Sunday, August 15, 2021

Peter Beinart's war on Israel - Yaakov Ahimeir

 

​ by Yaakov Ahimeir

While originally critical of Israel's settlement policy, this radical American Jewish progressive now calls for Israel's nuclear disarmament while comparing the Jewish state to Iran and opposes Israel's existence as a Jewish state.

Deep, abysmal Israel hatred runs through a recent opinion piece that appeared in The New York Times, so much so that the author actually recommends Israel cease to exist as a Jewish state and in its place, one state for both the Jews and Palestinians be established.

The Jewish American author of this piece, Peter Beinart, is one of the more prominent progressive intellectual Jews in the US and a member of the radical Left whose boundless criticism of Israel knows no limits.  At one point, he served as a senior commentator for Israel's Haaretz, although after writing only a few pieces for the newspaper, Beinart's ties with the left-wing outlet came to an end.

The Shin Bet security agency was also interested in Beinart's views when in 2018, security officials stopped Beinart and reportedly asked him about his ties to left-wing organizations as he was about to enter Israel at Ben-Gurion Airport. Beinart's detention at the airport was a serious glitch. Under then-Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister's Office apologized for the incident, which it referred to as an "administrative mistake."

Over the years, Beinart's criticism of Israel, and the settlements, in particular, has become increasingly extreme. If only it ended there. Beinart has undermined the very structure of Israel's regime. He believes Israel should be a state in which Jews and Palestinians live together in full equality. It seems this is the reason he has called for Israel to open its gates and allow the Palestinians to realize their "right of return." Just recently, he has gone even further, in his Israel criticism, so much so that his recent opinion piece, titled "America Needs to Start Telling the Truth About Israel's Nukes" and published just a few days ago in The New York Times, could be seen as comparing Israel to Iran.

Honest Reporting, a US pro-Israel media watchdog group, was highly critical of Beinart's piece, the subject of which was Iranian and Israeli nuclear policy. In his piece, Beinart called for the US and Israel to begin to reveal the truth about Israel's alleged nuclear missiles. Beinart dwarfed the Iranian threat toward Israel, making no mention of the fact that it is Iran that is threatening to wipe out Israel and the country's leaders who consistently call for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Beinart claims his minimization of the severity of the threat is aimed at promoting the nuclear disarmament of the Middle East. The difficulty, he argues, lies in the fact that Israel is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and unlike Iran, does not allow inspection of its facilities. The nuclear issue appears to be a recent addition to Beinart's Israel criticism. After all, Jewish American criticism of Israel tends to focus on the settlements as the source of all evil. For Beinart, Netanyahu's years in office provided a comfortable platform for him to write his criticism. The question is: Will the American Left Beinart represents soften its stance on Israel in the Naftali Bennett era or will it become even more radicalized?

 

Yaakov Ahimeir

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/peter-beinarts-war-on-israel/

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

No comments:

Post a Comment