The Converse Double Indemnity Victimization Ploy Peter Plays

Here is some content from Petar ("Boycott Settlements") Beinart's new blog site introduction at Zion Square:

(a) ...every day, official Jewish discourse about Israel grows more disconnected from reality, and that disconnect endangers Palestinian dignity, American security and the Jewish future.

"Palestinian dignity" equals "Jewish future"? Is that an example of his priorities?

(b) ...the Purim story doesn’t end with Haman’s plot being foiled; that’s the Disney version. It actually ends with Persia’s Jews retaliating with a massacre of their own.

Actually it ends thus

For Mordecai the Jew was next unto king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brethren; seeking the good of his people and speaking peace to all his seed. (Esther 10:3).

In other words, peace, security and even Jewish dignity were achieved.

(c) ...in official Jewish discourse, the Jewish story begins with victimhood and end with survival. On the one hand, Jews delight in our newfound power...But because the Jewish establishment still depicts Jews as victims, this celebration of power comes without the burden of responsibility. Again and again, Jewish power is described merely as a vehicle for Jewish survival. As if Jewish history means that Jews—unlike other human beings—can use power only to survive and not to destroy.

If I understand Beinart correctly - and I am presuming that he understands himself - what we have here is the The Converse Double Indemnity Victimization Ploy. That's a sort of 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation.

Beinart knows Jews were and can be victims. But by not becoming victims and/or preventing that status, Jews need wield power. In wielding power, we, Beinart claims, do but victimize "Palestinians", or as I prefer, Arabs of the former territories of the Mandate for Palestine. Arabs can claim victimhood but, pardon the phrase, God help the Jews if they do they same.

(d) ... I believe that such a [Jewish] state can only be achieved through a new commitment to full citizenship for those Palestinians who live within the green line, and through the creation of a Palestinian state beyond it.

Will these "full citizens" who are, by the way, Arabs, not Palestinians, pay full taxes? Will they do full national service?

...And how can Jewish leaders declare it impermissible to question Israel’s future as a Jewish state when the very settlement policies they support are erasing the green line and turning Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into one country in which Palestinians will soon outnumber Jews?

That demographic demonology has been shown to be far less threatening than suggested. The numbers are there to be dissected and analyzed and they do not support Beinart's thesis.

Beinart predicates his theorizing on an imaginatory framing of the debate which is far from reality, all the while claiming to be representing better than the American Jewish establishment the reality that is.

What a ploy.

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