An Important Critique of Zionism

Samuel Farber

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. A Reckoning.
By Peter Beinart
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025, 172 pages, $26 hardcover.

PETER BEINART HAS a highly varied history. More than 20 years ago, he worked for a decade for the conservative-leaning liberal weekly The New Republic where he became its principal editor from 1999 to 2006. He has moved a great deal to the left since those days and is currently one of the editors of Jewish Currents, a Jewish socialist and anti-Zionist publication.

During the last years, he has also become one of the better-known American Jewish critics of the state of Israel and of the American Jewish community’s organizational Establishment. While doing so, he often draws on Jewish religious sources and traditions, especially in his attacks on what he calls the “state idolatry” of Israel that prevails among Jews in Israel and abroad.

Despite its ambitious coverage, this book is short — comprising only 125 pages of text accompanied by 45 pages of notes, confirming it as a thoroughly researched project — beefing up its arguments with numerous contemporary as well as historical references. The book is well balanced in the specific sense that it systematically tries to debate and refute contrary arguments and evidence other than its own.

Its comprehensive treatment includes important historical materials on the very oppressive practices endured by Palestinians in what was then the new state of Israel of the late 1940s and early ’50s. These practices were covered up by the lies and distortions of Israeli leaders, among them the untruthful assertions making it appear that Palestinians had left the country of their own accord following the instructions of the Arab leaders.

In fact, most of these Palestinians were expelled by the Haganah (the principal and “official” Zionist army). As Beinart tells us, during Israel’s war of independence the Zionist armed forces emptied approximately 400 villages, many of which were looted, and most destroyed. (23)

Similarly, Beinart exposes and denounces in detail the system of Apartheid that has been implemented in the West Bank after it was taken over (together with Gaza and the areas in and around Jerusalem) by Israel after the 1967 war. (24-31)

A Turning Point

But it’s the massive destruction and genocide by the Israeli state that, as the book’s title suggests, is one of the central foci of the book.

“The story Jews tell ourselves to block out the screams,” Beinart writes, “enables our leaders, our families, and our friends to watch the destruction of the Gaza Strip — the flattening of universities, the people forced to make bread from hay, the children freezing to death under buildings turned to rubble by a state that speaks in our name — and shrug, if not applaud.” (9)

Beinart is indignant as he describes Israel’s destruction and damage of most of Gaza’s hospitals with, among other disastrous effects, the inability to effectively identify and report the number of dead in their morgues.

By the end of April 2024, the Gaza Health Ministry concluded that almost 35,000 Palestinians had been killed. Beinart also notes that even the Israeli army considered the Health Ministry’s total casualty numbers so reliable that it frequently cited them in its internal briefings.

Moreover, scholars from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who analyzed the Gaza’s Health Ministry’s reports determined that 68% of those killed in the war were women, children and the elderly.

Subsequent analysis by Michael Spagat, a British economist who specializes in measuring war deaths, claimed that the proportion of women, children and the elderly constituted around 60% of the deaths. While this was somewhat lower than the number claimed by the Gazan authorities, Spagat still found the data coming out of Gaza far more dependable than Israel’s. (59-60)

Of course, we must add to the number of Palestinian casualties and deaths, the massive destruction of housing, and widespread homelessness created by it. Thousands of Gazans have been forced into a desperate search for shelter, food and medical care among other vital needs such as schooling and education.

“My hope is that we will one day see Gaza’s obliteration as a turning point in Jewish history,” Beinart writes. Alongside the long accounts of Jewish persecution and disasters, “We must now tell a new story to answer the horror that a Jewish country has perpetrated, with the support of many Jews around the world…

“We are not hardwired to forever endure evil but never commit it. That false innocence, which pervades contemporary Jewish life, camouflages domination as self-defense.” (10)

“Ways of Not Seeing”

This is the title of Chapter 3, with the author’s focus concerning the reactions of the Jewish communities, both in Israel and in the United States, to the war in Gaza. This is an analysis of what could be called an indifference and callousness that paradoxically claims to be virtuous.

As Beinart sees it, the spirit animating these reactions is based on a redefinition of Judaism as a purely tribal creed, with the unmistakable message that the lives of Israelis matter in a way that the Palestinian lives do not.

Any lame excuse will do in applying this ideology in practice to Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Thus, for example, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the central pro-Israel lobbying organization) refused to attribute any responsibility to Israel for Palestinian casualties and deaths, on the spurious grounds that Hamas used the Palestinians as “human shields.”

As Beinart explains, under international law using civilians as human shields means forcing them to live alongside military targets. It does not mean fighting in areas with civilians around, as Hamas does. “No guerrilla force puts on brightly colored uniforms, walks into an open field, and takes on a vastly more powerful conventional army.” (61)

These apologetics by AIPAC, ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and their allies cover up the reality that in the first days of fighting alone, Israel bombed more than a thousand “power targets” including high-rise apartment buildings, banks, universities and government offices, which “it struck not because of their military value but merely for psychological effect” (62) — which should be understood in plain English as meaning intimidation and terror.

There are similarities between the nationalist attitudes of a majority of Israeli and American Jews and those of other rightwing nationalists, particularly those that are supported and upheld by formerly oppressed peoples.

In the case of Poland, for example, in January 2018 the right-wing Law and Justice Party then ruling the country approved a law criminalizing any mention of Poles being complicit in the crimes committed by the German Third Reich. Since Poles suffered a great deal under Nazi rule, no question or doubt should appear to place into question their honor and virtue.

This view in turn is related to the nationalist competitive computations (sometimes called “victimhood Olympics”), where more suffering confers rights with a superior moral value to that of other oppressed groups that may have suffered less. Thus, the degree of suffering, rather than the intrinsic political, social and economic merits of the cause of an oppressed group, seems to be decisive.

No wonder then that people like Elie Wiesel want to take Jews out of the competition, by asserting a sort of monopoly power on victimization. That meant that the Jewish Holocaust (in its infinite record of martyrdom) could not be subjected to historical analysis and compared to similar experiences suffered by other peoples.

As political scientist Corey Robin put it, “more than anyone, Wiesel helped sacralize the Holocaust, making it a kind of theological event that stood outside history. ‘The ultimate event, the ultimate history, never to be comprehended or transmitted,’ was how he once put it.” (Jacobin, July 6, 2016)

Compare Wiesel’s approach to that of Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish concentration camp victim who took exactly the opposite approach of Wiesel, refusing to reify and deify the Holocaust or romanticize its victims, while adopting a much more critically objective and humanist position toward the incredible human disaster which he and millions of others had experienced.

For the great majority of Israeli Jews and a very large proportion of U.S. Jews, Israelis can do no wrong. The actions of the Israeli Army are thus to be judged by a criterion that is not subject to factual verification — whether by independent human rights organizations, journalists, international humanitarian organizations such as the International Red Cross, or anybody else.

The doctrine of “purity of arms” that supposedly guides the behavior of all members of the Israeli Defense Force is uncritically assumed to describe reality, particularly in regard to the principal definition of the doctrine:

“The IDF servicemen and women will use their weapons and force only for the purposes of the mission, only to the necessary extent and will maintain their humanity even during combat. IDF soldiers will not use their weapons and force to harm human beings who are not combatants or are prisoners of war and will do all in their power to avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity and property.”

Tell that to the Palestinians who were injured, or to the relatives of those who were killed because of the above mentioned “power targets” bombed by Israel for “psychological effects.”

As Beinart points out, for the American Jewish Establishment “Israel is the perpetual target of aggression, never its author.” (19) Moreover, Jews in Israel and abroad “have built our identity around this story of collective victimhood and moral infallibility.” (107)

In his Prologue, Beinart anticipates and rejects an assumption that “exempts Jews from external judgments. It offers infinite license to fallible human beings.” (10)

About Hamas and October 7, 2023

Beinart has explained that he consciously chose as the book’s title not “Being Jewish After October 7,” but Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.

Beinart takes up the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 that provided the excuse and opportunity for the Israeli government to unleash its highly disproportionate, massive and totally destructive response (“To Whom Evil is Done,” 33-54) He fully recognizes the difference between the oppressor Israeli nation and the two million Palestinians living in an enclave that Israel has for many years subjected to intolerable living conditions.

As I pointed out in an earlier essay I wrote for this journal in its May-June 2024 issue, before the outbreak of the recent hostilities, Israel totally controlled the entry and departure from the Gaza zone, aided by the Egyptian authorities that enforce the border controls in the south of Gaza.

 Fishing, traditionally an important activity for the people living in the area, has been reduced by order of the Israeli government, to a maximum of 10 kilometers from the coast. Gaza is not allowed to have a port or an airport, and neither does the Israeli government allow the import of many machines and materials that they claim could be potentially used for military purposes.

Long before October 7, Israeli border controls were also damaging to the few thousands of workers who were allowed to participate in the Israeli labor markets. Gazans needing to go to Israel or anywhere else for medical attention faced many difficulties crossing the border. Importing food into Gaza was already reduced to a minimum necessary for the inhabitants’ survival.

As seen since the beginning of hostilities, Israel can deprive Gaza of water, electricity, and access to cell phones and the Internet. In other words, Gaza became a virtual open-air prison for its Palestinian inhabitants. And as Beinart pointed out in connection with the Palestinian resistance, “violent dispossession and violent resistance are intertwined.” (40)

For reasons such as these, Beinart rejects the analogy that compares the Hamas attack to an anti-Jewish pogrom (in Tsarist Russia), let alone to the Holocaust — considering as a minimum that in those historical instances Jews were powerless victims, a situation radically different from the enormous and oppressive power in the hands of the Israeli state on October 7.

Beinart goes on to suggest that October 7 had more in common with tragic explosions of rage such as “the murder, torture and rape of thousands of Europeans in newly independent Haiti in 1804, or the Fort Mims massacre of white settlers by Creek Indians in what is now Alabama in 1813.” (39)

Although insightful, I believe Beinart’s analogy is flawed in one important respect. The examples mentioned above mainly refer to elemental and largely spontaneous explosions of very justified popular anger.

The October 7 attacks on a large number of unarmed Israeli civilians, hundreds of whom were spectators at a large rock concert, were shot at in nearby highways or at a kibbutz, were carried out by Hamas, a well-organized, politicized and disciplined group with a well-defined political and religious ideology and practices (including a record of repression of Palestinians dissidents under its jurisdiction).

Beinart cites the example of South Africa, where the armed violent attacks by the African National Congress (ANC) in Apartheid South Africa “were largely restricted to military and industrial sites.” (52-53)

It is worth emphasizing here that the explicit objective of the Umkhonto we Ziswe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC, was not to target civilians or white people as such. Nevertheless, most of the casualties of armed South African black rebels were in fact civilians. Although some of these civilians were regarded by the ANC as legitimate targets, others were unintended victims such as passersby when bombs were detonated outside buildings housing security forces. (The O’Malley Archives, March 3, 2003.)

Again, creating terror among white South Africans as such was not the aim of these violent actions. This should not be surprising considering the clear (and radical) multiracial program, which explicitly included whites, adopted by the ANC as its Freedom Charter in June 1955.

Many details about October 7 remain unclear, but terrorizing Israeli civilians was undeniably part of Hamas’ objectives, although not the only one. It is clear that Hamas has to assume responsibility for the deeds committed by people under its command.

Accusations of Antisemitism to Avoid Criticisms

As Beinart puts it so clearly, Israel’s defenders often “deploy charges of antisemitism to try to silence criticism of a war whose morality they can’t defend.” (77) At least until the foundation of the Israeli state in 1948 and even until the so-called Six Day War in 1967, Zionism was generally seen in the Jewish community as a political position among several competing for Jewish support.

This dramatically changed immediately after the war of 1967, with Israel monopolizing Jewish American support. Moreover, the aftermath of that war coincided in the American late 1960s with the rise of Black Power and other developments such as the 1968 teacher’s strike in New York that pitted the Black community against what was then a union with a predominant Jewish membership and leadership.

From then on, it could no longer be assumed that there existed a long-time friendly relationship between the Jewish and Black communities. Changes in the policies of Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League were representative of the new trend according to which the political left was no longer seen as a natural ally of the Jewish community, but in the eyes of the ADL equally likely as the right to hold “antisemitic” views.

Today, the ADL sees criticisms and attacks on the Israeli government’s policies regarding Palestinians as clear evidence of antisemitism. Thus, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and principal spokesperson for that organization, openly claimed in November of 2023 that “Zionism support is fundamental to Judaism.” (86)

For Beinart, this amalgam of politics and religious identity represents a move to worship of a state — indeed, worship of the power of a state — that constitutes idolatry. In this regard he echoes the warning of the Israeli religious scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who way back in 1967 argued that attributing qualities of “holiness” to the land and the state would pave the road to what he openly called “Judeo-nazism.”

For its part, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental organization, is only slightly more nuanced than the ADL. While claiming that criticism of Israel that is no different from what would be applied to any other country or government is by itself not antisemitic, it insists that claiming the State of Israel to be a racist endeavor, is to deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and therefore an antisemitic act.

But what about Palestinians, and supporters of their right to self-determination, who see the Nakba (catastrophe) initiated by the establishment of Israel as placing into doubt the legitimacy of that state. Whether right or wrong, are they therefore racists or antisemites?

Beinart cites the research of political scientists Eitan Hersh and Laura Royden about the extent of antisemitism in the United States, who found that “the vast majority of progressives distinguish their feelings about Israel from their feelings about American Jews.” Even when made aware that most American Jews have favorable views regarding Israel, “respondents on the left rarely supported statements such as that Jews have too much power or should be boycotted.” (82)

What often happens on the sites of protests, most visibly at elite universities such as Columbia, UCLA and NYU among others, is that most of its young suburban Jewish students, including the liberals among them, very possibly grew up attending synagogues (including events such as weddings and Bar Mitzvahs) and other Jewish community institutions with some frequency.

In such spaces they were very unlikely to have heard criticisms of Israeli policy, much less outright opposition to the very existence of a Jewish-supremacist state. For them, support for Israel, even if not necessarily intense and infrequently ideologically and politically developed, came to constitute Jewish common sense.

Suddenly these young people are confronted by very intense, eloquent and more politically developed students (sometimes Jewish themselves) who are very critical if not hostile to Israel and Zionism not only at rallies but also in campus classrooms, cafeterias and even recreation areas.

Of course they feel threatened, not by a threat of physical violence but from the growing insecurity produced by their uncertainties and often by their superficial acquaintance with the specific issues at hand.

They also feel great frustration that while they in fact know a certain amount about Israelis, and to a much lesser extent about Palestinians, they cannot come up with an adequate reaction much less an intellectually cogent response. But as Beinart notes, it is important for them to “distinguish between being made uncomfortable and being made unsafe.” (93, emphases added)

While in fact some antisemites may and do show at anti-Israeli demonstrations and rallies, they are far more likely than not to be marginal and unrelated to the protests. The protesters themselves may lack understanding of the roots of the immense tragedy that took place particularly in the late forties and early fifties, as one group of recently highly oppressed people ended up systematically oppressing another group: namely the Palestinian people — a phenomenon that unfortunately has been and can be reproduced elsewhere.

Because of the then recent Holocaust, the foundation of the state of Israel received a great deal of support from world public opinion, including large sections of the international left. This even helps to explain the relative scarcity of left criticism of Israel in the United States even at the time of the 1967 War 30 years later, except for dissident figures such as I.F. Stone and Noam Chomsky.

The growing divorce between the U.S. left and the mainstream Jewish community during the following half century tended, for understandable reasons, to impoverish the U.S. left’s understanding — which of course does not at all entail approval — of the Jewish community’s support for Israel.

The situation of Palestinians and other Arab and Muslim peoples in the United States is different and indeed far more complicated than that of the mainly white Jewish and other actual or potential supporters of the Palestinian cause.

Be that as it may, Beinart maintains a sense of proportion, sympathy and support for the tens of thousands of Palestinian victims of the Israeli invasion of Gaza. He is entirely right when he asserts that it is “hard to ask Palestinians to care about the feelings of pro-Israel students while Israel slaughters and starves their families.” (92)

May-June 2025, ATC 236