Peter Beinart: ‘What Israel is doing in the name of the Jewish people is a desecration’
Peter Beinart
Itamar Katzir writes in Haaretz on 10 September 2025:
From his home in New York City, Peter Beinart watched in amazement as hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets during the first “day of disruption” in August.
The 54-year-old Jewish American journalist and commentator watched them call not only for the return of the hostages but also for an end to the war in Gaza, which he has protested against from the start. “I have immense respect for the people who are now connecting the suffering of the hostages with the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, and who are saying that it needs to end,” he says in a Zoom interview.
“I had mixed feelings about the protests against the judicial coup in the summer of 2023. On the one hand, I have immense admiration for the level of organization, and of course I believe that people were right to oppose the coup. On the other hand, I felt that this language, of ‘defending Israel’s liberal democracy,’ the desire to prevent Israel from becoming Hungary, did not in fact take the Palestinians in the story into account.”
Beinart, an observant Jew who describes himself as “attending an Orthodox synagogue” but says he does not consider himself Orthodox, has transformed in recent years from a liberal Zionist into one of Zionism’s harshest critics. His ideological shift, which includes abandoning the two-state solution in favor of calling for full equal rights between Jews and Palestinians, is uncomfortable even for the most liberal ears.
“After October 7, it seemed the focus of the demonstrations was on bringing back the hostages and the attack on Gaza, in an attempt to return them,” Beinart continues. “I completely understand. I cannot even imagine the suffering of these families. But it seemed to me that part of the blindness I saw in America – the focus on the hostages and not on the Palestinians suffering in Gaza – was also part of these demonstrations. So what is happening now in the demonstrations is inspiring.”
Beinart’s book, Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, published in January and a New York Times bestseller, is even more forthright about his political shift. His July 28 conversation about the issue with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” has racked up 2 million views.
‘The same principles that apply to them apply to us… If we’re going to question someone who says ‘globalize the intifada’ about their support for violence, we should also question the people who say ‘we stand with the IDF’ about their support for violence.’
When the book was released in January, the second hostage deal had not yet been implemented and then broken; the entry of aid into Gaza had not yet been stopped and later restored through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. By the time the conversation with Stewart took place, the famine crisis was already at its peak and the world was inundated with horrifying images from the Strip. As a result, Beinart’s views, which at the time of publication were among the most progressive on the political spectrum, became far more widespread.
Rabbi Abraham Heschel (third from left) standing next to Martin Luther King Jr. at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington
Stewart and Beinart spoke as one Jew to another: Stewart, completely secular; Beinart, religiously observant. Together they tried to understand how such horrors could be committed in their name. Stewart said that in his opinion, according to the definition of antisemitism, “Netanyahu would probably have to bomb himself” because he is the one endangering the security of the Jewish people. He also wondered, “What happens when David becomes Goliath?”
Beinart agreed, laying out his theory: Jews are safer in a system where everyone has equal rights, regardless of whether they are a majority or a minority. He claimed that ironically, Israel is currently the least safe place for Jews in the world, and that Jews are safer in the Diaspora. In his opinion, the solution is to grant equal rights to Palestinians, both within and beyond Israel’s borders.
Beinart recognizes that his views are hard for most Jews, especially Israelis, to swallow. They challenge the assumption that Jews need a Jewish state in order to be safe. “Look, almost half of the world’s Jews live in Israel, so it seems to me that if you are a Jew who believes that Jews have duties to each other, the life, welfare and safety of Israeli Jews will be of utmost importance,” he says.
“I do not understand any concept of Judaism or Jewishness where the lives of Israeli Jews do not matter and are not precious in the deepest way, both because they are Jews and because this land is sacred. The discovery that my positions are so far from those of most Israeli Jews, that many are angered by them and think they are terrible, is difficult for me. It’s difficult because it’s a set of values that comes from love and solidarity, but that also led me to a place that is very different from most Israeli Jews.”
What it means to be Jewish
Beinart’s book, as he explains in the interview, is an attempt to grapple with the same question that he and Stewart discussed – the sense of guilt. “Being Jewish can mean many different things,” he says. “Part of being Jewish is a system of legal obligations that I try to fulfill – for example, observing Shabbat, putting on tefillin [phylacteries – small leather boxes worn by Jewish men during weekday morning prayers] and keeping kosher – but for me, underneath all of that is the idea that all human beings were created in God’s image, and that comes before everything else. All of halakha [Jewish religious law], the entire Jewish story, comes after the creation of universal human beings.
“So when I think about what it means for me to be Jewish, I start with: ‘Are we honoring the idea of the image of God that exists in all human beings?’ When I see what Israel is doing in the name of the Jewish people and with my money as an American taxpayer, to me it is a desecration. I feel that our identity as a people will be changed by this, and that we will have to be held accountable for it in some way. You know, there are more children with amputated limbs in Gaza than anywhere else on Earth. I see the pictures from there and they haunt me. The book was my attempt to respond to this feeling that what was being done there violates my religious and traditional obligations as a Jew.”
The reason you feel that it is being done in your name is because Israel is the Jewish state?
“Yes. Absolutely. I am responsible as a citizen of America, which sends weapons [to Israel], and because the justification for what is being done is the security and identity of Jews.”
So, from your perspective, being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza is about vocal resistance? And this is based, as you mention in the book, on resistance by various Jewish writers in the past?
“Yes, I’m thinking about the people I admire. In the American context, there’s Abraham Joshua Heschel, who demonstrated against the Vietnam War. In the Israeli context, someone like Yeshayahu Leibowitz. I wonder what they would be saying at this time, as religious Jews who wanted to honor the image of God. I am not their equal in any way, but in my limited way I tried to do the same.”
Zionism is the problem
Beinart’s grappling, as a Jew, with the war in Gaza, its consequences and Jewish morality’s response to it are not the book’s only subjects. He also presents a very specific narrative about the establishment of the State of Israel, one that primarily aligns with the Palestinian narrative. Among other things, he tries to explain why he believes that Zionism is the problem, since a state called “Israel” he argues, is by definition unequal toward the Palestinians who live in it and have always lived in it.
Pro-Palestinian protest in New York, October 2024
He challenges the perpetual victim narrative of Israel and Judaism (and shows that throughout history Israel and Judaism were also victimizers). He criticizes the automatic Zionism of American Jewish institutions, and also suggests that a country called ‘Israel-Palestine’ is the solution – not only to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but to the problem of inequality throughout the world.
Beinart, a married father of two who teaches at the City University of New York and writes regularly for the progressive Jewish magazine Jewish Currents (and occasionally for The New York Times), wrote for Haaretz for several years. Long considered part of the American left, he once expressed distinctly Zionist views, like many American Jews. He has visited Israel many times and is in contact with many Israelis.
In 2018, when he came to Israel for his daughter’s bat mitzvah, he was detained for an hour at Ben-Gurion International Airport, ostensibly due to his ties with human rights organizations – he says he was asked if he was involved in any organization that threatens Israel’s democracy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later described the incident as an “administrative mistake.”
Over the years, as he visited the West Bank more frequently (he says the first time was in 2003) and made Palestinian friends there as well as in Israel and the United States, his views diverged from those of his Jewish Israeli friends and most American Jews. The book opens with a note addressed to one such “former friend,” their relationship ruptured in the wake of October 7 and the war in Gaza. The friend, Beinart writes, believes that Beinart’s opposition to the war and to the very idea of a state that favors Jews over Palestinians is a betrayal of the Jewish people.
Beinart was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his father was a professor at MIT. His parents had immigrated to the United States from South Africa, where most of his family remained. This has had a profound effect on his attitudes. “Many of my happiest Jewish memories are from South Africa, but it was also a place with great oppression,” he says.
“People around me, many of whom I loved very much, made excuses for these things: ‘Sure, apartheid isn’t great, but if we get rid of it we’ll all be in the grave, we’ll be in danger.’ Hearing this talk about security and supremacy from a young age really affected me. I was proud of my parents, who opposed apartheid, and I felt that this was my legacy from them: that if I found myself in a similar situation of moral injustice – not that Israel and South Africa are the same, they are different in many ways – I could follow in their footsteps.”
‘When you say that you want the entire Palestinian population of Gaza expelled, or when the Israeli state goes into villages in the South Hebron Hills and destroys structures, those, to me, are also acts that should be defined as terrorism.’
Beinart uses the volatile term “apartheid” to describe what is happening in Israel, and he is not alone. He describes Israel’s separate school systems for Jews and Arabs as “segregation.” He writes that in the Hebrew Bible, Abraham enslaved Hagar – suggesting that “this notion of slavery is not something only that can be done to Jews, but something that Jews can do as well.”
In a Haaretz review of his book, published in the format of a written debate between Noam Sheizaf and Itay Meirson, Meirson argues that using terms like segregation, apartheid and enslavement is a dog whistle to the American progressive left. I’m not sure I would go that far, but I also understand Meirson’s criticism. On the one hand, Beinart says the war in Gaza cannot be compared to any other. On the other hand, in certain places Beinart likens the situation in Israel to other governments or regimes, even if the comparison is imprecise.
“People always think in analogies,” he replies when I ask for his opinion on this criticism. “Therefore, I try, perhaps not always successfully, to point out why analogies are important in certain circumstances. When I think about October 7, an event that was a brutal and immoral attack on civilians and soldiers by people who are resisting oppression – or by their military group that came from people who oppose the occupation – it makes more sense to think of it like the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya or Native American uprisings against the United States, rather than saying it’s like the Kishinev pogrom, for example, or the Holocaust. Because [the pogrom and the Holocaust] were acts of violence committed by countries with antisemitic systems.
“I used the term apartheid because it has an international legal definition. That doesn’t mean it has to be the same kind of apartheid as in South Africa. Basically, it’s a word that describes a system of racial, ethnic or religious-legal domination and oppression. I also call the Jim Crow laws in the American South apartheid. Therefore, I think the term is appropriate for Israel and that it can also be applied to other places.”
In the book, why did you not call Hamas a terrorist group, nor its gunmen terrorists?
“Let’s define terrorism, right? Terrorism, as I would define it, is the use of violence against civilians for a political purpose, right? That’s how I would think about terrorism. And I think what Hamas did on October 7, clearly meets that definition. Not just against soldiers, it was targeted against civilians – for murder, for kidnapping, for violence – for a political purpose. So yes, I think what Hamas did on October 7 should be defined as terrorism. I think what it did in the 1990s with suicide bombings, and what it did in the Second Intifada also meets the definition of terrorism.
“I think it’s important – and this is difficult for many American Jews and probably many Israeli Jews to grapple with – that there are things that the Israeli government, the Israeli military, does that also meet that definition. And probably the United States government in many ways too, right? If you deny food aid, food, water, electricity to the population of Gaza for two and a half months, you are targeting civilians for a political purpose. And using violence to deny people food is an act of violence. And when you say that you want the entire Palestinian population of Gaza expelled, or when the Israeli state goes into villages in Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills and destroys the structures in those villages, those to me also, I think, are acts that should be defined as terrorism.”
But shouldn’t there be a distinction between what Israel is doing and settler terrorism, for example?
“Yes. But unfortunately, I don’t think this is only done by settlers. I think there’s things that are done by the IDF that also meet this definition of violence that targets civilians for a political purpose. It’s not just settlers who attack in Area C of the West Bank. The IDF bulldozes entire villages because it says Palestinians can’t live in these areas. I’ve been in some of those places, I saw firsthand how terrified those people were.”
Who do you call a victim
Throughout the book, Beinart also tries to get Jews out of the position of eternal victimhood. In the first chapter, titled “They Tried to Kill Us, We Survived, Let’s Eat,” he points out that the reading of the Megillah (scroll of the biblical Book of Esther, read on Purim) concludes after Haman is hanged on a tree. Had we read on, he writes, we would have discovered that, as King Ahasuerus was unable to overturn Haman’s lot (his plan to annihilate the Jewish people on a date determined by casting lots), he allowed Mordecai and his army to kill the enemies of the Jews. Mordecai and his army thus massacred some 75,000 enemies, celebrating a feast the next day, “while the blood had not yet dried,” Beinart writes.
In another section of the book, Beinart demonstrates how both Herzl and Jabotinsky viewed Zionism as a colonialist project – and even took pride in it. In other sections, he cites studies demonstrating how the more Palestinians Israel kills, the more Jews fall victim to antisemitic incidents. He makes it a point to say that Jews are not guilty of the antisemitism they are subjected to, but argues that the fight against antisemitism must be engaged in wisely, and that “confusing Judaism with Israel isn’t wise.”
In his book “Jews Don’t Count,” David Baddiel writes that in progressive discourse, Jews never count as a minority, that they are not part of the sacred circle of victims. So I ask: Can’t we be both victimizers but also victims? Why, for instance, isn’t it the victim who gets to decide whether slogans such as “From the river to the sea” or “Globalize the intifada” are offensive or not?
“Obviously, Jews can be victims. Jews were victimized on October 7, and Jews are victimized by antisemitism around the world. The problem I have with the victimhood discourse is when it erases the legal realities that exist in Israel-Palestine, which are based on Jewish legal supremacy and Palestinian legal inferiority.
“In the United States, the demand should be that Jews should be treated equally with other groups of people – that the same principles that apply to them apply to us. So what does that mean, for instance, with a term like ‘globalize the intifada’? This could be interpreted as a as a call for violence against Israeli Jews, right? Because the second intifada was very violent.
“But there are also groups on American streets and college campuses who chant things like ‘we stand with the IDF,’ or ‘Israel has the right to defend itself.’ Now, those chants could also be interpreted as calls for violence against Palestinians, because we see what the IDF is doing. We see what Israel has done in the name of self-defense since October 7. So I think we should treat these chants the same, which is that both groups of people have the right to chant those things.
“And if we’re going to question someone who says ‘globalize the intifada’ about their support for violence, we should also question the people who say ‘we stand with the IDF’ about their support for violence […] I think Jews and Palestinians being seen equally means we ask the question for both sides. So if you expect the one feeling victimized – if you expect to consider him – you should consider also the other side feeling victimized.”
How prevalent is this position in Jewish-American discourse? I assumed there was a tremendous rift between Israel and the diaspora, but in the book you present Israel as a kind of symbol, worshipped by American Jewry.
“There’s been an evolution since October 7. And there’s also a very large gap between the American Jewish political leadership and where American Jews, particularly younger American Jews, are now. That [gap] was growing even before October 7, and it’s grown even more. But if you look at the organized institutions of the American Jewish community, the ones that tend to wield the most power, I think that they are still basically within the framework in which the basic legitimacy of the state of Israel can’t be questioned.
“The default position is always to say that Israel should not be subject to international law, that the United States should maintain unconditional support for Israel, and that the American Jewish community should maintain unconditional support for Israel. And that even if there are tragic things that happen, it’s not fundamentally Israel’s fault. And although there are many, many American Jews now who disagree with that point of view, when you look at the way the American Jewish community intersects with American politics through groups like AIPAC or the Anti-Defamation League, this is still the central message.
“As I argue in the book, in a lot of American Jewish spaces Israel has become a kind of an idol. It’s become something that is treated as something that’s almost extra-human. Something that is an object of worship rather than recognizing that it’s a human creation and that we are human beings who can do every single thing that other human beings can do. And that unless we’re vigilant, this state will be able to – can do – terrible things.”
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