Responding to Peter Beinart's arguments

Sar Shalom

There have been many deservedly harsh reactions to Peter Beinart's column several weeks ago in the New York Times arguing to turn Israel into a binational state. Some of those attacks on Beinart's conclusions have turned into attacks on Beinart himself. However, understated in those responses (one exception is Elder's response to Beinart's assertion that Palestinians are excluded from the national dialog, but even that does not get at Beinart's case for why the Palestinians deserve to be heard) is any rebuttal to Beinart's case for why a binational state is an appropriate response. While Beinart's column in the Times does not provide much in the way of material to assess what his case is, his appearance on the Times podcast "The Argument" does provide such material.

First some background. "The Argument" is a joint liberal, conservative, moderate discussion series. The liberal position is represented by Michelle Goldberg, the conservative position by Ross Douthat, and the moderate position was originally represented by David Leonhart and is currently represented by Frank Bruni. For Beinart's appearance, Bruni stepped aside leaving Goldberg and Douthat to discuss Beinart's proposal with him.

Attacking Beinart's conclusion without refuting his arguments risks falling into the trap of presenting our case as one of "The nations of the world, including many of the Arab/Muslim nations, have brutally mistreated their Jews over the centuries. This gives us the right to do to the Palestinians what was done to us." Refuting Beinart's arguments would make the case that justifying Israel's actions does not depend on that premise. In order to refute those arguments, it is first necessary to identify them. For that reason, I list them here roughly in the order that I identified them in the transcript of Beinart's appearance. Unless otherwise noted, points listed were made by Beinart.

• Israel is expanding settlements into land that the Palestinians need to build a separate state
• Prior to the 1940s, Zionism did not focus on achieving an independent Jewish state, rather would have been content with a Jewish homeland that would have been a refuge for Jewish people around the world.
• If we can escape the mindset of trauma and see the Palestinians as normal human beings “whose aspirations are not that different from most other peoples,” we will see that equality is not such an existential threat.
• “A fair reading of Palestinian history over the last 100 years suggests that the Palestinian national movement has not been defined by a kind of genocidal intent towards Jews”
• Israel is already a binational state. The only question going forward is whether Israel will be a binational state in which the bulk of one people is disenfranchised or one in which all subjects have a voice in the government.
• White South Africans didn’t imagine prior to 1994 that they could live safely under a government that gave an equal voice to black citizens.
• Palestinian desire to return to homes in internationally recognized Israel.
• Why is it that American Jews see reading from a prayer book about returning to a place we left 2,000 years ago as perfectly normal but dismiss the desire of those who wish to return to a place they left less than 100 years ago.
• 20% of Israel’s population are Palestinian who will never feel like equal citizens in a Jewish state.
• Douthat: Jews have been oppressed and expelled from all parts of the world, including the surrounding Middle Eastern nations. The experience of Christians in the surrounding nations does not inspire confidence. Beinart: We must avoid the danger of ethnic/religious essentialism. Douthat: [No response]
• The result of Israel’s current path will be intifadah after intifadah. Political science research teaches us that oppression breeds the violence that we see.
• Israel was founded on an act of mass population expulsion in 1947 and 1948.
• Christians are leaving Israel-Palestine as much as they are leaving other Middle Eastern states because Christian Palestinians face the same oppression as Muslim Palestinians.
• The Joint List is the Left in Israel today.
• The Palestinian Authority keeps Israel’s cost of occupation low by acting as Israel’s subcontractor.
• First spent time with Palestinians in the early 2000s and was ashamed of what a society he felt so close to was doing to them.
• Palestinians have no recourse because they are not citizens.
• Beinart and Goldberg: American Jews should see the Palestinians’ situation firsthand for themselves.
• Goldberg: Anti-Zionist speech is uniquely repressed suppressed, such as government sanction against the BDS movement. Beinart: When we talk about cancel-culture, we have to start in our own house.

Now to start to respond to those arguments.

• Israel is expanding settlements into land that the Palestinians need to build a separate state

First, the footprint of land taken up by the settlements has not been expanding. Second, the land currently used by those settlements may or may not be necessary for the Palestinians to build a state. The Palestinians have not engaged in much effort to build a state in what has been allocated to them in prior agreements. Their actions are what one would expect their objective was to remove as much land as possible from Jewish control using their lack of a state as justification. If they were to make good faith efforts to build a state on Areas A and B and come up short, that argument would be worth discussing.

• Prior to the 1940s, Zionism did not focus on achieving an independent Jewish state, rather would have been content with a Jewish homeland that would have been a refuge for Jewish people around the world.

Completely irrelevant to our current situation.

• If we can escape the mindset of trauma and see the Palestinians as normal human beings “whose aspirations are not that different from most other peoples,” we will see that equality is not such an existential threat.
• “A fair reading of Palestinian history over the last 100 years suggests that the Palestinian national movement has not been defined by a kind of genocidal intent towards Jews”

To what history of the Palestinian national movement is Beinart referring? Does the Mufti occur in Beinart's Palestinian history? How does Beinart explain Jews sitting down at the Western Wall triggering the Palestinians to go on a rampage in 1929? Does Beinart's Palestinian history include marches in the 1920's where they chanted “Filastin bladna w’al yahud klabna [Palestine is our land and the Jew is our dog?”

Remaining points to be covered in a future post.