Jewish scholar Peter Beinart imagines a world where Jews who support Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and Jews who are utterly opposed make accommodations with each other.
Jewish scholar Peter Beinart imagines a world where Jews who support Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and Jews who are utterly opposed make accommodations with each other.
By Jenna Price
February 11, 2025 — 11.00pm
HUMAN RIGHTS
Being Jewish After The Destruction of Gaza
Peter Beinart
Atlantic, $34.99
It’s possible your heart didn’t break when you first heard about the murderous attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023. And it’s possible your heart didn’t break when you saw endless photos, read endless stories, of the destruction of Gaza. This human suffering is immeasurable – and it has had a dramatic effect on the Jewish community across the world, tearing friends and family apart. Can you be a community that for centuries has experienced persecution and victimhood but turns away when asked to account for violence in your name?
Peter Beinart’s new book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is brilliant, painful. Brilliant because of the scholarly way Beinart approaches the complexity of the issues. Painful because it is painstakingly accurate in its observations about life, politics, justice and empathy since October 7.
Why is this book called Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza? Beinart knows we were shaken by the murders and the hostage-taking that occurred that day in Israel. But, in his Note to My Former Friend which opens the book, “I worry that you don’t grapple sufficiently with the terror of the days that followed, and preceded it, as well.”
The book binds together Beinart’s personal reflections as a Jew, a scholar, a writer, as the member of a family, to deliver a powerful message to readers on the war, on having faith, on the rise in antisemitism. It is also strongly kind, reminding us of the power of understanding. Beinart imagines a world where Jews who support Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and Jews who are utterly opposed may one day be able to make accommodations with each other. These few pages are so powerful, it is tough to resist the urge to cry. Instead, I called him and asked him to expand.
“In families where there is a disagreement, people are able to put that aside because there is an investment in the relationship,” he said. “Those who are deeply divided can try to find ways of engaging with the subject that involve empathy for one another. I try to express an understanding of the perspectives of those people who are in a different place than I am.”
And when might this reconciliation take place? “Perhaps as we move further away from the trauma of October 7,” he says.
Beinart argues antisemitism is the moral responsibility of antisemites. But he also acknowledges there is a correlation between a rise in antisemitism and Israel’s violence towards Gaza. How do we combat this? We need to make it clear not all Jews are responsible for what Israel is doing. Jews, he says, have the right to support Israel, a choice many Jews make.
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“But it’s not an inherent part of being Jewish. The Jewish community has to make the distinction between being Jewish and being a Zionist. The conflation of the two makes it hard to fight that form of antisemitism. The Zionist consensus is crumbling. Many younger Jews are rejecting it,” he says.
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Beinart does what all good scholars do: grounds his arguments in research. He cites three papers exploring the link between military operations (also known as war) conducted against Palestinians by Israel and the resultant rise in antisemitic behaviours. Three studies all found a clear correlation – including one paper by Deakin University academic Matteo Vergani and others which examined 673 incidents between October 2013 and September 2017, well before this current razing of Gaza.
He also acknowledges that accusations of antisemitism are now directed at Jews to silence dissent. First, it’s the decision by some to speak out against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. He says the expression “blood libel” is now becoming a term to silence progressive Jews who express horror at the deaths in Gaza. Beinart mentions the first use of the term in April 2024 by Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US.
“I hear it used all the time. It is one of the stupidest phrases,” Beinart says. To acknowledge that Israel is murdering Palestinians is not a libel. “There is a basis in reality,” he says.
Which makes you wonder why cricket broadcaster and writer Peter Lalor got the flick from his gig at SEN for posting on X about Palestine. Or why Antoinette Lattouf was ditched from the ABC for sharing posts from Human Rights Watch?
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That form of silencing is also used to stifle debate at universities. In the past year in Australia alone, there have been dozens of instances of universities being called upon to apologise for making students feel unsafe. Beinart is unconvinced.
“To be made unsafe is to be physically threatened or harassed,” he says. “That’s quite different to being intellectually or morally uncomfortable. Universities are supposed to be the places where you encounter ideas that are challenging. We want people to be confronted by ideas … by the opportunity to have a debate.”
I have just one quibble. Beinart tells me it’s the decision of the publishers. References are in a dump at the back, just a page number to guide you. Apparently, readers hate footnotes. Not me.
Despite that small flaw, the book is worth reading, buying, giving as a gift, for this alone: “… Jews don’t need to search for the hidden antisemitism in every nineteen-year-old anthropology major, or Lutheran grandmother, who condemns Israel because they can’t bear seeing another Palestinian child die … we don’t have to disfigure our communal institutions by suppressing open debate.”
If and when Peter Beinart comes to Australia, I hope that’s how we treat him.
Peter Beinart is Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York.
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Jenna Price is a regular columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via Twitter, Facebook or email.
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