Israel Matzav

Time to stop enriching Peter Beinart

Richard Baehr is onto something.

Peter Beinart has taken the lessons of Professors Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer to heart. The two professors, one of whom taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and the other at the University of Chicago, were respected in their field, but unknown to the general population. As soon as they took on Israel and its supporters in the U.S. with their essay on the Israel Lobby in 2006, they became folk heroes to the Left and the assorted collection of Israel haters in the U.S., Europe and the Arab world.

Walt and Mearsheimer’s paper in the London Review of Books, (and later their book on the same subject) was poorly argued, poorly researched, and above all fundamentally wrong in its conclusions. (In just one example, despite the authors’ lame attempt to argue otherwise, neither Israel nor its supporters in the U.S. drove the U.S to war with Iraq.)

But none of this had any impact on the authors’ newfound notoriety. Suddenly, they were in demand at more than just dull political science conventions. They had become players. They commanded much higher speaking fees. They earned nice advances and royalties for their book. Getting the imprimatur of two icons of academia for an anti-Israel screed is a big deal.

At universities, where Israel is the least favored nation on the planet and is viewed as the source of much of what is wrong with the world, to have such distinguished professors from elite institutions make the anti-Israel case, instead of members of radical Palestinian or Muslim groups, was like manna from heaven.

Peter Beinart was one of many young editors to circulate through the New Republic in the past 20 years. After leaving the journal, his career seemed to languish a bit and his commentary did not get anyone very excited (nor did it get him noticed very much). He supported the war in Iraq in 2003, and at that point, seemed to fit pretty comfortably into the category of center-left writers who, after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, supported a more muscular U.S. foreign policy.

Then, in early 2010 , Beinart chose to follow the Walt-Mearsheimer model. In an article in the New York Review of Books, he bemoaned the loss of support (and even hostility) for Israel among young educated Jews, and decided that his sympathies were with this camp of Jews who had become alienated from Israel. Beinart argued that future generations of American Jews would be lost to Israel unless it stopped the settlements and agreed to a two-state solution that would include self-determination for the Palestinians.

Baehr goes on to do a great job of tearing Beinart to shreds - read the whole thing.

On Sunday, Beinart penned an article in the New York Times, which can be summed up in one sentence: Israel must be destroyed to save it. Just about every right-wing, right thinking pro-Israel blogger you can think of felt the need to respond, all in opposition. Except yours truly. (There's a list here; I'm linked from it, but only because my friend Soccer Dad discussed it in Sunday's Media Sampler).

Maybe it's because I live in Israel, and only feel the debate in the US via media accounts, but my feeling is that Beinart is being blown out of proportion. Ron Kampeas - hardly a supporter of the complete State of Israel (or what's often referred to in the media as 'greater Israel') - writes that despite all the hullabaloo surrounding Beinart, there are almost no takers for his proposal. Even from the 'Zionist Left.'

When I saw Baehr's column, it resonated with me. Beinart is attempting to become a younger version of Walt and Mearsheimer with a big difference: He's Jewish (and in fact, I saw somewhere that he prays in an Orthodox synagogue, which means he's identifiably Jewish). That has the potential to make him even more of a darling with the 'pro-Israel Left' than his academic ancestors. He could get richer than they have become by speaking against the Jewish state.

Unfortunately, we Jews have more than enough experience with those of our own who attempt to advance their own success on the backs of the community. Raphael Magarnik - who writes for Beinart's 'Zion Square' blog (which, by the way, cannot even use the domain name 'Zion Square' because someone else owns it - heh) - actually got one thing right:

One of Zion Square's writers, Raphael Magarik, chided those who said Jews boycotting Jews should be out of bounds, and noted that such actions have been commonplace throughout Jewish history.

“To cut from our playbook the best tactic Jews have for censuring other Jews, a tactic that dates at least to the Talmud and has as its targets the likes of Leon Trotsky, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, and Baruch Spinoza -- well, that’s what I call painful and unnatural,” he wrote.

Remember the old joke about whether anyone hears when a bear relieves itself in the woods? If Peter Beinart writes an article, and no one responds to it, will anyone listen? We ought to be boycotting Beinart and not building him up. I feel no need to answer everything he writes.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: BDS, john Mearsheimer, Peter Beinart, Stephen Walt

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:52 AM