peter beinart

Fighting Israel's actions without denying the driving ideology behind them is futile. That ideology is Zionism, which claims that Israel is not the country of its citizens but of all Jews. Thus, any association between Jews and Israel strengthens Zionism, including when Jews feel obligated to protest Israel as Jews .  The only effective way to defeat Zionism is for Jews to say - like Jacob Blaustein and the WJC once did - that Israel has nothing to do with the Jews and has no business being anything but a normal, democratic state, and Jews have no more reason to involve themselves as Jews in its politics any more than they do any foreign country. The more Jews distance themselves from Israel the weaker Zionism gets; the more Jews associate themselves with Israel, even by protesting its actions, the stronger Zionism gets.


Jacob Blaustein and WJC's objections to Israel claiming to be the Jewish State

Left Win Zionism and Jiewhs Identity, with Ronnie Barkan

The seemingly intractable Israel-Palestine conflict may well be moving into a new phase, one in which the long-dominant two-state solution is no longer viable or desirable to the parties involved.  How did this occur?  And what would replace it? 

Peter Beinart, noted journalist and editor-at-large of Jewish Currents magazine, recently published two pieces in the Jewish Currents and The New York Times about abandoning his own faith in the long-sought two-state solution.  Beinart now proposes a vision of equality for all in a single state. He joins Then & Now in conversation with LCHP Director and UCLA professor of Jewish history David Myers to discuss his shift in perspective and the role of history in his present-day analysis

The conversation revisits the definition and historical foundations of Zionism, the role of the Holocaust in Jewish approaches to Israel, and the related dynamics of other geopolitical conflicts. Ultimately, Beinart complicates the lines between utopianism and realism, challenging listeners to approach a longstanding conflict with new perspective.