Peter Beinart has a beef with Israel. As a liberal who
wants to remake the Jewish state in his own image — secular,
passive, willing to forfeit property, power, and identity to
appease perpetual victims — Beinart
famously called on American “Zionists” to
reject Israel so that it would comport with his flaccid version of
liberalism:
Fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal. One reason is
that the leading institutions of American Jewry have refused to
foster — indeed, have actively opposed — a Zionism that
challenges Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and
toward its own Arab citizens. For several decades, the Jewish
establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at
Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that
many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.
Beinart maintains that because groups like AIPAC and the Presidents’ Conference avoid virtually
all public criticism of Israeli actions they have no moral basis to
criticize the anti-Israel policies of the United Nations, the UN
Human Rights Council or the Durban Conference on Racism. In
Beinart’s world Israel — and Zionism — has become an instrument
of oppression. He views the defense of the homeland and the
construction of communities on land Israel won in a series of
unprovoked wars as racist. You see Beinart really believes that
Israel is not a liberal democracy but a proto-fascist state that
avoids peace to pursue an expansionist agenda.
This delusion can be maintained by just stitching together
the allegations, misstatements, and omissions about Israel to
create a new Blood Libel. He invokes Deir Yassin but ignores the
War of Independence, the Sinai campaign or the Yom Kippur war, and
ignores the long list of peace treaties and diplomatic agreements
Israel has entered into, the land it is has given in exchange for
peace, the willingness to halt construction of homes in places
people want to live. Beinart never explains why a nation that has
lost its soul expelled its own citizens from their homes rather
than wiping out the people they “occupy” at great expense and loss
of life.
Beinart
now claims that the reason for the
Palestinian effort to get the UN to recognize it as a state is that
Israel walked away from a peace agreement in 2009 when Netanyahu
became prime minister. His proof is a widely discredited claim that
Ehud Olmert had reached a deal with Abbas on Jerusalem, borders,
and the so-called “Right of Return” and Netanyahu tore it
up.
In fact, in a September 2010
article in Haaretz entitled
“Olmert: Abbas Never Responded to My Peace Offer,” the former PM
notes, “It’s time the international community demand an answer from
the Palestinians (why they rejected the peace proposal) instead of
arguing about a building here and a building there.”
In late 2009, the Australian
reported that Olmert met with Abbas nearly
35 times to produce a proposal. When he showed Abbas a map, “which
embodied all these plans…. It was, from Olmert’s point of view, a
final offer, not a basis for future negotiation. But Abbas could
not commit.”
But Beinart insists: “Abbas wanted to continue those
negotiations even amidst the Palestinian fury that followed
Israel’s January 2009 invasion of the Gaza Strip.”
These distortions fit Beinart’s limpid worldview. They do
not reflect the 60-year reality of Israel’s existence. Which is
also the defect of President Obama’s treatment of
Israel.
