Almost all the criticism (and controversy surrounding) Peter Beinart's The Crisis of Zionism comes down to two major complaints.
The first is that he is a "liberal Zionist" which, by some definitions, means he is just as indifferent to Palestinian rights as a rightwing Zionist. He believes in the idea and reality of a Jewish state and is primarily motivated by his sense of urgency about preserving it. He also does not support the right to return to Israel of all the Palestinian refugees (dating back to 1947) and their millions of descendants, viewing full return as a means to ending Israel's existence. And, worst of all to some on the left, Beinart favors the so-called "two-state solution" which, although repeatedly thwarted primarily by settler-supporting Israeli governments, Beinart sees as the only means to achieve a solution fair to both peoples.
The second source of complaint (fury, actually) emanates from the "pro-Israel" right and its intensity dwarfs the criticism of those who attack from the left. The anti-Zionists primarily view Beinart as misguided and naïve, still a prisoner of the Zionist ideology on which he was raised. The "pro-Israel" right (and that includes virtually the entire "pro-Israel" establishment) views Beinart as evil, as a traitor and, as ridiculous as this sounds, an enemy of the Jewish people. No matter, that his goal is a secure Israel living side by side next to a secure Palestine. No matter that his love for Israel suffuses his entire book or that he is an observant Jew. For the "pro-Israel" right, Beinart is the enemy.
Understanding the right's feelings about Beinart may be more the job of a psychologist than a pundit because it is so irrational that it cannot be addressed merely by citing facts. It is a mark of how crazy the debate over Israel has become in this country that it exceeds anything that goes on in Israel, which itself has more than its fair share of right-wingers.
For instance, take a look at this video from the top-rated Israeli show Big Brother, a television reality show in which a group of young people move into an apartment and live their lives on camera. These shows are popular worldwide but the brilliant exposition of the evils of the occupation that one character made on the Israeli show last week is unimaginable here. (U.S. reality shows avoid politics like the plague. But this is Israel).
Striking this about this video (besides the fact not even a Jewish Community Center would dare show it in the U.S) is the young man making the case against the occupation. He is the kind of person Zionism was supposed to produce: a proud Israeli, afraid of nothing. These are the kind of Israelis we don't see much of in the United States anymore in contrast to the period before Israel became obsessed with maintaining the occupation and confronting Iran. You know, the Paul Newman (Exodus) kind of Israelis which, although a stereotype, is rooted in reality. The reason we don't see them is because an Israeli government that is always making the case for the status quo based on fear would be ill-served by proud, unafraid Israelis speaking to Americans. It prefers fear mongering.
Take Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, for instance, whose mind seems to be in 1938 Europe.
In 2006, speaking of Iran, Netanyahu told an audience in Los Angeles. "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany." He said that the Iranian president who "denies the Holocaust" is "preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state."
Note: Netanyahu's warning of the imminent danger of an Iranian nuclear weapon was delivered six years ago and it was far from the first Netanyahu warning that Iran was on the brink of achieving a nuclear bomb. It was also not the first time he said that the present day was reminiscent of 1938, although he has sometimes invoked 1942 or 1944.
The difference between Netanyahu and the young Israeli in the video (and most Israelis, I believe) is that for them the situation today is nothing like the situation in the 1940s. If it is, then who needs Israel -- which justifies it existence as the ultimate guarantee that "Never Again" is more than a slogan? In fact, that justification is a reality backed up by one of the most effective militaries in the world and 200 nuclear weapons. Israel is not the Warsaw Ghetto, a comparison that insults both the memory of the Holocaust and Israel itself.
And Netanyahu is far from the only person in a leadership position to make that comparison. Beinart reminds us that:
[Jews] tell ourselves that we are still history's victims whose primary responsibility is merely to survive. Consider the language of prominent Jewish leaders. In 2009, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, declared that "anti-Semitism (is)... reaching a peak this year that we haven't seen since the tragic days of World War II." In 2010 House Majority Leader Eric Cantor devoted his entire speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference to an extended analogy with the Nazi era. That December, Malcolm Hoenlein, the powerful executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, gave a speech entitled," Is It 1939?" (In a 2007 speech, it is subtitled "Is it 1938 Again."
Beinart then offers this chilling image that sums up the Holocaust fixation and how it affects attitudes toward Israel today:
A few years ago, a journalist reported that Malcolm Hoenlein... had a photo in his conference room of Israeli F-15s flying over Auschwitz. It is a photo of a fantasy. Israeli jets never bombed Auschwitz and never will. What they have bombed, in recent years, is the Gaza Strip, a fenced in, hideously overcrowded, desperately poor slum from which terrorist groups sometimes shell Israel. Hoenlein, in other words, has decorated his conference room not with an image of the reality that he helps perpetuate, but with an image of the fantasy he superimposes on that reality.
It is that fantasy that is producing such vitriol against Beinart in the "pro-Israel" organizations and among their cutouts. Born in 1971 in Massachusetts, brought up on stories about Israeli pioneers and heroes, he absolutely refuses to accept the idea that Israel is some pathetic little ghetto on the verge of extinction. He does not see the existence of Israel as an extension of the Holocaust but as the guarantee that there will never be another one. His Israel is one of daylight while the "pro-Israel" establishment sees only night and fog.
Add to that that his belief that the secure Israel of his dreams can only exist if Palestinians are secure, too and it is clear why he produces such rage. To put it simply, the "pro-Israel" establishment is so invested in the dark past that it will not tolerate the image of a bright future, especially if that future can only be achieved by compromising with a people they have decided are 1940s Nazis. It is pathological. Fortunately, it is Beinart who represents the future.
Follow MJ Rosenberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mjayrosenberg
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Diaspora Divided > Jewish Review of Books
Book Review: The Crisis of Zionism - WSJ.com
The Crisis of Zionism by Peter Beinart - Reviews, Discussion ...
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The agenda of the Likud administration of Binyam Netanyahu, which includes attacking Iran and expanding into occupied Arab territories in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, is one that alienates increasing numbers of Jews and others around the world. It is arguably the greatest threat to world peace, today.
It really isn't any more complicated than that.
Err, dude, you have it wrong.
Italy is an "Italian state" because it is a "state for all its citizens" i.e.it exists for the "citizens of Italy", it does not pretend that it exists for "all the wops of the world".
Compare and contrast....
Fully 100% of Israelis are "citizens of Israel", but Israel insists that it IS NOT an "Israeli state" i.e. a state for all the citizens of Israel.
Absolutely not: Israel insists that it is "the state for the Jews".
That is FUNDAMENTALLY different to Italy, which does not pretend that it is "the state for the wops of the world".
Cynthia is right: you can't have it both ways.
Either Israel is "the Israeli state" (in which case it is "the state for the citizens of Israel") or it is "the Jewish state".
But it can't be both.
Q: Why not?
A: Because if it is the latter (and that's what it claims to be) then it has:
a) disenfranchised fully 20% of its own citizenry
b) enfranchised millions who have never, ever set foot in the joint.
That ain't nothing like Italy, which doesn't enfranchise Brooklyn Wops no matter how much they insist on talking with an accent while they fling pizza's into the air, nor does it disenfranchise any of its citizens for any reason.
Thank you for the kind words.
They don't want piece, they want Israel in pieces, or better yet, no Israel at all.
Yet the Majority of the Jews in the world support Israel and the citizens of Israel who freely elected their government (sometime on the left and other on the right) and respect the choice of the majority and if the progressives within our community do not like it, they can act within the system and make a change. Yet it up to Israel citizens to make that choice and to elect whomever they prefer, as in all democracies, regardless of your bashing and putting it down. It is their decision, it is their live on the line , not Mr. Rosenberg or those living elsewhere.
Those of us who have personally lived through WWII and its Holocaust have memories, which are etched in our bodies, as well as in our conscious. To Mr. Rosenberg, these are just *narratives*, and we should get rid of those narratives post haste. Unfortunately, and that applies to everyone, our youth, our experiences then, and what was taught to us then, is part of our DNA. Two people, moreover, can be the offspring of the same parents, live in the same house, have the same upbringing, and still have different experiences and memories. Mr. Rosenberg's opinions are a result of his own life's story, and of hearsay. Just as I can not get into the personal DNA/experience of Palestinians, and their narratives, so neither Mr. Rosenberg, nor Paletinians are fully able to get into the skin, the souls, and the life experience of his enemy: *the pro-Israelis*. Obviously, it is quite alright to be pro Palestinian, but NOT to be Pro-Israel. Maybe Mr. Rosenberg can not understand either side properly, and his arguing that he does appears not to be based in reality.
Mr. Rosenberg's consistent strident opinions do not help anyone, or any cause, not even the cause he wants us to believe he champions.
Right now, Palestinians are being denied their rights to live in equality. Their land is taken and they have no freedom of movement.
I urge anyone who is able to travel to the West Bank and see what is happening.
You couldn't get that kind of honesty out of a US politician in Washington that wanted to keep his job, because he would be out before his feet touched the ground, thanks to AIPAC.
"It is time for any Israeli with an enlightened self-image to look at the mirror and see Avigdor Lieberman staring back. It is time to stop the procrastination over the question whether Israel can be both Jewish and democratic ... It is time to stop fidgeting, and to admit that mono-ethnicism cannot be a framework for liberal values ... It is time to rethink Zionism."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/16/israelandthepalestinians-israeli-elections-2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/26/israel-labour-binyamin-netanyahu-ehud-barak
Probably the best article on this issue that I have seen is by Ben Ehrenreich:
“The problem is fundamental: Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prison camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/16-2
I welcome any and all resources to aid me in this. . . thanks again!
Thank you for the kind words, and you are most welcome.
The argument in the article you link makes quite a few assumptions that simply aren't so, chief among them is the one copied in your comment above that the necessary end of the establishment of a nation-state is exclusion or "wholesale ethnic cleansing" (the breathlessness of the hyperbole there almost makes one chuckle), which is only contradicted by the experience of almost every nation-state on the face of the earth that has an ethnic minority.
Most of us who have read what Beinart writes don't feel fury, just annoyance. Yet another well meaning sucker being played by the Arabs who, unlike Beinart, wish to destroy Israel by any means necessary. People like Beinart really prolong the conflict by giving the intransigent Palestinians hope that if they hold onto their maximalist demands just a little longer, then someone is going to destroy Israel for them. After waiting for the Nazi's, the Soviets, the Nassarites the Baathists and now the Iranians to come conquer Israel for them, the Palestinians should give up and take what the can get from the Israelis and move on. But instead they see the mirage of the Beinarts of the world, and believe that there is a movement (BDS?), which will destroy Israel for them. This does more to perpetuate the conflict than anything else.
I find Beinart and his ilk annoying, I reserve my fury for actually dangerous people.
The Palestinians waited for the Nazis? lol, certainly amuzingly ridiculous your justification to what, steal more land?
"While acknowledging that it was Beinart who chose to cancel the talk, Jewish Voice for Peace sent out a statement that placed blame on “an increasingly McCarthyite atmosphere in the Jewish institutional world … more and more, Jewish institutions are required to police speakers and events based on the narrow requirements of a handful of influential funders.”
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/64734/zionism-author-cancels-kpfa-talk-in-berkeley/
Why do you frame Pro-Israel only those conservative institutions or persons who advocate for an endless occupation based on taking Palestinian lands? Or those who want us to go to war with Iran? (I could care less if Israel wants to do it, they should as long as they are the only ones who receive any retaliation, just don't get US involved). Is Beinart by your definition not Pro-Israel, and therefore Anti-Israel? and exactly for what? What is exactly on his book that does not make him Pro-Israel?
I am just amazed how the "Pro-Israel" qualifier has been defined by the land takers as mean anything that is against their divine right to keep taking other people's right without grating them any rights.
The point is to make the israeli occupation too expensive to maintain. The point is to make life difficult for the israel economy without making it difficult for yourself.
Its really not complicated.