 Israel. He even proposes new language--the West Bank should now be called "non-democratic Israel" and '67 Israel should be called "democratic Israel." I don't think that will catch on, nor do I think the US will support religious schools soon. But he is right in the motive behind both solutions. If liberal (ie, those in tune with Ben Gurion and Herzl, and the ideology of Israel's major founders) Jews do not deepen their attachment to Israel, then they will abandon the field to those who fundamentally doubt the humanity and equality of Palestinians. And unless a two state solution appears in the next five years, the expansion of the settlements will make any peace impossible. The choice for Israel is a difficult peace now, or endless war into the future. Beinert's book is a cri de couer from a passionate lover of Israel. He, unlike so many, points out wrongs committed by both Palestinians and Israelis, and points a way forward for both peoples.
The book's central theme is how can Israel be saved as a democracy? Time is running out, Beinart argues, because the settlements continue to expand, and this will leave Israel with no choices left but to ethnically cleanse the West Bank or create a single binational state. He is not the first to point this out. Experts have long pointed out that Israel aspires to be large (ie, holding onto huge chunks of the West Bank), democratic, and Jewish, but it can only be two of three at best. But what is new, at least to me, is the tracery of Netanyahu's intellectual origins, via his father, and back to Jabotinsky. It is a compelling case, cunningly made, and it dovetails perfectly with every move Netanyahu has made.
While I have done some prior reading on the Irgun and the neo-fascist right in Israel's early years, this was the best linkage between it and the current political situation. I also saw (although Beinart does not make this point) a remarkable similarity between Nietzsche's characterization of Jewish morality in the Genealogy of Morals and Jabotinsky's critique of liberal Jewish morality. Both saw it as a weakening of the Old Testament warrior strength, although Nietzsche ultimately saw its apotheosis in Christianity, while Jabotinsky does not. But given that, and given the strong endorsement of the most radical Jabotinsky heirs by Netanyahu's father, it helps explain why Israel, home to so many deeply moral individuals and institutions, can nevertheless widely and continually practice such brutalities against the Palestinians. It is a civil war within Jewish ideology and within Zionism itself, and the side I would hope would win is badly losing.
Another enormous strength of this book is its detailed and revealing account of how Obama lost every time he sat down to negotiate with Binny Netanyahu. Failure piles upon failure so rapidly that one almost throws the book across the room in frustration. The remarkable spinelessness of the Republican Party in betraying their own country, and allowing a foreign government to repeatedly humiliate a great nation. Israel under Netanyahu treats the United States as if it were a dependent ally, rather than the other way around. For all the talk of how Obama has "apologized" to the world, the only nation that I would contend has pushed America's face in the dirt during the Obama years is Israel. And this, from a president who has spent his adult life surrounded by Jews who wished to see a better Israel, and a better US-Israeli relationship.
Finally, Beinert ends, as few books do these days, with concrete suggestions for how to ameliorate or solve the problems he brilliantly outlines. He calls for a rapid increase in Jewish schools in the US, particularly those aimed at non-Orthodox children. He radically advocates government support for religious schools, and points out that this has not harmed religious freedom in other western democracies. Many will recoil in horror on the left at the thought. But the right wing of Jewish opinion are even angrier about this book, which ends by endorsing, reluctantly and at great pain, the boycott of settlement products, while strongly opposing any boycott of '67 Israel. He even proposes new language--the West Bank should now be called "non-democratic Israel" and '67 Israel should be called "democratic Israel." I don't think that will catch on, nor do I think the US will support religious schools soon. But he is right in the motive behind both solutions. If liberal (ie, those in tune with Ben Gurion and Herzl, and the ideology of Israel's major founders) Jews do not deepen their attachment to Israel, then they will abandon the field to those who fundamentally doubt the humanity and equality of Palestinians. And unless a two state solution appears in the next five years, the expansion of the settlements will make any peace impossible. The choice for Israel is a difficult peace now, or endless war into the future. Beinert's book is a cri de couer from a passionate lover of Israel. He, unlike so many, points out wrongs committed by both Palestinians and Israelis, and points a way forward for both peoples.
April 4, 2022
I kind of like the idea of doing book reviews centered around the questions it ponders.
Are Jews histories permanent victims? NO! But why not?
Is telling a group they are victimizing themselves INHERENTLY problematic?
Can we define Zionism based on its racial justice + liberation + democratic principles from a century ago? Or has it been PERMANENTLY REDEFINED against our will (and with right wingers help)? Was it ever based on these values? (This is an argument pretty recent, not addressed in 2012 book)
Is the real message of the Purim story that we can survive as well as DESTROY those who harmed us?
A decade later, is it still true settlements can’t survive without American money and ideological support?
Why do leftists get imperialism wrong sometimes?
WHY ARE OBAMA AND NETANYAHU SIMILAR (this one was pretty crazy, and is the only question answered so we’ll the book is worth reading).
Here are answers I’ll give. Those questions above I won’t answer.
What are three emerging types of new Jews?
Orthodox who don’t care about democracy.
Non Orthodox who don’t care about Israel.
Non Orthodox who feel Israel doesn’t represent Us.
We are the third group duh, what do we do!
WIERD ANSWER;
Go on more nuanced birthright trips and get a strong Jewish schooling.
Ya, wierd conclusion right. WTF. Even weirder. If u read the book it’s kinda convincing. Don’t read the book tho. It’s 10 years old. That’s decades in I/P time. He was a Zionist when he wrote this!
3/5. Cool premise. Empowering read
Are Jews histories permanent victims? NO! But why not?
Is telling a group they are victimizing themselves INHERENTLY problematic?
Can we define Zionism based on its racial justice + liberation + democratic principles from a century ago? Or has it been PERMANENTLY REDEFINED against our will (and with right wingers help)? Was it ever based on these values? (This is an argument pretty recent, not addressed in 2012 book)
Is the real message of the Purim story that we can survive as well as DESTROY those who harmed us?
A decade later, is it still true settlements can’t survive without American money and ideological support?
Why do leftists get imperialism wrong sometimes?
WHY ARE OBAMA AND NETANYAHU SIMILAR (this one was pretty crazy, and is the only question answered so we’ll the book is worth reading).
Here are answers I’ll give. Those questions above I won’t answer.
What are three emerging types of new Jews?
Orthodox who don’t care about democracy.
Non Orthodox who don’t care about Israel.
Non Orthodox who feel Israel doesn’t represent Us.
We are the third group duh, what do we do!
WIERD ANSWER;
Go on more nuanced birthright trips and get a strong Jewish schooling.
Ya, wierd conclusion right. WTF. Even weirder. If u read the book it’s kinda convincing. Don’t read the book tho. It’s 10 years old. That’s decades in I/P time. He was a Zionist when he wrote this!
3/5. Cool premise. Empowering read
April 9, 2012
Peter Beinart may not be saying much that is new in his book, but he put it all out there, well researched and noted. There is much that is wrong with Zionism of today: Liberal Zionism, which was responsible for the building of the state, has been eclipsed by the Revisionist Zionism of Vladimir Jabotinsky. Revisionist Zionism seeks to rebuild the Jewish nation based on the notion that Israelite heroes were brute warriors (e.g. Samson), and that the moral vision of the prophets was an exilic dilution, a distortion due to powerlessness. Benjamin Netanyahu's father, Benzion, served as secretary to Jabotinsky and was dedicated to the Revisionist idea. The idea also has its followers among many of today's Jewish communal heads, people who are either Holocaust survivors themselves or children of survivors, those who remember the early years of Israel's struggle to survive. Many forged ties with Netnayahu when he lived in the US. Beinart chronicles Barack Obama's Zionist connections among prominent Liberal Zionists in the Chicago community (Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, Judge Abner Mikva, and others), and the pressures on Obama to take a more conservative approach over the years because of a combination of forces - heads of Jewish organizations, AIPAC, and Netanyahu's end runs around Obama through Congress. In the meantime, American Jews are not as committed to Israel as American Jewish leaders (who don't represent much of the American Jewish community) want everyone to believe. Their supporters are largely those who take the bait of the history of Jewish weakness, the Holocaust and rampant anti-Semitsm, a poor sell to younger American Jews. Beinart is a passionate Zionist; he wants to see the center reignited to advocate for an Israel that lives up to its liberal democratic fundamentals by remaining a Jewish state living alongside a Palestinian state. In the end, Beinart makes some recommendations that are either counterproductive (calling for a boycott of goods produced in settlements) or unwieldy (state support for non-public/religious schools). The recommendations, while only a small part of the book, have caused much alarm that strongly overshadow the value of the analysis offered by the author. A well worthwhile read.
April 29, 2012
Beinart’s book is an important intervention and should be a topic of conversation between American Jews about our relationship with Israel and our own undemocratic elites. Non-Jews would benefit from listening in, especially since a Liberal Zionist view is so rarely taken seriously by The Left. Meanwhile, the reviews from The Right are the same petty sequences of denials, double-standards, subject-changing and bigotry we’ve heard before, from The Israel Lobby book to J Street’s moderate Zionism. While flawed here and there, the book is basically sound and I agree with most of Beinart’s arguments, but shy from some of his otherwise creative conclusions. As an insider he’s privy to some sharp stories and has a strong chapter on Obama’s liberal Jewish influences. It’s a spry read that usefully reframes the debate—calling the West Bank “Undemocratic Israel” and “East of Democracy” in order to champion the erstwhile Democratic part within the 67 borders. For this, he’s done Zionism a favor.
January 6, 2023
Overall, I definitely enjoyed this book and I am going to recommend it to everyone I know who is interested in this subject, but I do want to talk about it because I do have some qualms.
Beinart’s analysis throughout the book is quite good. He brings up a lot of points that I never really thought of before and gave me a much better understanding of the current situation writ large (even though I believe I already had a pretty good one).
My biggest complaint comes in his conclusions. I think his emphasis on Jewish education and Jewish life itself is a bit misguided. I think the best way to create momentum against occupation is to use that secularism to our advantage and target those universal ideas of human rights at Israel. I also think public funding of any form of religious education is NOT a good idea.
I also definitely think Beinart is where I was ideologically about a year ago. His conclusions definitely dilute in many ways his sharp criticisms of Israel earlier in the book because it felt like his idea of “legitimizing Israel” kind of came out of nowhere in the context of this book. I appreciated how the rest of the book was much more focused on just occupation itself. Furthermore, he feels a lot more moderate than me in this book, very much stuck on the traditional two state model that was mainstream (at least in his conclusions, not necessarily his analysis)
It is important to note however, it seems Beinart has evolved ideologically since this book. In the article I will paste below, he has clearly moved to the left, even supporting a confederation (which is what I believe in). He also thinks now that one state binationalism is much more viable than he does in this book - which I do believe is potentially viable although it is not my preferred solution.
Here is the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/op...
Anyway, very good book. Highly recommend you read this if you want to get a good foundation on the Israeli Palestinian conflict from a fairly social Democratic/progressive view. Just note that this is not at all leftist and does not really focus on colonialism that much, so just be aware going into it.
Beinart’s analysis throughout the book is quite good. He brings up a lot of points that I never really thought of before and gave me a much better understanding of the current situation writ large (even though I believe I already had a pretty good one).
My biggest complaint comes in his conclusions. I think his emphasis on Jewish education and Jewish life itself is a bit misguided. I think the best way to create momentum against occupation is to use that secularism to our advantage and target those universal ideas of human rights at Israel. I also think public funding of any form of religious education is NOT a good idea.
I also definitely think Beinart is where I was ideologically about a year ago. His conclusions definitely dilute in many ways his sharp criticisms of Israel earlier in the book because it felt like his idea of “legitimizing Israel” kind of came out of nowhere in the context of this book. I appreciated how the rest of the book was much more focused on just occupation itself. Furthermore, he feels a lot more moderate than me in this book, very much stuck on the traditional two state model that was mainstream (at least in his conclusions, not necessarily his analysis)
It is important to note however, it seems Beinart has evolved ideologically since this book. In the article I will paste below, he has clearly moved to the left, even supporting a confederation (which is what I believe in). He also thinks now that one state binationalism is much more viable than he does in this book - which I do believe is potentially viable although it is not my preferred solution.
Here is the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/op...
Anyway, very good book. Highly recommend you read this if you want to get a good foundation on the Israeli Palestinian conflict from a fairly social Democratic/progressive view. Just note that this is not at all leftist and does not really focus on colonialism that much, so just be aware going into it.
October 31, 2019
Beinart is so incredibly intelligent.
September 8, 2020
I learned so much. wow
August 31, 2012
A well-written, well-researched and insightful book by the man
who called Barack Obama the “first Jewish president”, Beinart offers ideas towards
effecting peace in the Middle East along with
strengthening the Jewish community in the U.S.
The author’s main premise is that both Israel under Netanyahu
and the conservative Jewish leadership in the U.S., have used the rationale
of the Holocaust to justify a deepening of the occupation. In his view, they
have abandoned the democratic, egalitarian Zionism of
Theodor Herzl, as well as good Jewish values. He
believes that peace will only come with a two-state
solution and that Israel must delegitimize the occupation,
returning to the green line in order to gain legitimacy
before the world.
Additionally, Beinart provides insights into what may not always be apparent
motivations of both Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu and the discord between them.
If you are concerned about the well-being and continuity
of the Jewish people, the alienation of younger, liberal Jews from mainstream
Jewish organizations, and the future and quality of
life within the State of Israel, read this book.
who called Barack Obama the “first Jewish president”, Beinart offers ideas towards
effecting peace in the Middle East along with
strengthening the Jewish community in the U.S.
The author’s main premise is that both Israel under Netanyahu
and the conservative Jewish leadership in the U.S., have used the rationale
of the Holocaust to justify a deepening of the occupation. In his view, they
have abandoned the democratic, egalitarian Zionism of
Theodor Herzl, as well as good Jewish values. He
believes that peace will only come with a two-state
solution and that Israel must delegitimize the occupation,
returning to the green line in order to gain legitimacy
before the world.
Additionally, Beinart provides insights into what may not always be apparent
motivations of both Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu and the discord between them.
If you are concerned about the well-being and continuity
of the Jewish people, the alienation of younger, liberal Jews from mainstream
Jewish organizations, and the future and quality of
life within the State of Israel, read this book.
Want to read
February 14, 2012OP-ED COLUMNIST ROGER COHEN (NYT 2/14/12) ...
Peter Beinart’s “The Crisis of Zionism” is an important new book that rejects the manipulation of Jewish victimhood in the name of Israel’s domination of the Palestinians and asserts that the real issue for Jews today is not the challenge of weakness but the demands of power.
What Netanyahu and major American Jewish organizations miss is that, in Beinart’s words, “the less democratic Zionism becomes in practice, the more people across the world will question the legitimacy of Zionism itself.” Israel, he states rightly, is a democracy within the green line “but in the West Bank it is an ethnocracy, a place where Jews enjoy citizenship and Palestinians do not.”
Obama, who started out saying settlements must stop, ended up vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution to that effect. He had to shed his liberal Zionism for American political survival. There could not be a clearer demonstration of why Beinart’s book is so important and timely for the future of Israel.
Peter Beinart’s “The Crisis of Zionism” is an important new book that rejects the manipulation of Jewish victimhood in the name of Israel’s domination of the Palestinians and asserts that the real issue for Jews today is not the challenge of weakness but the demands of power.
What Netanyahu and major American Jewish organizations miss is that, in Beinart’s words, “the less democratic Zionism becomes in practice, the more people across the world will question the legitimacy of Zionism itself.” Israel, he states rightly, is a democracy within the green line “but in the West Bank it is an ethnocracy, a place where Jews enjoy citizenship and Palestinians do not.”
Obama, who started out saying settlements must stop, ended up vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution to that effect. He had to shed his liberal Zionism for American political survival. There could not be a clearer demonstration of why Beinart’s book is so important and timely for the future of Israel.
February 28, 2024
I picked up this book as an anarchist who’s a white American from a Christian background, to try to understand the liberal argument for political Zionism. It seemed self-evident to me that the values of liberal democracy are in direct opposition to any sort of ethnostate, and I’d yet to come across an argument explaining otherwise. After reading this book, well, I still haven’t come across that exact argument, but I do have a more profound appreciation of the inherent moral hypocrisies of liberalism. This is a text on liberal Zionism that takes as its premise the value of Zionism and, in the process, reveals an ethnosupremacist worldview without acknowledging any dissonance with democracy— only ‘tensions.’ In other words, this *is* liberalism. I can’t be mad that this text did what I expected of it, but I can be disappointed in The Crisis of Zionism for the same reasons I am always disappointed by liberalism.
It is apparent from the first pages, when Beinart discusses the tragedy of his non-Black Jewish grandmother being pushed out of South Africa and attributes this to antisemitism plus some vague reference to racial strife (I listened to the audiobook, so forgive me for not pulling a direct quote), that this is not someone who has ever seriously engaged with postcolonial theory, Black studies, third world feminism, or any other Black or Indigenous intellectual tradition. And of course not, because liberalism requires the privileging of only certain subjectivities. This is just the first instance of the book’s extensive, inadvertent cataloguing of the limitations of liberalism. And there is some utility in this, demonstrating how blinkered one’s worldview must be in order to accept the “tensions” (that one is his exact word) between democracy and ethnocracy.
Of course this requires privileging a Euro-American telling of history without naming it as such, and it also requires a particular selectivity even in this telling. It additionally requires a historical determinism and fatalism to declare that the Jewish state of Israel must exist because it does exist, and that it must continue to exist primarily because we can never hope for anything better than two states that segregate Palestinians and Jews. It requires a level of hubris as well as a profound denial to name this as realism when it erases a more complex reality that does not feature discrete segments of humanity, but rather, overlapping populations, multiethnic peoples and communities, Arab Jews, Black Jews— all indicating that there is not just a possibility of sustained coexistence between peoples but a long if difficult history of exactly that, and genocide and other crimes against humanity are not the necessary outcome. It isn’t until the conclusion, when Beinart expresses alarm over rates of intermarriage among American Jews, that he admits his Zionism as what it is: a narrowly focused, racist ethnosupremacy. He calls the children of intermarriage ‘not really Jewish,’ and heavily implies that multiethnic, multicultural Jews will be the end of Judaism. I can only conclude, as anti-Zionist Jews do, that Zionism is fundamentally less concerned with using the state to protect Jews from violence than it is with using the state to segregate Jews entirely, also ‘protecting’ them from interethnic, interreligious, and interracial love so as to better maintain a (primarily Ashkenazic) ethnoreligious purity. But because this is not white supremacy per se and was only influenced by such forms of 19th-Century Euro-American thought, it goes unexamined.
This is the most fundamental requirement of liberalism, Zionist and otherwise: a belief that only a certain level of coexistence, peace, and justice are possible and a concomitant refusal to interrogate the origins of that belief, to turn any kind of critical inquiry toward oneself the way one does one’s ideological opponents (by which I mean conservatives— anti-Zionist Jews are mostly erased in this text.) So, yes, of course liberalism is hypocritical and nihilistic enough to support ethnocracy.
All that said! Beinart makes some important criticisms of more centrist and rightwing Zionists that they will likely only hear from him, if from anyone. These include an indictment of their crude, static power analysis that refuses to acknowledge the continuation of Jewish history into the present; a thorough dismantling of claims that criticisms and protests of Israel are antisemitic, including a defense of (a modified version of) the BDS movement and, implicitly, the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’; numerous citations refuting the argument that Palestinians or Arabs are particularly or inherently hateful towards Jews or especially to blame for ongoing conflict; and an extensive accounting of Israel’s oppressive policies, particularly its violence in the occupied territories, which Beinart names as both apartheidist and colonial. There’s also an interesting account of Netanyahu’s rise to power and triumph over the US in Obama-era foreign relations.
But all this in service to arguing that this state and all states are just and necessary! I wonder in what ways, if any, the current ethnic cleansing of Gaza might prompt Beinart to reevaluate his stance on ethnostates. What else will it take to radicalize most decent people into believing a better world than this one is not just possible but necessary and worth fighting for?
I’d be remiss to end this without recommending other books to read instead of or in addition to this one, books which I’m still making my way through but am enjoying quite a lot more than Beinart’s: Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism: Stories of Personal Transformation, ed. by Carolyn L. Karcher, for Jewish anti-Zionist perspectives, and Greater than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism & Palestine by Nada Elia, for a Palestinian decolonial perspective.
It is apparent from the first pages, when Beinart discusses the tragedy of his non-Black Jewish grandmother being pushed out of South Africa and attributes this to antisemitism plus some vague reference to racial strife (I listened to the audiobook, so forgive me for not pulling a direct quote), that this is not someone who has ever seriously engaged with postcolonial theory, Black studies, third world feminism, or any other Black or Indigenous intellectual tradition. And of course not, because liberalism requires the privileging of only certain subjectivities. This is just the first instance of the book’s extensive, inadvertent cataloguing of the limitations of liberalism. And there is some utility in this, demonstrating how blinkered one’s worldview must be in order to accept the “tensions” (that one is his exact word) between democracy and ethnocracy.
Of course this requires privileging a Euro-American telling of history without naming it as such, and it also requires a particular selectivity even in this telling. It additionally requires a historical determinism and fatalism to declare that the Jewish state of Israel must exist because it does exist, and that it must continue to exist primarily because we can never hope for anything better than two states that segregate Palestinians and Jews. It requires a level of hubris as well as a profound denial to name this as realism when it erases a more complex reality that does not feature discrete segments of humanity, but rather, overlapping populations, multiethnic peoples and communities, Arab Jews, Black Jews— all indicating that there is not just a possibility of sustained coexistence between peoples but a long if difficult history of exactly that, and genocide and other crimes against humanity are not the necessary outcome. It isn’t until the conclusion, when Beinart expresses alarm over rates of intermarriage among American Jews, that he admits his Zionism as what it is: a narrowly focused, racist ethnosupremacy. He calls the children of intermarriage ‘not really Jewish,’ and heavily implies that multiethnic, multicultural Jews will be the end of Judaism. I can only conclude, as anti-Zionist Jews do, that Zionism is fundamentally less concerned with using the state to protect Jews from violence than it is with using the state to segregate Jews entirely, also ‘protecting’ them from interethnic, interreligious, and interracial love so as to better maintain a (primarily Ashkenazic) ethnoreligious purity. But because this is not white supremacy per se and was only influenced by such forms of 19th-Century Euro-American thought, it goes unexamined.
This is the most fundamental requirement of liberalism, Zionist and otherwise: a belief that only a certain level of coexistence, peace, and justice are possible and a concomitant refusal to interrogate the origins of that belief, to turn any kind of critical inquiry toward oneself the way one does one’s ideological opponents (by which I mean conservatives— anti-Zionist Jews are mostly erased in this text.) So, yes, of course liberalism is hypocritical and nihilistic enough to support ethnocracy.
All that said! Beinart makes some important criticisms of more centrist and rightwing Zionists that they will likely only hear from him, if from anyone. These include an indictment of their crude, static power analysis that refuses to acknowledge the continuation of Jewish history into the present; a thorough dismantling of claims that criticisms and protests of Israel are antisemitic, including a defense of (a modified version of) the BDS movement and, implicitly, the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’; numerous citations refuting the argument that Palestinians or Arabs are particularly or inherently hateful towards Jews or especially to blame for ongoing conflict; and an extensive accounting of Israel’s oppressive policies, particularly its violence in the occupied territories, which Beinart names as both apartheidist and colonial. There’s also an interesting account of Netanyahu’s rise to power and triumph over the US in Obama-era foreign relations.
But all this in service to arguing that this state and all states are just and necessary! I wonder in what ways, if any, the current ethnic cleansing of Gaza might prompt Beinart to reevaluate his stance on ethnostates. What else will it take to radicalize most decent people into believing a better world than this one is not just possible but necessary and worth fighting for?
I’d be remiss to end this without recommending other books to read instead of or in addition to this one, books which I’m still making my way through but am enjoying quite a lot more than Beinart’s: Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism: Stories of Personal Transformation, ed. by Carolyn L. Karcher, for Jewish anti-Zionist perspectives, and Greater than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism & Palestine by Nada Elia, for a Palestinian decolonial perspective.
January 6, 2013
This book makes a passionate case for liberal American Jews to take seriously and act to combat the erosion of liberal values in the governmental policies of today's Israel. He makes a persuasive argument that the country has strayed dangerously from the principles upon which it was founded, and that, through relative indifference and inaction, the liberal majority of American Jewry has ceded the community's voice on the matter to a wealthy right-wing minority that powerfully influences American foreign policy. The book is an important wake-up call to the American Jewish community.
November 29, 2012
A thoughtful look at the challenges facing Israel and American Jews.
January 2, 2022
EVERY LIBERAL JEW MUST READ THIS BOOK. And non jews too who want to understand the actual foundations of zionism in order to understand why we must fight for a democratic israel.
May 27, 2012
I've been familiar with Peter Beinart's writings since he wrote a very important piece in the New York Review of Books a few years ago that noted that younger Jews were becoming less and less concerned about Israel, He argued that this was in large part because Israel was no longer seen as an endangered nobel country, but rather as one that was an occupier that has amassed a very powerful military force insulating the country from any neighboring threats. Beinart also had once supported the Iraq war, but subsequently recanted. Of course, given that he is a well-educated journalist who is also an academic, it seemed curious to me that many of us who are not erudite journalists had no problem figuring out in the run up to the war that this was a really dumb and dangerous thing for the Bush administration to do. But Beinart did seem to hit the nail on the head regarding Israel and its powerful, blind supporters in the US, and if nothing else, he hit a serious nerve in the organized Jewish community.
Interestingly, from the stuff one can see on the Web, on TV and in other media, Beinart is largely being demonized as a "traitor" to the Jewish people, a "self-hating Jew" and probably worse epithets by now. Contrast that with the reaction to Gershon Gorenberg's recent book that raises alarms about the ongoing settlement enterprise by the Israeli government; nary a bad word or remark, almost as if few even paid attention to Gorenberg's book. Most likely, as a friend pointed out to me, this is because Gorenberg criticizes Israeli governmental policies. Beinart is taking on the US Jewish establishment, and that apparently hits a raw nerve.
Given all this, is Beinart's book really a bomb thrown at the organized Jewish community, and is he Noam Chomsky-redux? I'll cut to the chase: yes and no.
Let's start with the good. The Crisis of ZIonism is well-written, and contains a lot of material that does question the standard narrative on Israel and criticizes, often vehemently, the large organizations that have come to speak for the US Jewish community, even when many of us within that community is in total conflict with the opinions proffered by those groups that claim to represent us. These include organizations such as AIPAC, the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League and so on. Beinart recounts, in painful detail, how many within those groups actively worked to derail the Middle East peace process, and even work against our current president when he suggested policies contrary to those of the Netanyahu administration in Israel. Beinart also points out the hypocrisy in criticizing President Obama (to whom Beinart refers as "The First Jewish President") for verbally opposing settlement activities when previous Republican administrations actually went beyond verbal disagreements and withheld money and arms to Israel when they disagreed with Israeli policy and actions. So yes, Beinart does criticize, and appropriately so, the organized Jewish community.
Now for the bad; he's no Noam Chomsky. Not even close. I'm not sure why he's being referred to as an "ultraliberal;" if that's the case, then many of us must be the second coming of Che Guevara. Beinart came across to me as wanting things both ways; he wants to criticize Israel for its interminable occupation of Palestinians, but also wants to support Israel so that his kinder, gentler pre-Netanyahu Israel can break through. The problem is that that kinder, gentler Zionism never existed. What Peter doesn't call much attention to is the fact that the occupation started, continued and flourished under secular Labor governments that predated the current religious Zionism endemic within the settler movement. Ben Gurion, Dayan, Meir, Rabin, Peres, all of them secular and none of them did much to end the occupation. If anything, they all promoted it, including Rabin (to be fair, Rabin did eventually provide some reforms that helped Israelis of Palestinian descent, but a Lincoln he wasn't). Beinart relates how Herzl and other early Zionists wanted to have Israel represent something akin to Vienna rather than the intolerant cruelty it currently represents. What Beinart omits is that in the early Zionist vision, the Arabs would live in peace under a Jewish government, albeit with equal rights but no land of their own. It is also quite true that when Israel was conceived, Jews were being slaughtered in many countries and no one really did give a damn. But it was also true that the early Zionists wanted a Jewish refuge, not necessarily a country where Jews ruled exclusively, and certainly not one in which Jewish law held sway. And for hundreds of years, many rabbis didn't have any interest in settling in Israel nor did the average religious Jew; Israel was only to come into being through the return of the messiah. The real impetus for a Jewish refuge came out of the real persecution endemic in much of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Beinart correctly points out that the occupation is destroying Israel, and understands that it must end. So he wants to mobilize progressive Jews (or more precisely, "liberal Zionists," as he terms them) to take action and reclaim his imaginary and elusive "feel-good, tolerant Zionism" to save Israel. But as he pointed out in his accurate New York Review of Books article, many young Jews in the US just don't find Israel relevant to their daily lives. So Beinart really wants Jews to start caring about Israel and somehow convince Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian land and devise a two-state solution. And to get these young progressive Americans to care about Israel, he feels the answer is to push for increasing enrollment in Jewish day schools (right after he points out that Jewish day schools are costly and tend to have fewer resources than secular schools). And then, to convince Israel to end its occupation, there should be a targeted boycott of goods from the West Bank (or "Zionist BDS, as he calls it, referring to the boycott/divest/sanction movement that targets Israel as a whole), but not of "democratic Israel," as he terms the area within the Green Line that defines the 1948-1967 borders of Israel. And an element of his Zionist BDS is to instead invest in "democratic Israel," which he defines as all territory not officially Occupied by Israel.
That's his solution: daily Jewish education and a selective boycott of the "undemocratic" part of Israel.
That was the most disappointing aspect of this book for me; he can go just far enough to criticize the organized Jewish community in the US and the Netanyahu government, but can't accept a boycott movement against Israel as a whole, nor does he seem to accept that since many of the really vehement settlers are orthodox Jews, perhaps Jewish education isn't a definite recipe for more tolerance of Israel's Palestinian citizens and (occupied) neighbors. Granted, Beinart does point out many aspects of Jewish teaching that should provoke revulsion at the current occupation. But clearly those important Jewish values are not guaranteed to cause religious Israelis to pull out of the West Bank and stop their control of Gazan life. Beinart very pointedly is against the BDS movement because in his view, it delegitimizes Israel. That seemed strange to me, when he had earlier correctly indicated that the sound-bite that criticizing Israeli policy is "delegitimization" amounts to a canard designed to delegitimize the complaint itself. Most people in the BDS movement are not antisemitic nor do they want to see Israel vanish. Just the opposite; many are Jews like me, who want Israel to be better. Clearly, Beinart wants that very much as well. But he has a fairly simplistic vision: all was good before the occupation and before right-wing governments came into power in Israel, so if a progressive government would just come into power in Israel, that country could go back to being a moral beacon, etc. But Israel has had liberal governments from day one, and under those governments chose to provide orthodox Jewish control over civil affairs such as marriage, and chose to continue and expand its control over Palestinians and their land. Beinart is operating under a very clean duality: liberal Zionism and President Obama = good, right-wing religious Zionism and Netanyahu = bad. But I'm still not clear what liberal Zionism is, exactly, and while I agree with every negative thing Beinart writes on Netanyahu and other right-wingers in Israeli politics, there is no evidence that a subsequent liberal/Labor government in Israel would do much of anything to reverse the occupation. If only it were that easy.
And Beinart's solution also requires a two-state solution. That would have made sense in the 90's when the Oslo Accords seemed to move things in that direction. But this is 2012, and without an Israeli retreat from settlements such as Ariel and several other large towns that Israel is loathe to ever give up, it's unclear how any Palestinian state could comprise anything more than a series of Bantustans on non-adjacent land areas. Ariel, for example, would cut a Palestinian state in two. The entire "can't we just rewind things back a decade or two" argument within The Crisis of Zionism just seems to be so much fanciful thinking to my mind, even constituting magical thinking. So what about a one-state solution then? Beinart condemns it (as does much of the Jewish establishment he rightfully criticizes), since he views it as the end of a Jewish state, and unworkable (he offers up the images of Belgium and Lebanon as examples of why a one-state solution likely is impossible to work in Israel). Yes, a one-state solution is not a slam-dunk, and is probably impractical. But a two-state solution is dead at this point. It hasn't been a reality since 1967 nor was it a reality when the UN partitioned Mandate Palestine into Jewish and Arab sections with an internationalized Jerusalem. And let's say a two-state solution happened tomorrow; would Israelis accept even a demilitarized Palestinian state on two sides containing at least a few radicals who want Palestine to comprise everything within the Green Line? And for that matter, would those religious Zionists accept giving up claims to Judea and Samaria, land that they believe is theirs? Some of these folks still believe Jordan should be part of Israel, based on some phrases from the Old Testament. And what of the settlements? And what of Israelis of Palestinian descent? And what happens to the Palestinian right of return? So yes, a one-state solution may be pie in the sky. But no less so than a two-state solution, and in some ways (S. Africa being a good example, although not a perfect analogy), perhaps a one-state solution would be more appropriate. It would allow everyone living there, Jew, Muslim and Christian, access to their holy sites regardless of whether they sit in what would have been Israel or Palestine. There would be one military, regardless of one's religion. But what about a Jewish state? Depends what is meant by that. If it means a Jewish homeland, one which is free of persecution, then does it matter who is running the country? A Jewish state doesn't have to mean having only Jews in primary positions of power. It can mean, however, a democracy where everyone is equal, but allows Jews to live in peace. There is just no more reason for Jews to be the exclusive power holders in a "Jewish state" than there was reason for white Afrikaners to be the exclusive power in a democratic S. Africa. Yes, I may be dreaming given the unlikely probability that a single democratic state would ever arise between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. But just because something might not happen doesn't mean that it shouldn't.
So ultimately, for all of Beinart's valid criticisms of an organized Jewish community in the US that is woefully out of touch with its more progressive constituents, as well as his revulsion at the occupation and the Netanyahu government in Israel, his solutions fall flat and his vision is ultimately surprisingly and disappointingly naive. He ignores the discrimination inherent in even the early conceptions of ZIonism that involved a return to Israel (and that assumed an acquiescence on the part of the Palestinian population indigenous to that area). He pushes for a selective "Zionist BDS" that only targets the West Bank, which is neither practical nor useful, while condemning a wider and potentially more powerful BDS movement against Israel as a whole (consistent with this, Beinart recently praised the failure of a NYC food coop to put forward a boycott of Israeli goods). The truth is that the occupied territories and Israel are intimately linked.
Beinart wants to hold on to a two-state solution and condemns a one-state vision, while hoping to enlist young progressive Jews in the effort towards propping up Israel and undoing the settlement enterprise. Beinart opines that those young Jews would be more committed to activism on behalf of a two-state solution were they going to Jewish day schools every day (disclaimer: my wife and I sent both of our children to Quaker schools for part of their education, and they currently attend secular public schools, as did both of us when we were that age). None of this makes a whole lot of sense to me, much as I understand where he is coming from. There is little or no mention of groups like Jewish Voice for Peace that are currently working to end the occupation but that also support BDS efforts. There isn't even a whole lot of mention of Palestinians, period, except for a few prominent names like Saeb Erekat and Yasir Arafat.
I have no question that Beinart sympathizes with the Palestinians. But he feels very strongly (not surprising given his modern Orthodox adherence) that there is a religious, biblical and historical right for Jews to inhabit and run Israel, and that would be destroyed by any Palestinian right of return and/or a one-state solution. While Israel exists and is not going away, the religious dogma or historical justifications for Jewish control of Israel are thin. Why wouldn't the Ba'hai or other religious minorities that are persecuted not then also deserve their own states, for example?
It is also very understandable that Beinart cannot support the current Netanyahu government. But while Netanyahu and his administration are certainly suboptimal, it's not like a Peres government or a Barak government led to an end to the occupation and equal rights for Israelis of Palestinian descent. Beinart feels there is a democratic Israel within the Green Line and an undemocratic one in the occupied territories. Truth is, while Israel is ostensibly a democracy, it has been drifting away from democracy for some time, even before the current Netanyahu government. There is gross discrimination against Israelis of Palestinian ancestry; Beinart makes that very clear in is book. Yet he seems to feel that bad as that is, at least that group has citizenship; Palestinian within the territories lack citizenship and are governed by military rule while settlers are governed by Israeli rule. But consider that Black Americans had citizenship in the US for years but were horribly persecuted and discriminated against for much of the 20th century. We were a democracy then, too. There is no place for the systematic discrimination against non-Jewish Israelis who also identify with Palestinian Arabs. There is thus something wrong when it's fair to boycott "undemocratic Israel" (ie, the Occupied Territories) yet unfair to boycott a "democratic Israel" that is becoming less democratic, discriminates against 20% of its population and gives material, legal and financial support to the occupation enterprise. It's not like everything within the Green Line is good and the occupation beyond it is bad; both are intimately linked, and the occupation could not exist were it not for everyone and everything within the Green Line. Beinart also feels that East Jerusalem is less discriminatory than the occupied territories, as Palestinians are eligible to apply for citizenship within East Jerusalem. But that really doesn't make Israel particularly democratic in practice, nor does it mean that Israel proper deserves support while boycotting settlement goods.
On a more mundane note, this is also a short book. I was surprised to have finished it with my Kindle Reader indicating that I was around 47% through the book, meaning that over 50% of the book consists of endnotes, references and acknowledgements. I literally finished the book in three days.
The Crisis of Zionism was a worthwhile book to have read. It provides a good deal of interesting detail about selected US Jewish organizations, the hidden dealings between US administrations and Israel over the years, and takes Israel and the US Jewish establishment to task for supporting the occupation and undermining more liberal American presidents. But I was ultimately very disappointed by the "solutions" presented by Beinart, his holding to the idea that there is a better, kinder Israel just waiting to be freed by the efforts of young progressive Jews if they only attended heder every day, and his condemnation of BDS and a one-state solution as inimical to a Jewish state and even (in the case of BDS), fundamentally antisemitic.
Interestingly, from the stuff one can see on the Web, on TV and in other media, Beinart is largely being demonized as a "traitor" to the Jewish people, a "self-hating Jew" and probably worse epithets by now. Contrast that with the reaction to Gershon Gorenberg's recent book that raises alarms about the ongoing settlement enterprise by the Israeli government; nary a bad word or remark, almost as if few even paid attention to Gorenberg's book. Most likely, as a friend pointed out to me, this is because Gorenberg criticizes Israeli governmental policies. Beinart is taking on the US Jewish establishment, and that apparently hits a raw nerve.
Given all this, is Beinart's book really a bomb thrown at the organized Jewish community, and is he Noam Chomsky-redux? I'll cut to the chase: yes and no.
Let's start with the good. The Crisis of ZIonism is well-written, and contains a lot of material that does question the standard narrative on Israel and criticizes, often vehemently, the large organizations that have come to speak for the US Jewish community, even when many of us within that community is in total conflict with the opinions proffered by those groups that claim to represent us. These include organizations such as AIPAC, the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League and so on. Beinart recounts, in painful detail, how many within those groups actively worked to derail the Middle East peace process, and even work against our current president when he suggested policies contrary to those of the Netanyahu administration in Israel. Beinart also points out the hypocrisy in criticizing President Obama (to whom Beinart refers as "The First Jewish President") for verbally opposing settlement activities when previous Republican administrations actually went beyond verbal disagreements and withheld money and arms to Israel when they disagreed with Israeli policy and actions. So yes, Beinart does criticize, and appropriately so, the organized Jewish community.
Now for the bad; he's no Noam Chomsky. Not even close. I'm not sure why he's being referred to as an "ultraliberal;" if that's the case, then many of us must be the second coming of Che Guevara. Beinart came across to me as wanting things both ways; he wants to criticize Israel for its interminable occupation of Palestinians, but also wants to support Israel so that his kinder, gentler pre-Netanyahu Israel can break through. The problem is that that kinder, gentler Zionism never existed. What Peter doesn't call much attention to is the fact that the occupation started, continued and flourished under secular Labor governments that predated the current religious Zionism endemic within the settler movement. Ben Gurion, Dayan, Meir, Rabin, Peres, all of them secular and none of them did much to end the occupation. If anything, they all promoted it, including Rabin (to be fair, Rabin did eventually provide some reforms that helped Israelis of Palestinian descent, but a Lincoln he wasn't). Beinart relates how Herzl and other early Zionists wanted to have Israel represent something akin to Vienna rather than the intolerant cruelty it currently represents. What Beinart omits is that in the early Zionist vision, the Arabs would live in peace under a Jewish government, albeit with equal rights but no land of their own. It is also quite true that when Israel was conceived, Jews were being slaughtered in many countries and no one really did give a damn. But it was also true that the early Zionists wanted a Jewish refuge, not necessarily a country where Jews ruled exclusively, and certainly not one in which Jewish law held sway. And for hundreds of years, many rabbis didn't have any interest in settling in Israel nor did the average religious Jew; Israel was only to come into being through the return of the messiah. The real impetus for a Jewish refuge came out of the real persecution endemic in much of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Beinart correctly points out that the occupation is destroying Israel, and understands that it must end. So he wants to mobilize progressive Jews (or more precisely, "liberal Zionists," as he terms them) to take action and reclaim his imaginary and elusive "feel-good, tolerant Zionism" to save Israel. But as he pointed out in his accurate New York Review of Books article, many young Jews in the US just don't find Israel relevant to their daily lives. So Beinart really wants Jews to start caring about Israel and somehow convince Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian land and devise a two-state solution. And to get these young progressive Americans to care about Israel, he feels the answer is to push for increasing enrollment in Jewish day schools (right after he points out that Jewish day schools are costly and tend to have fewer resources than secular schools). And then, to convince Israel to end its occupation, there should be a targeted boycott of goods from the West Bank (or "Zionist BDS, as he calls it, referring to the boycott/divest/sanction movement that targets Israel as a whole), but not of "democratic Israel," as he terms the area within the Green Line that defines the 1948-1967 borders of Israel. And an element of his Zionist BDS is to instead invest in "democratic Israel," which he defines as all territory not officially Occupied by Israel.
That's his solution: daily Jewish education and a selective boycott of the "undemocratic" part of Israel.
That was the most disappointing aspect of this book for me; he can go just far enough to criticize the organized Jewish community in the US and the Netanyahu government, but can't accept a boycott movement against Israel as a whole, nor does he seem to accept that since many of the really vehement settlers are orthodox Jews, perhaps Jewish education isn't a definite recipe for more tolerance of Israel's Palestinian citizens and (occupied) neighbors. Granted, Beinart does point out many aspects of Jewish teaching that should provoke revulsion at the current occupation. But clearly those important Jewish values are not guaranteed to cause religious Israelis to pull out of the West Bank and stop their control of Gazan life. Beinart very pointedly is against the BDS movement because in his view, it delegitimizes Israel. That seemed strange to me, when he had earlier correctly indicated that the sound-bite that criticizing Israeli policy is "delegitimization" amounts to a canard designed to delegitimize the complaint itself. Most people in the BDS movement are not antisemitic nor do they want to see Israel vanish. Just the opposite; many are Jews like me, who want Israel to be better. Clearly, Beinart wants that very much as well. But he has a fairly simplistic vision: all was good before the occupation and before right-wing governments came into power in Israel, so if a progressive government would just come into power in Israel, that country could go back to being a moral beacon, etc. But Israel has had liberal governments from day one, and under those governments chose to provide orthodox Jewish control over civil affairs such as marriage, and chose to continue and expand its control over Palestinians and their land. Beinart is operating under a very clean duality: liberal Zionism and President Obama = good, right-wing religious Zionism and Netanyahu = bad. But I'm still not clear what liberal Zionism is, exactly, and while I agree with every negative thing Beinart writes on Netanyahu and other right-wingers in Israeli politics, there is no evidence that a subsequent liberal/Labor government in Israel would do much of anything to reverse the occupation. If only it were that easy.
And Beinart's solution also requires a two-state solution. That would have made sense in the 90's when the Oslo Accords seemed to move things in that direction. But this is 2012, and without an Israeli retreat from settlements such as Ariel and several other large towns that Israel is loathe to ever give up, it's unclear how any Palestinian state could comprise anything more than a series of Bantustans on non-adjacent land areas. Ariel, for example, would cut a Palestinian state in two. The entire "can't we just rewind things back a decade or two" argument within The Crisis of Zionism just seems to be so much fanciful thinking to my mind, even constituting magical thinking. So what about a one-state solution then? Beinart condemns it (as does much of the Jewish establishment he rightfully criticizes), since he views it as the end of a Jewish state, and unworkable (he offers up the images of Belgium and Lebanon as examples of why a one-state solution likely is impossible to work in Israel). Yes, a one-state solution is not a slam-dunk, and is probably impractical. But a two-state solution is dead at this point. It hasn't been a reality since 1967 nor was it a reality when the UN partitioned Mandate Palestine into Jewish and Arab sections with an internationalized Jerusalem. And let's say a two-state solution happened tomorrow; would Israelis accept even a demilitarized Palestinian state on two sides containing at least a few radicals who want Palestine to comprise everything within the Green Line? And for that matter, would those religious Zionists accept giving up claims to Judea and Samaria, land that they believe is theirs? Some of these folks still believe Jordan should be part of Israel, based on some phrases from the Old Testament. And what of the settlements? And what of Israelis of Palestinian descent? And what happens to the Palestinian right of return? So yes, a one-state solution may be pie in the sky. But no less so than a two-state solution, and in some ways (S. Africa being a good example, although not a perfect analogy), perhaps a one-state solution would be more appropriate. It would allow everyone living there, Jew, Muslim and Christian, access to their holy sites regardless of whether they sit in what would have been Israel or Palestine. There would be one military, regardless of one's religion. But what about a Jewish state? Depends what is meant by that. If it means a Jewish homeland, one which is free of persecution, then does it matter who is running the country? A Jewish state doesn't have to mean having only Jews in primary positions of power. It can mean, however, a democracy where everyone is equal, but allows Jews to live in peace. There is just no more reason for Jews to be the exclusive power holders in a "Jewish state" than there was reason for white Afrikaners to be the exclusive power in a democratic S. Africa. Yes, I may be dreaming given the unlikely probability that a single democratic state would ever arise between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. But just because something might not happen doesn't mean that it shouldn't.
So ultimately, for all of Beinart's valid criticisms of an organized Jewish community in the US that is woefully out of touch with its more progressive constituents, as well as his revulsion at the occupation and the Netanyahu government in Israel, his solutions fall flat and his vision is ultimately surprisingly and disappointingly naive. He ignores the discrimination inherent in even the early conceptions of ZIonism that involved a return to Israel (and that assumed an acquiescence on the part of the Palestinian population indigenous to that area). He pushes for a selective "Zionist BDS" that only targets the West Bank, which is neither practical nor useful, while condemning a wider and potentially more powerful BDS movement against Israel as a whole (consistent with this, Beinart recently praised the failure of a NYC food coop to put forward a boycott of Israeli goods). The truth is that the occupied territories and Israel are intimately linked.
Beinart wants to hold on to a two-state solution and condemns a one-state vision, while hoping to enlist young progressive Jews in the effort towards propping up Israel and undoing the settlement enterprise. Beinart opines that those young Jews would be more committed to activism on behalf of a two-state solution were they going to Jewish day schools every day (disclaimer: my wife and I sent both of our children to Quaker schools for part of their education, and they currently attend secular public schools, as did both of us when we were that age). None of this makes a whole lot of sense to me, much as I understand where he is coming from. There is little or no mention of groups like Jewish Voice for Peace that are currently working to end the occupation but that also support BDS efforts. There isn't even a whole lot of mention of Palestinians, period, except for a few prominent names like Saeb Erekat and Yasir Arafat.
I have no question that Beinart sympathizes with the Palestinians. But he feels very strongly (not surprising given his modern Orthodox adherence) that there is a religious, biblical and historical right for Jews to inhabit and run Israel, and that would be destroyed by any Palestinian right of return and/or a one-state solution. While Israel exists and is not going away, the religious dogma or historical justifications for Jewish control of Israel are thin. Why wouldn't the Ba'hai or other religious minorities that are persecuted not then also deserve their own states, for example?
It is also very understandable that Beinart cannot support the current Netanyahu government. But while Netanyahu and his administration are certainly suboptimal, it's not like a Peres government or a Barak government led to an end to the occupation and equal rights for Israelis of Palestinian descent. Beinart feels there is a democratic Israel within the Green Line and an undemocratic one in the occupied territories. Truth is, while Israel is ostensibly a democracy, it has been drifting away from democracy for some time, even before the current Netanyahu government. There is gross discrimination against Israelis of Palestinian ancestry; Beinart makes that very clear in is book. Yet he seems to feel that bad as that is, at least that group has citizenship; Palestinian within the territories lack citizenship and are governed by military rule while settlers are governed by Israeli rule. But consider that Black Americans had citizenship in the US for years but were horribly persecuted and discriminated against for much of the 20th century. We were a democracy then, too. There is no place for the systematic discrimination against non-Jewish Israelis who also identify with Palestinian Arabs. There is thus something wrong when it's fair to boycott "undemocratic Israel" (ie, the Occupied Territories) yet unfair to boycott a "democratic Israel" that is becoming less democratic, discriminates against 20% of its population and gives material, legal and financial support to the occupation enterprise. It's not like everything within the Green Line is good and the occupation beyond it is bad; both are intimately linked, and the occupation could not exist were it not for everyone and everything within the Green Line. Beinart also feels that East Jerusalem is less discriminatory than the occupied territories, as Palestinians are eligible to apply for citizenship within East Jerusalem. But that really doesn't make Israel particularly democratic in practice, nor does it mean that Israel proper deserves support while boycotting settlement goods.
On a more mundane note, this is also a short book. I was surprised to have finished it with my Kindle Reader indicating that I was around 47% through the book, meaning that over 50% of the book consists of endnotes, references and acknowledgements. I literally finished the book in three days.
The Crisis of Zionism was a worthwhile book to have read. It provides a good deal of interesting detail about selected US Jewish organizations, the hidden dealings between US administrations and Israel over the years, and takes Israel and the US Jewish establishment to task for supporting the occupation and undermining more liberal American presidents. But I was ultimately very disappointed by the "solutions" presented by Beinart, his holding to the idea that there is a better, kinder Israel just waiting to be freed by the efforts of young progressive Jews if they only attended heder every day, and his condemnation of BDS and a one-state solution as inimical to a Jewish state and even (in the case of BDS), fundamentally antisemitic.
June 30, 2020
Peter Beinart and I differ in two crucial ways. For one, he is Jewish; I am not. He also begins his book with the provocative statement that he is a Zionist; I do not identify as one. Starting in this way had me second-guess what I was getting myself into with this text, but it also confused me, for I knew Beinart from his deliberately AIPAC-antagonizing Twitter feed and as a journalist whom Shin Bet famously detained at Ben Gurion Airport. To me, he was somebody who devoted his online real estate to vigorously defending Palestinians despite no shortage of trolls. So, from the get-go, I was also interested to see how these two identitarian features would reconcile themselves.
The answer is both hopeful and dismaying. Hopeful because Beinart's liberal Zionism shares many of the same policy objectives as Palestinian rights groups - a far cry from Zionism as it is most often marketed in American politics today - and makes the astute argument that modern Israel is an apartheid society: democratic within the Green Line, undemocratic beyond it. But the answer is also dismaying in that the ideological gap between Palestinian rights groups and liberal Zionists in their conception of Israeli statehood proves perhaps too wide to be bridged. Liberal Zionism, though to be commended for its commitment to social justice and democracy, fails to address Israel's origin story and how even its pre-1967 existence ought to be grappled with (the assumption is that the 19 years prior to the Six Day War were somewhat of a Golden Age of Israeli democracy). I personally do not believe "peace" (however ill-defined that notion may be) can be achieved without a cross-cutting understanding that Israel's founding created both refuge and refugees; liberal Zionism acknowledges and seeks to mend Palestinian statelessness without thinking about how and why this statelessness came about. So long as liberal Zionists like Beinart continue to play the dual game of condemning Israel's treatment of Palestinians while also advocating for Israel's existence as a Jewish state, true compromise and harmony will prove evasive, for Israel's status as majority-Jewish is dependent on Palestinian expulsion and disenfranchisement. However, it goes without saying that liberal Zionism remains infinitely times more preferable than present Likud Revisionism; this book is also incredibly somber in its prognostication of imminent political cataclysm, and cynical in its assessment of American presidents' abilities to reign in the Israeli-right wing (as demonstrated by a case study of Barack Obama's anti-Occupation campaign to Bibi-appeasing tenure).
Apart from this central ideological disagreement, I nevertheless found Beinart's analysis sharp, pointed, and informative. I know he is in some ways digging himself a hole: taking heat from both the AIPAC right and the BDS left. But I certainly learned a great deal from this book, and found its nuance comforting. Given the divisiveness of the Israel-Palestine issue, it can be difficult to feel that it's possible to share common ground with someone who indulges fundamentally different starting premises, particularly without discussion turning bitter. Yet, Beinart gave me hope that we actually share far more than divides us. If I weren't writing this review on the eve of Israel's probable annexation of Palestine (eight years after the book's initial publication), I might even suggest that it could serve as an effective starting point for the next iteration of peace negotiations.
The answer is both hopeful and dismaying. Hopeful because Beinart's liberal Zionism shares many of the same policy objectives as Palestinian rights groups - a far cry from Zionism as it is most often marketed in American politics today - and makes the astute argument that modern Israel is an apartheid society: democratic within the Green Line, undemocratic beyond it. But the answer is also dismaying in that the ideological gap between Palestinian rights groups and liberal Zionists in their conception of Israeli statehood proves perhaps too wide to be bridged. Liberal Zionism, though to be commended for its commitment to social justice and democracy, fails to address Israel's origin story and how even its pre-1967 existence ought to be grappled with (the assumption is that the 19 years prior to the Six Day War were somewhat of a Golden Age of Israeli democracy). I personally do not believe "peace" (however ill-defined that notion may be) can be achieved without a cross-cutting understanding that Israel's founding created both refuge and refugees; liberal Zionism acknowledges and seeks to mend Palestinian statelessness without thinking about how and why this statelessness came about. So long as liberal Zionists like Beinart continue to play the dual game of condemning Israel's treatment of Palestinians while also advocating for Israel's existence as a Jewish state, true compromise and harmony will prove evasive, for Israel's status as majority-Jewish is dependent on Palestinian expulsion and disenfranchisement. However, it goes without saying that liberal Zionism remains infinitely times more preferable than present Likud Revisionism; this book is also incredibly somber in its prognostication of imminent political cataclysm, and cynical in its assessment of American presidents' abilities to reign in the Israeli-right wing (as demonstrated by a case study of Barack Obama's anti-Occupation campaign to Bibi-appeasing tenure).
Apart from this central ideological disagreement, I nevertheless found Beinart's analysis sharp, pointed, and informative. I know he is in some ways digging himself a hole: taking heat from both the AIPAC right and the BDS left. But I certainly learned a great deal from this book, and found its nuance comforting. Given the divisiveness of the Israel-Palestine issue, it can be difficult to feel that it's possible to share common ground with someone who indulges fundamentally different starting premises, particularly without discussion turning bitter. Yet, Beinart gave me hope that we actually share far more than divides us. If I weren't writing this review on the eve of Israel's probable annexation of Palestine (eight years after the book's initial publication), I might even suggest that it could serve as an effective starting point for the next iteration of peace negotiations.
June 19, 2024
The book really should have been titled "The Crisis of American Zionism," as it is entirely focused on the American Jewish community and its attitude towards Israel. Even then, only about 25% of the book is actually about the subject promised by the title.
Beinart starts off by declaring himself a Zionist, but then spends the rest of the book assailing Israel. In particular, he blames the Occupation for the Crisis, as if everything was peachy and peaceful prior to 1967. He completely disregards the ongoing opposition to Israel's very existence, insisting that everything would be fine again if Israel would only withdraw completely from the West Bank and support the creation of a Palestinian state there. While I too support a two-state solution and condemn the oppressive and discriminatory treatment of Palestinians by Israel's military and administrative control of the disputed territories, he provides a myopic and somewhat cynical assessment of the situation, and ignores critical facts and developments that contradict it. For instance, he glosses over the fact that after uprooting settlements and withdrawing completely from both Gaza and Southern Lebanon, both areas were quickly and methodically overrun by terrorist organizations, resulting in more rather than less violence.
But aside from disagreements over some of his opinions, my bigger problem with the book was that half of it was devoted to details about the Obama administration, which is now out of date and irrelevant. Even at the time, he presents minor perceived slights (e.g. leader X made leader Y wait 45 minutes before meeting with him, a word in a statement got mistranslated and hence interpreted as a rebuke when it was just a mild disagreement, etc.) as if they presented a serious threat to the American-Israeli relationship. Why did he do this? In order to express his hatred of Benjamin Netanyahu, which also takes up a good part of the book. I don't like him any better, but presenting Bibi as the source of Israel's problems and not just a symptom of larger trends is both petty and misses the point.
In the end, he turns back to the hand-wringing over the lessening ties of the younger American generations to Israel, and blames it on their assimilation to American culture. Essentially the same tired arguments that have been raised in every generation since the incident with the Golden Calf. His conclusion is that American Jews need to become more religious, utterly ignoring the secular nature of most of the early Zionists and mainstream modern secular Israeli culture.
May 11, 2024
This was a short, compelling and thought-provoking exploration of the challenges facing Zionism in both Israel and America and specifically explores how this interrelationship has continuously influenced the persistent Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The central argument of the book posits that Zionism, under the stewardship of Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, has increasingly aligned with the revisionist and exclusionary aspects of its foundational ideology. Over time, he argues that this alignment has irrevocably metamorphosed Israeli and American Jewish youth into embracing expansionist doctrine observed today.
I am in much agreement with vast arguments in this book. Indeed, Beinart's firm chiding of Israelis current apartheid-like practices against Palestinians in the West Bank comes across as convincing and earnest. While proponents of Zionism who advocate for the occupation of the West Bank may invoke national defense as a legitimate justification, Beinart astutely asserts that such a rationale fails to legitimize the expansion of settlements and the resultant discrimination against Palestinians, who remain ineligible for Israeli citizenship.
In the prevailing sociopolitical context, it is observed that genuine and well-intentioned critiques of Israel are occasionally, and inappropriately, labeled as anti-Semitic—a patently absurd accusation, though it must be acknowledged that considerable anti-Semitism does indeed exist at present. Nevertheless, it is untenable to overlook the critical examination of the treatment of Palestinians in the West. Beinart effectively showing that there is plenty of substrate by which to criticize Israel.
Despite his effective polemics, as historical events are now unfolding, Beinart appears to have been naively misled by the rhetoric propounded by Hamas just over a decade ago, which indisputably manifests as yet another inept, barbaric, and profoundly ineffective governing body that has eschewed any efforts toward modernization or stability.
Altogether, I recommend this book - although caution that it is pretty left leaning; I would have liked to see him be critical of the Palestinian Islamist movement, which in my opinion has hijacked the Palestinian cause.
I am in much agreement with vast arguments in this book. Indeed, Beinart's firm chiding of Israelis current apartheid-like practices against Palestinians in the West Bank comes across as convincing and earnest. While proponents of Zionism who advocate for the occupation of the West Bank may invoke national defense as a legitimate justification, Beinart astutely asserts that such a rationale fails to legitimize the expansion of settlements and the resultant discrimination against Palestinians, who remain ineligible for Israeli citizenship.
In the prevailing sociopolitical context, it is observed that genuine and well-intentioned critiques of Israel are occasionally, and inappropriately, labeled as anti-Semitic—a patently absurd accusation, though it must be acknowledged that considerable anti-Semitism does indeed exist at present. Nevertheless, it is untenable to overlook the critical examination of the treatment of Palestinians in the West. Beinart effectively showing that there is plenty of substrate by which to criticize Israel.
Despite his effective polemics, as historical events are now unfolding, Beinart appears to have been naively misled by the rhetoric propounded by Hamas just over a decade ago, which indisputably manifests as yet another inept, barbaric, and profoundly ineffective governing body that has eschewed any efforts toward modernization or stability.
Altogether, I recommend this book - although caution that it is pretty left leaning; I would have liked to see him be critical of the Palestinian Islamist movement, which in my opinion has hijacked the Palestinian cause.
June 11, 2024
Like many people horrified by the events unfolding in Gaza in 2024, I’ve been trying to follow through on years of good intentions to understand the recent history of the region. It’s been very difficult to find accessible, comprehensive sources that don’t treat the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like a dang sports match. I think it’s really sad that the best book I’ve found to that end was written 12 years ago.
As an American Jewish man who believes generally in the project of Israel, but is horrified by the Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinian people and its slide from democratic principles, Beinart uses that tension to treat this subject in probably about as fair and honest a way as possible. And because he’s writing about recent history from an American point of view, I found that I could actually get a grip on at least some of the history to take with me into other reading.
I don’t think it’s necessary to agree with all of Beinart’s conclusions or even the way he phrases his arguments to find this book useful— especially given that so much has happened in the time since its publication. I think it’s enough that he’s arguing in good faith and doing his best to be honest.
As an American Jewish man who believes generally in the project of Israel, but is horrified by the Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinian people and its slide from democratic principles, Beinart uses that tension to treat this subject in probably about as fair and honest a way as possible. And because he’s writing about recent history from an American point of view, I found that I could actually get a grip on at least some of the history to take with me into other reading.
I don’t think it’s necessary to agree with all of Beinart’s conclusions or even the way he phrases his arguments to find this book useful— especially given that so much has happened in the time since its publication. I think it’s enough that he’s arguing in good faith and doing his best to be honest.
April 12, 2021
This book leaves me with the same question that do most of Beinart’s tweets and columns: is Beinart Just an amazingly unskilled liar or has he totally gone off the deep edge? Really, I want to know. Just in the Intro alone Beinart lays down a thesis that would be at home in a David Duke book: Jews have too much power and privately revel in it; Jews would rather spend more on holocaust memorials than education Bc Jews like the idea of being permanent victims, and a bizarre admission that his grandmother referred to Jews as rats. He then goes on to say that American Jewish college kids face almost no antisemitism at universities (last I heard something like 80% reported having antisemitism directed at them personally) and then on page 60 he insists that it’s OK that Palestine is Judenrein bc “Palestinian leaders insist they’ll let Jews live there someday” - a bald lie. (https://mobile.reuters.com/article/am...).
In conclusion, this book is definitely by Peter Beinart and wasn’t ghost written. The author is 100% indifferent to Jew hate, delusional and chronically dishonest.
In conclusion, this book is definitely by Peter Beinart and wasn’t ghost written. The author is 100% indifferent to Jew hate, delusional and chronically dishonest.
December 4, 2023
Beinart's 2012 book is a good background to the current crisis. Perhaps most importantly, it discusses divergent ideologies within the early Zionist movement, with one strand reflecting the importance of democracy in the new land, and the second, that of Vladimir Jabotinsky -- taken up by his personal secretary, Benzion Netanyahu and then Benzion's son, Benjamin -- stressing power, strength, and domination at all cost, in obtaining and holding the land "on both sides of the Jordan." Also a very interesting chapter on Obama and his relationship to prophetic Judaism, and why, in the face of the inordinate power of the organized conservative American Jewish community -- AIPAC,etc -- he was forced away from that view.
July 22, 2021
It's astounding that a book so grossly ignorant of history and so obviously opportunistic in It's goals is not seen for what it is by so many. The writer has no training in or knowledge of the field in which he writes. He was an obscure mediocre journalist who has realized that it's easy to grift off of an ignorant audience eager to hear millenia old stereotypes about the Jewish people served up as a string of modern ignorant cliches. This is not a book for intelligent discerning minds or anyone with intellectual curiosity. But it will satisfy those who like confirmation bias affirming tired cliche. Stupid things sell well these days
November 5, 2017
If you're committed left-wing, you'll love everything in this book. If you're committed right-wing, you'll totally hate this book. If you are moderate like I am, you will find that the author has raised important issues that need to be addressed. I disagree with many of his conclusions but the more that I work with the younger generation, the more I realized that the challenges he sees our share by them. he is a committed Zionist, who misses the old days of Labor Zionism and idealism. while I can't say I blame him, you can't turn back the clock. the dangling question is what direction now?
September 10, 2019
If I could do half stars I’d rate this as 3.5 stars. I thought the beginning of the book was very strong, and I appreciate the author’s perspective (as one that differs from my own) on, as he describes “how to ethically wield Jewish power” and deconstruct Judaism’s “victimhood narrative.” I also recognize that as a non-Jew this book wasn’t written for me — it’s written to appeal to Jews and Zionists — and appreciated broadening my understanding of this critical international issue from another viewpoint.
February 20, 2024
I don’t necessarily agree with all the points he makes, but overall I think that it’s a refreshing perspective on Zionism, staying compassionate but also directly calling for action - this is the kind of book I can also recommend to people who are on the right wing side of zionism which i genuinely think could impact how they think about the issue
September 20, 2020
Good primer on issues facing American Jews about their relationship with Israel and Israeli policies.
Written before Beinart gave up on the two-state solution.
His criticism of the big legacy Jewish organizations is spot-on.
Written before Beinart gave up on the two-state solution.
His criticism of the big legacy Jewish organizations is spot-on.
December 4, 2023
I am indebted to Peter Beinart for his incredibly helpful and clearly-written summary of the history of the modern Jewish state of Israel as it pertains to its identity crisis. I learned so much from this book.
December 6, 2021
Peter has improved a lot from defending liberal zionism to Palestinian liberation advocacy. I couldn't be more proud of him.
December 22, 2023
Hard read but insightful and persuasive2
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