Progressives Against Israel

Progressives Against Israel

By

Leonard Zwelling

Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) is a professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also the editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times. The above editorial was on the Times website on March 23.

Beinhart describes a slowly developing split in the American Jewish community that has accelerated since October 7, 2023 and the Hamas raid on Israel followed by the massive destruction delivered by Israel in Gaza.

This is a long essay but the gist is simple. Traditionally, American Jews have been liberal politically, proponents of a host of left wing causes from civil rights, to gay rights, to abortion rights. They have also been pro-Zionist. American Jews have historically been the strongest supporters of

Israel outside of Israel itself. This took a marked uptick after the Six Day War in 1967 when Zionist fervor and Jewish pride meshed in great enthusiasm for the nineteen-year-old country. I vividly remember a cartoon of an Israeli tank and my tape recorder playing the Israeli national anthem outside the ZBT fraternity house at Duke in autumn of 1967. After 3000 years, we were back, baby!

Slowly, as my generation of Baby Boomers aged and were replaced in the liberal ranks by the Gen Xers, the Gen Yers, the Gen Zers, and the Millennials, the feelings toward Israel changed. A lot of that change was co-temporal with Israel’s development from a small defense-challenged nation to an “oppressor” nation in the eyes of the liberal left. Israel has the strongest army in the Middle East and the strongest economy. It is the only democracy in the area as well and it is a strong ally of the United States.

Now many young American Jews extol the rights of the Palestinians to a land that they never had as a country in the first place. On multiple occasions, the Israeli Jews offered the Arabs a country next to theirs. The Palestinian leadership never “missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

In the meantime, the Israeli Jews weathered two intifadas. The Palestinian Arabs also struggle without a state and without much hope. I have visited the West Bank several times. You know immediately when you cross the border, even between Jewish and Arab neighborhoods in Hebron. The Jewish areas are well-developed. The Arab areas less so, some even bordering on Third World circumstances as in the refugee camp in Ramallah that we saw in July of last year.

According to Mr. Beinhart, as an American Jew I have to make a choice between supporting Israel and being a card-carrying liberal.

That’s easy. I’m no liberal and I am a enthusiastic Zionist having travelled to the Holyland five times and seen the Israeli miracle. But, this does not mean I am without concern for the Arabs of Israel (about 2 million) who still feel like second class citizens often or the Arabs of the 1967 captured territory in the West Bank and Gaza who are without a country and cannot vote and really have no rights at all.

That Mr. Netanyahu proposes to keep things pretty much as they are is untenable to any thinking person. Either Israel has to become one country that is no longer a Jewish state or it remains a Jewish democracy and an Arab state is carved out of the West Bank and Gaza. Neither can occur with the current leadership in Israel or in Ramallah.

So, if the United States wants to propose a way to solve that problem, I’m all ears. I don’t see it happening as long as Netanyahu and Abbas are still alive and in power. I also think this becomes even less likely if Mr. Trump is elected because his support from the Jews is very pro-Israel and more Zionist American Jews are leaving the Democratic Party all the time. Count me as one of them.

This is a really awful situation, but the crisis in Ireland was eventually solved. This one can be too. In fact, everyone knows the solution. Two countries for two peoples. No Hamas. New leadership in Israel. New leadership for the Palestinian Authority. Now if saying it could make it so.