Beinart: Being pro-Israel doesn’t mean agreeing with Jerusalem’s policies

NEW YORK — It’s been eight days since Peter Beinart caused a stir with a controversial New York Times op-ed excerpted from his latest book, “The Crisis of Zionism.”

The book, which arrives in US stores Tuesday, will cause a headache for virtually all readers who care about Israel — either because they agree with Beinart and fear for its future as a Jewish democracy, or because they object to his ardent arguments and reading of history.

Praised by Bill Clinton and former Knesset deputy speaker Naomi Chazan, the book argues that Israel and the West Bank have become “Siamese twins,” one a “flawed but genuine democracy” and the other an “ethnocracy” that is corroding the country’s founding values. “Today, it is failing,” Beinart writes of Israel, “and American Jews are helping it fail.”

A former Rhodes scholar and editor of the New Republic, Beinart spoke to the Times of Israel last week, shortly ahead of his appearance at the annual J Street Conference. The editor of Zion Square, a newly launched Daily Beast blog about Israel, Beinart briefly recalled his past visits to the country — including with his father, an architect who did urban planning in Jerusalem, and later as a summer student at Hebrew University. He then moved on to other topics, including reactions to the Times piece and his “nightmare scenario” for US-Israel relations, as well as ideas for improving Jewish education in the US, which he considers vital for American support of Israel in the future.

Your op-ed in last Monday’s New York Times called for American Jews to boycott the settlements and buy products from within Israel’s Green Line. It was widely criticized — on the right for putting the onus on Israel to end the conflict, and on the far left for creating a distinction between what you call “democratic Israel” and “nondemocratic Israel,” a reference to the West Bank. Were you hoping for a different response?

You can never predict what the response to something you write is going to be, and it’s foolish to try. The important thing is to write what you believe, and then it’s up to other people to decide how they’re going to respond.

Some of your more right-wing critics have called you a “self-hating Jew.” What does that say to you about the state of current discourse about Israel and the US?

In my experience, the fact that people can communicate and say things and expect never to have to actually confront the person face to face allows them to say things that, when you’re actually in human contact with somebody, they would never say. I usually think, when I hear people say that, that if they had any actual experience of me, they might still profoundly disagree with my views, but they’re saying this because they don’t know me. If they did, they would realize that things like that don’t make any sense.

You used to edit the famously pro-Israel New Republic, where you wrote on a wide range of topics. It seems like your focus has narrowed in the past few years to Israel and the American Jewish community. Why?

When you’re writing a book, you have to focus in on one topic. [But] I still write a  column for the Daily Beast once a week, and if you look at those columns, most of them are about American politics and foreign policy more generally. I’m going to keep doing that.

But was there something in the past few years that inspired you to write the book, and the piece that preceded it in the New York Review of Books? Or was this something you always wanted to do?

‘I think it was the emergence of this Israeli government that made me feel that our definition of “pro-Israel” had drifted very far from solidarity with the principles of Israel’s Declaration of Independence’

I think I always cared about it. I was conflicted about writing about it for a long time because I knew that it would cause conflict with people in my life, who I care about. I think it was the emergence of this Israeli government, particularly the rise of Avigdor Lieberman and the real unwillingness of the organized American Jewish community to respond . . . that made me feel that our definition of “pro-Israel” had drifted very far from solidarity with the principles of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. For me, it seemed really important to try to make an argument for that definition of being pro-Israel.

What’s your relationship like now with former New Republic owner Martin Peretz and other colleagues from the magazine?

I’d rather not speak about the New Republic, actually. It still has a very special place in my heart.

You write pretty dismissively about the Gaza disengagement in 2005, saying it was done for the wrong reasons. I see a certain similarity between this argument and people for whom Israel can never do anything right, even when it’s doing something that appears to facilitate a two-state solution or make life easier on the Palestinians. Why turn something like the Gaza disengagement into a negative?

I don’t think I was writing dismissively at all. In the book I give real credit to Ehud Barak’s offer at Camp David . . . I think I call it courageous and far-reaching, and I think I’m very complimentary of Ehud Olmert and what he did. I don’t think that [former Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal was, for Sharon, a move toward a Palestinian state on the vast majority of the West Bank. The evidence is pretty strong, including from what Sharon and his top advisers said themselves. And I think that it’s important to understand, in the context of the Gaza withdrawal – the Gaza withdrawal was not a bad thing. I think it was a good thing. But I think that the evidence is pretty strong that Sharon was not doing this in service of a move toward the creation of a Palestinian state on the majority of the West Bank. So I don’t think it was dismissive. I spent a fair amount of time trying to explain the missteps on both sides that led from the Gaza withdrawal to [Operation] Cast Lead. But I think it was important to try to explain why, on my reading of the evidence, Sharon did what he did.

One of AIPAC’s strategies over the years has been presenting support for Israel as a bipartisan, or nonpartisan, issue. In the past few years, some American Jews have abandoned that approach, and are now trying to define the issue simply as “If you’re on the right, you’re pro-Israel, and people on the left are anti-Israel.” What is your take on this strategy?

‘I really resent the claim that I’m one of these people who says that Israel hasn’t accomplished anything or that there isn’t anything to be proud of in Israel’

Let me go back to something you said before, because it bothered me: the suggestion that I don’t have anything good to say about Israel. I’m not saying you were suggesting this, [but] if you read the first chapter of my book, I talk about all of Israel’s accomplishments, all of the stresses that Israel faces, that Israel’s record is pretty good compared to the United States’ in war. I really resent the claim – not that you’re making it, but others have — that I’m one of these people who says that Israel hasn’t accomplished anything or that there isn’t anything to be proud of in Israel. To the contrary, my whole argument is that, based on Israel’s founding principles, its founding accomplishments are so precious that we need to make sure they’re not undone by the occupation. That puts a huge gulf between me and some to my left who completely disagree with my reading of Zionist and Israeli history, and say that Israel was a colonialist, imperialist, etc. [project] right from the start. I just don’t see how anyone who carefully reads the book could think that I don’t have anything good to say about Israel.

On the question about AIPAC, I think there is a process of polarization going on, and I think the driver for that polarization is fundamentally the threat to Israel’s survival as a democratic Jewish state. At the heart of the potential consensus among American Jews about Israel is the idea that this is a democratic Jewish state, and the more endangered Israel becomes as a democratic Jewish state, I think the more the American Jewish community will divide about it. So you’re right – AIPAC’s strategy has always been to maintain a bipartisan consensus. The problem is that there is no one definition of what it means to be pro-Israel. AIPAC’s has to been to support the positions of the Israeli government. I think it’s pro-Israel to act in solidarity with the principles of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which might lead you to be in conflict with some of the policies of Israel’s [current] government.

Besides boycotting the settlements and buying products from inside the Green Line, what else should American Jews be doing to help Israel achieve peace and stay true to its Declaration of Independence?

‘I really believe that it’s much harder for American Jews to have a relationship with Israel if they don’t have a strong relationship with Judaism, and I think that one of our major failures in the American Jewish community has been in education’

The book ends with two major proposals. The other is also pretty controversial, but in a different way: to support government funding of Jewish schools. I really believe that it’s much harder for American Jews to have a relationship with Israel if they don’t have a strong relationship with Judaism, and I think that one of our major failures in the American Jewish community has been in education, that we haven’t created a very strong Jewish school system, which gives people academically excellent and affordable Jewish alternatives. I think if we did, it would lead American Jews to be much more connected to Israel. I think there would still be political divisions, but I think it would lead to a much stronger connection between Israel and American Jews. It also helps to respond to this problem American Jews have of a process of assimilation, which I think is fostered by a lack of education.

Based on the trends you cite, it’s easy to picture a future in which a core of Orthodox and evangelical Americans push a very right-wing approach to the Middle East, and the rest of American Jewry basically detaches, or becomes actively opposed to Israel. Looking around now, what do you think the likelihood is of that happening?

That, for me, is the nightmare scenario that I’m writing to try to avoid. I think it would be tragic because I don’t think that that right-wing agenda would be good for Israel, and I think it would be an immeasurable loss for American Jews to lose the type of closeness that prior generations had to a greater degree.

You’re in Washington, DC, for the J Street Conference. How do you think J Street is doing in terms of carving out a role for itself among American Jews?

I think J Street’s playing for the long game, trying to build relationships in Congress and a constituency out there in Jewish America, and I think they’re doing a reasonably good job of it. It takes time to build an organization that has power and a powerful grassroots that wields power in Congress. AIPAC didn’t do it overnight. I just hope that we have enough time for the long game that J Street’s playing.

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