A year ago, in mid-July, the Pope of liberal Zionism, American Jewish journalist Peter Beinart, ditched the Jewish state, and announced in a caustic 7,000-word essay in the New York Times: “It is time for liberal Zionists to abandon the goal of Jewish-Palestinian separation and embrace the goal of Jewish-Palestinian equality.” Frankly, all of us in Israel were deeply injured, because we woke up every morning wondering what Peter Beinart is thinking about us today, but we learned to live with it. Some of us found comfort in heavy drinking, some tended to our victory gardens with a renewed sense of purpose, we managed.
But on Wednesday this week, we who still hold on to our NY Times subscriptions discovered that Peter Beinart wants us dead (America Needs to Start Telling the Truth About Israel’s Nukes). Not at once, but as soon as possible. First, he wants Israel to give up its nuclear deterrence, because, hey, it’s not fair to go after Iran for its nuclear program when Beinart’s former people also have one of those. He really wrote that, suggesting the US has been covering for Israel’s shameful nuclear capability and arguing that “this deceit undercuts America’s supposed commitment to nuclear nonproliferation, and it distorts the American debate over Iran.”
It’s very tempting at this point to say, well, what are you going to do, the man has lost several key screws in his head, just cancel your NY Times subscription and go weed your garden. But Beinart marks the direction of Jewish America, most notably Jewish Democrats, and his stunning false equivalency of the Mullahs in Tehran and the only country in the Middle East where gay men aren’t tied down to chairs and thrown off the roof, is the false equivalency of an entire new generation that actually does not know the difference.
And that’s followed, usually, with the latest anti-Semitic battle cry of Defund Israel. And since millions of Jewish Democrats read the NY Times, as do the rest of the people we used to consider educated and sane, this notion of the US having to block Israel’s nuclear program with the same zeal and vigor as it should the perpetrator of death and destruction around the world, Iran, will become popular. The Squad will add it to their daily taunts about how the Jews are behind poisoning the water that black folks drink in Michigan, and the apartheid thing, and evicting Arab squatters – and the Israeli nuclear threat against world peace. It’s coming. I know. I read Peter Beinart.
The former Jew-sympathizer Beinart actually wrote the following: “Feigning ignorance about Israeli nuclear weapons makes a mockery of America’s efforts at nonproliferation. Mr. Obama vowed to pursue a nuclear-free world. Yet to prevent public discussion of Israel’s arsenal, his administration helped squelch a United Nations conference on a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.”
This reporter is not a huge Obama fan, I still don’t understand why he needed to mess with all the Arab regimes in a manner that introduced death and destruction in so many states, started civil wars, created millions of refugees, altered the population of Europe in under a decade. Still, Israelis and Jews should be grateful to Obama for blocking the UN’s sinister attempt to deprive Israel of its ultimate means of survival.
Back in October 1973, the Syrian tanks were rushing down the Golan Heights and there was nothing to stop them. By rights, they should have continued their plunge through Israel’s north and set Haifa ablaze. It was happening, everybody knew it. But instead of rushing into Israel, the Syrian columns stopped. They stopped long enough to allow the IDF to mount a massive response and reverse the course of the war. Why did they stop? Some historians suggested they became nervous, afraid of their own success, suspicious of an Israeli trap. That was not the case. In 2010, Israel declassified archived documents that showed the country’s leadership considered using “drastic means,” a.k.a. the “doomsday option.” Conceivably, Prime Minister Golda Meir delivered this message to President Richard Nixon, who informed the Russians, who told the Syrians. This is why Israel was saved.
Now Peter Beinart wants the Biden administration to force Israel to give up its doomsday option for the sake of maintaining a fair and balanced treatment of all the players in the Middle East. This mamzer writes: “The Biden administration continues to impose punishing sanctions on Iran in an attempt to force its government to accept inspections more stringent than those required by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Meanwhile, Israel, which has never signed the N.P.T., permits no inspections at all. This hypocrisy leads many around the world to smirk when American diplomats claim to be defending the ‘rules-based order.’ It also empowers those Iranians who claim Tehran has the right to match its regional rival.”
Beinart was among the first in Jewish mainstream to suggest using US military aid to Israel as leverage in forcing Israeli territorial withdrawals. Long before Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he wrote that “it is lunacy for President Obama to give Israel a new military aid package before Netanyahu curtails settlement growth and negotiates seriously toward a Palestinian state.” Soon after, and as the 2020 primaries ensued, with greater frequency and power, this became the mantra of the liberal left.
Now Peter Beinart has launched a crusade against Israel’s very guarantee of survival. I for one expect groups like J Street to exude this intellectual pus from their body politic. This man should be boycotted.