Peter Beinart on American Jews and Israel
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Peter Beinart, who has become a leading voice of the liberal critique of Israel, had this to say in describing Jews who support AIPAC:
There is nothing wrong with the people themselves. Most AIPAC people are not ideological. They don’t see themselves as right wing. They’re mostly moderate Democrats. They just want to do something for Israel. They want to feel connected to Israel. They go to their synagogue dinner, they go to the Federation dinner, and they go to the AIPAC dinner. (Haaretz, “Is archliberal Peter Beinart good for the Jews?“)
A recurrent theme at TOO is that Diaspora Jews are engaged in hypocrisy—supporting apartheid Israel bent on ethnic cleansing and oppression of Palestinians, with a Jews-only immigration policy, while supporting America as a proposition nation with no ethnic identity, massive non-White immigration, and vilifying any manifestations of ethnic/racial identity by Whites. My image of AIPAC supporters was that they are conscious gung-ho supporters of settlers, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid—the technical term is ‘neocon’. But Beinart seems to be saying that American Jews simply have a blind spot. The hypocrisy fails to register with them. They are good liberals who will vote for Obama and just want to support Israel; they don’t pay much attention to what Israel does, or their attitudes are shaped by the AIPAC propaganda machine. In a rather gentle way, Beinart is trying to get them to see their hypocrisy, probably to no avail. Read more