Peter Beinart: Before and After

 Peter Beinart tweeted:

Tonight, I’m going to speak at Tel Aviv University. I know many people who I respect will think this was the wrong decision given that Israel—as widely recognized by experts on international law—practices not only apartheid but genocide. I support full equality for Israel’s Palestinian citizens, an end to the occupation and the right of Palestinian refugees to return. I support many forms of boycott, divestment and sanction against Israel and Israeli institutions. I have repeatedly advocated implementing the Leahy Law, which would radically restrict—if not end—US arms sales to Israel. I support the European Union ending its free trade agreement with Israel. I support ending Israeli participation in sports and cultural arenas like FIFA and Eurovision. I support these things because I don’t believe that Israel will end its oppression of the Palestinian people and move towards equality under the law and historical justice without outside pressure. But I believe there is value in speaking to Israelis about Israel’s crimes. I have spent much of my adult life speaking to Jews about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In that effort, I have conducted public discussions with many people whose views I consider immoral and spoken at many institutions that are based on principles with which I profoundly disagree. These include institutions like Tel Aviv University that are in various ways complicit in Israeli oppression. I do so because I want to reach Jews who disagree with me—because I believe that by trying to convince Jews to rethink their support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, I can contribute, in some very small way, to the struggle for freedom and justice. I don’t have many opportunities to speak to Israelis. As it is, right-wing Israeli organizations have pressured Tel Aviv University to cancel my talk. I felt I should take advantage of this opportunity to say in Israel what I’ve been saying elsewhere for the last two years. I know many people I admire will disagree with this logic. But it stems from my desire to challenge Jewish supremacy and see the end of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.

and then tweeted:

By speaking earlier this week at Tel Aviv University, I made a serious mistake. In the past, when formulating my views about Israel-Palestine, I’ve sought out Palestinian friends and interlocutors and listened carefully to their views. In this case, I did not. I really wanted to speak to Israelis. In the US, I’ve cultivated conversations with Jews with whom I strongly disagree, both to listen and in hopes of changing their minds. Over the horrifying last two years, I’ve hoped for more conversations with Israelis, to explain why I believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and why I believe Jewish supremacy is fundamentally wrong. My motivation for giving the talk wasn’t financial; I didn’t receive an honorarium. I wanted to say certain things to an Israeli audience. Speaking at Tel Aviv University seemed to offer that chance. I let my desire for that conversation override my solidarity with Palestinians, who in the face of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide have asked the world boycott Israeli institutions that are complicit in their oppression. As Noura Erakat and others have pointed out, there are ways for me to talk to Israelis without violating BDS guidelines and undermining a collective effort against oppression. I could have had the exchange I desired while respecting a non-violent movement based on human rights and international law. Had I listened more to Palestinians, I would have realized that earlier. It’s embarrassing to admit such a serious mistake. I dearly wish I had not made this one, which has caused particular harm because international pressure is crucial to ensuring Palestinian freedom. This was a failure of judgment. I am sorry.

That reminded me of a Soviet show trial confession

^

UPDATE:

Read this blog post.

And this one.

^

Peter Beinart Goes 'Supreme'

Peter Beinart uploaded a short clip on Instagram. Its message:

Of course, that is a sleight-of-words exercise.

He has substituted "supremacy" for "political sovereignty". He then suggests that a Jewish state is inherently wrong in that it asserts its sovereignty over non-Jews.

But what is truly invidious is that he knows well that he is employing a term that resonates as racist, such as "white supremacist".

Aside from being wrong, what he is encouraging is violence directed at Israelis and, as we have seen since October 2023, the pro-Palestine forces do not make any distinction between Israeli and Jews and go about physically assaulting Jews, damaging Jewish property and institutions and seeking to commit psychological injury to Jews for being Jews. In their logic, all Jews must be 'Zionists'.

Of course, that destroys Beinart's thesis which is that Jews should not be permitted to run a political state. But to explain to him that, at least in the modern era, a main impetetus for Zionism was antisemitism - in addition to the 2000-year old vision of a return to Zion - and that today's antisemitism simply justifies the right of Jews to maintain a state, would be beyond his intellectual grasp.

And why?

Because Beinart's prejudices and political orientation override any rational thinking in which he may engage.

^

My Exchange with NYRB's Editor Following a Beinart Piece

After I read something Peter Beinart published at the New York Review of Books back at the end of January, I initiated corrspondence with the NYRB by first submitting a short letter-to-the-editor:

From: Yisrael Medad 
Sent: Sunday, January 31, 2021 9:02 AM
To: Editor 
Subject: Letter for Publication

Peter Beinart asserts that "Those Palestinians who can [vote in Israeli national elections] —the 'Arab Israelis' who hold Israeli citizenship—mostly vote for Arab parties that are, by custom, barred from Israel’s coalition governments" (What the Lincoln Project Gets WrongAbout Israel-Palestine, NYRB, Jan. 27). That assertion needs to be corrected.

Arabs have been enfranchised to cast their ballots in Israel's elections since 1949. In fact, the parties that traditionally received the most votes usually were Communist. That Israel, even until today, tolerates Communist parties supported mainly by the Arab minority, as well as pan-Arab nationalist factions, is a testament to its vibrant democracy. Moreover, these parties are not so much "barred" as not invited to join due to their principled ideological position which is anti-Zionist. It is not a racist policy as Arabs, as well as Druze, have served in government as ministers and deputy-ministers when members of other parties. Members of these anti-Zionist parties have been member of the Knesset Presidium.

 The reply within two days:

February 2

Dear Yisrael

Thanks for this communication, but we do not believe there is any need to correct Beinart’s assertion. Further, I am afraid you are misinformed.

First, one of two leading parties in the Arab Joint List is Hadash, which supports a two-state solution and is thus, by definition, not anti-Zionist. Second, many governing coalitions in Israel in the past have included non-Zionist ultra-orthodox parties representing, in some cases, Jews who do not recognize the state of Israel. In short, it is a canard that Arab parties are not admitted to coalition governments of Israel because they do not pass some ideological test of Zionism. The salient political fact is simply this: that no Israeli Jewish politician is willing to govern in coalition with the elected representatives of Arab citizens of Israel.

In other words, Beinart's assertion was completely correct, and the counter-assertion is incorrect.

Best wishes, 

Matt Seaton

Editor, nybooks.com

My retort:

February 2

Dear Matt,

I think you have been misinformed.

Hadash is Communist and thus, by definition, anti-Zionist. It may recognize Israel as a state but that is not the same.

The Joint List comprises, as you surely know, four parties. "Leading" or not is an irrelevancy. But just as an aside, if the Ra'am Party pulls out, according to tonight's news, it will drop from 15 to 9 so how can one even judge what "leading" means?

As for the ultra-Orthodox parties, they define themselves as Zionist but claim their Zionism is Torah-based, whatever that means. Most actually do get to serve in the IDF in one form or another, something Arabs, the vast majority anyway, are loath to do. They even refuse in the main (I am sorry but exact figures are not at my fingertips) to do national service.

Moreover, to assert that "no Israeli Jewish politician is willing to govern in coalition with the elected representatives of Arab citizens of Israel" is a "salient political fact" is wrong as I pointed out that Arabs, elected in Arab lists as well as Jewish lists have served in coalitions.

I am sorry for disputing this so strongly but my suspicion is that you were provided that information and the person that did it either is ignorant or is purposely beclouding the issue.

As I have had letters previously published in the NYRB, I find it odd not to take a chance on me by publishing my letter, it isn't that long at all, and have Peter Beinart respond, you know, an element of open debate in his own name.

I trust your sense of 'fair play' would actually work in my favor.

Thank you for your reconsideration.

Yisrael

On February 11, I checked the latest issue and then wrote the following:

I see the new issue has appeared. My letter is not visible.

Can I assume my letter will not ever be published? Or is Peter still composing a response?

Yisrael

And the conclusion is:

Hi Yisrael

I'm afraid we don't publish letters in response to online-only pieces, unless the matter at dispute rises to the level of meriting a full Exchange between a correspondent and the author, and this didn't.

Best wishes, Matt

So, I made a pitch:

From: Yisrael Medad 

Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2021 2:41 PM
To: Matt Seaton  Subject: Re: Fw: Letter for Publication

 

Thanks.

Would submitting a piece to the online edition be a possibility for me then?

And the answer was:

Thu, Feb 11, 2021 at 9:44 PM Matt Seaton wrote:

Of course, you may submit. But I would advise you against offering a right-to-reply type response piece to the Beinart; it's not something we do, and we simply would have to turn that down flat.

I inquired as to how many words and was informed "optimal length for us is 1500-2500w".

On February 18, I submitted the following:

Is It To Be Competing Narratives or Narrative Cancelling?

We are now in an era, 45 years on since the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 was adopted determining “that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination" and 30 years since it was rescinded, when presumed intellectual conversation can call for the dismantling of the Zionist project, openly suggest in one of America’s leading newspapers there is no need that a Jewish ‘home’ be a Jewish state in that it be replaced by an entity called “Israel-Palestine”, a senior level church officer can echo a New Testament blood curse, applying it to Israel and a Congresswoman can retweet a meme that Israel be eliminated by applying to it borders that delineate another state if afterwards in was deleted. As the conversation gets less intellectual and progressively ideological, even theological, the demands made in relation to Israel worsen in tone, become malefic and eventually, generate a sense of freedom for acts of illegality and eventually terror. This is not marginalization but cancellation.

It is not that anti-Zionism has never been a legitimate topic of debate. Of course it has. Indeed, a very small minority of fanatic obscurantist Jews, inheritors of the Satmar Hungarian rejection of all human efforts to re-establish a Jewish state, are quite active and find solace in misrepresented Talmudic sources. There are Jews who support and promote all forms of national identity, including one termed Arab Palestinian, but deny the same to those, Jews and non-Jews, who wish to see Israel continue to exist and flourish. There are anti-nationalist Jews steeped in progressive or communist or socialist theories who cannot bring themselves to identify with Zionism.

A century ago, some 300 American Reform Rabbis attempted, in a letter published in the New York Times, to abort President Woodrow Wilson’s approval of Palestine becoming reconstituted as the historic Jewish national home. The American Council for Judaism took up the anti-Zionist baton following the 1937 Reform Judaism’s decision rejection of the same. The Jewish Bund prided in its anti-Zionism. The ultra-Orthodox Agudah preferred to see themselves as the true Zionists, refusing to acknowledge full legitimacy of the World Zionist Organization even while eventually forming an awkward coalition with it.

These days, we witness the endeavours of a plethora of Jewish anti-Zionist groups, including the backing of a sham Twitter account of a long-dead anti-Zionist Rabbi, but it need be made clear that anti-Zionism, once a position of theoretical debate, is an historical fossil. At this time, with Israel's establishment and continued flourishing, if actively advanced, it is no longer a philosophical matter but one of eliminationist ideology (as illustrated by a Congresswoman’s T-shirt) that promotes staticide, that is the destruction of a state and endangering lives of upwards of 9 million humans as well as millions of Jews who would (not might) need to flee to it due to an upsurge in anti-Semitism. An op-ed recently published at the New York Times argues against sanctions that are in place against Iran, a state sponsoring regional and even global terror that also views a need to eliminate Zionist Israel, even through an act of legislature, yet its author supports sanctions on Israel due to Jews residing in Jerusalem suburbs, Hebron, the burial place of the Jewish people’s patriarchs and matriarchs or my community village, Shiloh, where scientific archaeological excavations conducted over a century by Danes, British, Israelis and Americans, have proven the Biblical narrative.

Moreover, in the immediate sense, persons and institutions who might also be non-Israeli such as Jewish and non-Jewish students who do support Israel, find themselves under verbal, psychological and even physical attack on campuses not only from fellow students or off-campus radicals but their lecturers as well. Already in 1990, pro-Palestinian promoters were aware of the need for progressive political support even as the messaging - “they [Jewish Americans] control Capitol Hill…they have big money and fear on their side” (at 2:38-43 in the clip) – is blatantly adoptive of anti-Semitic memes. We have now reached the point when the moderator of an international affairs commission of a Christian fellowship of 350 churches from more than 110 countries, representing over 500 million Christians worldwide stated, falsely, that people are killed every day as a result of the Israel-Palestinian conflict adding “the blood of the people of Palestine will be sought from” Israel’s supporters thus employing a meme of classic anti-Semitism.

Bret Stephens, who thinks that hard-core anti-Zionism is indeed a form of anti-Semitism, penned, “If anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and racist language is intolerable…might we someday forbid not only advocacy of anti-Zionist ideas, but even refuse to allow them to be discussed?” In connection with what can and what cannot be discussed, I wish to take Stephens question one step further and ask: if the negation of a people’s national identity and aspirations is legitimate, indeed, if it is acceptable to even refuse to acknowledge that an ethnic community also possesses national characteristics – as does anti-Zionism – cannot another people’s claim to national identity undergo scrutiny, debate and even negation?

As an example, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Ernest Bevin, himself quite unsympathetic to the idea of a Jewish state, nevertheless had no compunction, in his words in the House of Commons on 18^th February, 1947, to admit that “the Arabs...are therefore unwilling to contemplate further Jewish immigration into Palestine. They are equally opposed to the creation of a Jewish State in any part of Palestine”. Is it possible to express that point of view today, especially as regards the position of Hamas?

Can one point out that the term “historic Palestine”, geographically, always encompassed the territory that Jordan occupies? Can one point out the Jordan was the occupier of the West Bank until 1967? Can one note that the term “West Bank” was created only in April 1950 when Jordan annexed that area? Can it be recalled that in the United Nations Partition proposal of November 29, 1947, when delineating the borders between the Arab State and the Jewish State, a recommendation that was dashed when Arab-initiated violence broke out, never employed the then-unknown term “West Bank” but rather “Judea” and “Samaria”?

Is it possible to recollect that between 1920-1948, a Jewish population of several thousands who had been, in part, residing in Judea and Samaria for centuries, in Hebron, Gaza, Nablus and Jerusalem’s Old City and environs, as well as newer communities in the Etzion Bloc and on the shore of the Dead Sea, were ethnically cleansed in a terror campaign instigated and led by the most senior Islamic cleric in the country, a campaign which included murder, rape, burnings and pillaging?

Is it allowed to point to the uniqueness of UNRWA, the United Nations agency that provides humanitarian care for Arab refugees from Mandate Palestine? That all the world’s millions of refugees have one agency and the relatively few from Palestine have another? That to have been a “refugee” all one needed was to have lived in Mandate Palestine for but two years previous to May 1948? That the status of refugee is applied solely to the descendants of males and also includes adopted children? That the true figure of actual refugees is less than 200,000 according to a US State Department July 2018 report?

Is it permissible to know what topics are mentionable and what are to be banished from all mention? And why? Are there any agreed upon definitions of such? Or is but one narrative the accepted framework while the other is denounced and deprecated?

Are acts of destruction committed by Arabs at locations of Jewish legacy sites, such as was found after the 1967 war on the Mount of Olives and over 30 synagogues in Jerusalem’s Old City discussable? Hasmonean Palaces outside of Jericho, additional archaeological sites or at the Temple Mount when a new, underground mosque was carved out of Solomon’s Stables? Moreover, is the claim of a 10,000 year old Natufian origin of the contemporary Arabs, made by the late Saeb Erekat, open for discussion or to do so would be causing major micro-aggressions?

If one is to hurl a charge of “illegal occupation”, is it permissible to bring up the 19-year occupation and annexation of Jordan or does one simply accept the proffered explanation that that occupation was entirely legal in that the Arabs of Palestine requested to be ruled by Abdullah I, even if the Mufti Al-Husseini had the monarch assassinated in 1951? When is a narrative a genuine reflection of history and when is it but a cover-up for bad politics or even plain revisionist history?

Zionism is, the narrative has it, a settler-colonial enterprise. But did not the Arabs come out of the Arabian Peninsula in the first third of the seventh century and, in a wave of conquest, subjugation and occupation, overrun many lands including, in 638 CE, the Land of Israel, ruled by the Persians who had conquered it in 614 CE from the Byzantine Empire, the continuation of the Roman Empire that had conquered Judea in 135 CE and altering its name to Palestina? What is a narrative, what is propaganda and what is the historical truth?

Having long abandoned anti-Zionism, Isaac Deutscher admitted in 1954 that that anti-Zionism “was based on a confidence in the European labour movement, or, more broadly, a confidence in European society and civilisation which that society and civilisation have not justified.” Does there exist among too many contemporary Jewish progressives a similar presumption of over-confidence? Or does their psychological and ideological opposition to the concept of Jewish national identity overcome rational incisiveness to what is actually occurring around them?

The more, it would appear, Israel strengthens its position including diplomatic successes with Arab Islamic states, significant economic advances and major contributions to the rest of the world in the fields of science, health, agriculture, engineering and the like, the more the verbal abuse increases. Bristol University professor David Miller raged, “It's not enough to say Zionism is racism, Israel is a settler colonial society...The aim of this is…to end Zionism as a functioning ideology of the word.” Jews, who have long suffered from racist ideologies of Aryan and White supremacism, have now been turned into people who benefit from a ‘white privilege’ while the majority of Israel’s population is basically brown and black and Israelis are out-and-out “white supremacists”. Furthermore, university students are being told “Zionism isn’t about self-determination, it’s about Jewish supremacy” and that “white supremacy [equates] with Jewish supremacy.” This is not solely verbal abuse but incitement to violence. It is the new form of the oldest hate, now practiced by so-called progressive leftists.

Israel is not a state à condition que. It is a state, as the 50-member League of Nations decided in 1922, that once existed and need be reconstituted, based on the historical connection of the Jewish people with the territory of their national home. Two fundamental rights were recognized for the Jews in their Land of Israel: the facilitation of Jewish immigration and the encouragement of “close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands”. For sure, the rights and position of other sections of the population should not be prejudiced but those rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine were defined as “civil and religious”, not national nor political. Simply, Israel is.

No longer can there be suppression of discussion. No longer improper application of academic terminology. No longer ignoring the problems with the rival people claiming a more supreme right to the territory on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The debate over Zionism and the activities intended to oppose Israel as the Zionist state, the result of a 3,000-year old national identity legacy of the Jewish people, has evolved into a violent one, whether on campus or at work places. It does not solely target “Zionists” but seeks to highlight Jews as Jews, which, incidentally, proves, if backhandedly, that Zionism is indeed authentic Judaism.

Yisrael Medad is Research Fellow at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, resides in Shiloh and comments on political, cultural and media affairs.

But the response was:

Hi Yisrael

Thanks for a look at this submission. I'm afraid I will have to decline it as we already have a piece assigned and in the pipeline about Hebron and the related political, territorial, and archaeological disputes, and this would clash too much with that. I hope you are able to find the right platform for your piece.

Best wishes,

Matt

All I could do is respond:

Editorial discretion is a wonderful tool.

I look forward to see how much I clash.

Yisrael

And the article that did eventually appear in the issue of March 19 is

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

Nathan Thrall

One man’s quest to find his son lays bare the reality of Palestinian life under Israeli rule.

^

Jabotinsky - a la Beinart

A shortened version of this article appears

in the Summer edition of Fathom Journal

___________________

In his recent infamous Jewish Currents essay, Peter Beinart, seeking to minimize the element of the demand for a Jewish state amongst Zionist lumanaries, includes this snippet as reflecting the thinking of Ze’ev Jabotinsky as regards the requirement for Jewish statehood:

As Jabotinsky explained in 1909, “The full pathos of our ideal was never focused on sovereignty, but rather on the idea of a territory, a compact Jewish society in one continuous space . . . not a Jewish state but a Jewish collective life.” 

The original Russian text

with thanks to Ira of the Jabotinsky Institute

That excerpt, which he - or rather one of the three research assistants he employed – found in an article by Dmitry Shumsky, would be fairly surprising for those familiar with the Jabotinsky who demanded a Jewish State. Beinart uses it to buttress his agreement with Shumsky that “the demand for a Jewish state did not define Zionism until the 1940s”.(Shumsky, who promotes a historic revisionism focused on "nonstatist Zionism", is problematic and as Alan Arkush notes: "evidence presented by Shumsky the historian seems to be tailored to substantiating the thinking of Shumsky the polemicist"). He could have also referred to a 1918 booklet entitled ‘The Jewish Nation’ in which Jabotinsky proposed a formulation of an administrative government in Palestine, writing,

“our friends as well as enemies…think that we claim an independent Jewish State – which of course, we do not, and most emphatically not … . A “Jewish state” is so premature”.

But, as is obvious, from the wording, Jabotinsky did not reject a Jewish state in principle but rather was expressing his judgment that the time and conditions were not ripe for a declaration of independence. He could have been echoing how David Lloyd George explained the British thinking behind the Balfour Declaration to the Peel Commission in 1937:

when the time arrived for according representative institutions to Palestine, if the Jews had meanwhile responded to the opportunity afforded them by the idea of a National Home and had become a definite majority of the inhabitants, then Palestine would thus become a Jewish Commonwealth.’ 

Statehood surely and always defined Zionism while less-than-statehood defined their pragmatic practical politics to attain that goal.

Without specifically referencing the 1942 decision taken at the Biltmore Hotel Conference, Beinart is suggesting that it was only the Holocaust that tipped the scales, forcing Zionists to pursue statehood rather than other paradigms as here:

“The belief that Jews in the land of Israel risk genocide without a Jewish state is central to what it means to be a Zionist today.”

I would suggest, if anything, what galvanized a policy change, not a fundamental political alteration, was the reneging of the British government in its 1939 White Paper and its volte face from the idea of a Jewish state, or homeland, or commonwealth.

He depends on Jabotinsky further on to support his outlook that not only was the Holocaust the catalyst to demand a state but that Arab violence was not comparable to Nazi Holocaust activity and quotes from Jabotinsky’s 1923 Iron Wall article:

“prominent pre-state Zionists themselves depicted Palestinian resistance not as genocidal but as understandable. ‘Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized,’ wrote the hawkish Jabotinsky in 1923. ‘That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing’.”

But in the JTA 1940 obituary of Jabotinsky, we read:

Addressing a convention of the New Zionist Organization in Prague two years ago, Jabotinsky declared that the whole of Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan, had to become an independent Jewish State which would then decide its future connection with Britain.

These are two examples of what I have previously noted is Beinart’s hallmark: arguing with Beinart is frustrating because almost every source to which he refers is corrupted, is incomplete, lacks background and, in addition, he has a sophistic method of argumentation. As Daniel Gordis has observed, Beinart displays “an astonishing array of sleights of hand and misrepresentations” and his ‘piece [is] so intellectually dishonest—and manipulative.” (And CAMERA deals with Beinart corrupting more recent history.)

To return to the quotation from 1909, Jabotinsky’s article from which those words are extracted appeared in seven parts from mid-January to mid-March 1909. In order to grasp the context, one need recall that after several years of struggle, the Young Turks succeeded on July 24, 1908 in forcing Abdul Hamid to restore the constitution. They were nationalists and for all intents and purpose, their rule was nigh martial. Any attempt to propagandize in Turkey for an independent Jewish state would have been the end of Zionism in Turkey in those existing circumstances. 

Jabotinsky had been in Constantinople since 1908. He had been commissioned by a St. Petersburg newspaper to cover the revolution in Turkey and the Berlin Executive office of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) had appointed him its agent there. He became editor-in-chief of a new pro-Young-Turkish daily newspaper La Jeune Turc and other pro-Zionist periodicals including a weekly, L’Aurore, the Ladino El Judeo and a Hebrew weekly, Ha-Mevasser.

As noted by Tudor Parfitt, Yulia Egorova and Jacob Landau [in their studies] there, “Regarding Palestine, [Ha-Mevasser] argued that Zionist settlement to Palestine was economically favourable for the development of the Ottoman empire…[and] rebutted claims circulated by other contemporary press outlets (such as Alemdar), which stated that Zionism was anti-Turkish.

Quite simply, and even more obviously, Jabotinsky realized he needed a more pragmatic approach to the ruling clique to advance Jewish settlement in Palestine. The Young Turk leadership was becoming more sympathetic to Zionism as long as it was still in its practical phase (see p. 75 here). Yet, Jabotinsky came to the conclusion that Palestine could
not become a Jewish state as long as the Ottoman Empire existed and the attitude of the regime was anti-minority. Anyone reading the original Russian would grasp that Jabotinsky, throughout those seven sections, was deliberately avoiding any phrasing of Zionist aims that could prove disastrous for Zionism while yielding on as little as possible for the future development of the growing Zionist presence in then Palestine both demographically and agriculturally.

There is a second backdrop element which was the publication of a book by Jacobus Kann on his impressions of his 1907 visit to Ereẓ Israel. He had sent it to Young Turk parliamentarians and it included a demand for a Jewish autonomous home rule in Eretz Israel. This aroused strong criticism from Jabotinsky who at the time headed of the Zionist press in Istanbul who claimed it had damaged the cause of Zionism in the Ottoman capital. As described:

Jabotinsky had orders from [WZO President David] Wolffsohn to push a very soft line to the new masters of Turkey: Zionism did not mean a Jewish state, only free immigration to Palestine and cultural autonomy. But suddenly, without warning to either Wolffsohn or the Constantinople office, Jacobus Kann, a banker who administered the finances of the Dutch royal family and a member of the Actions Committee, published a travelogue, in German, of his recent trip to Palestine. In it, he reiterated the traditional Herzlian line that Turkey should set up an autonomous Zionist state there.

This affair provides greater insight into Jabotinsky’s thinking contained in the article quoted and it becomes quite clear, as Evyatar Freizel found, that he was agreeable that

For tactical reasons, official Zionism was cautious in explaining its ultimate aims, especially when addressing public opinion. Terms other than ‘state’ were used in diverse political documents and official Zionist utterances: Heimstatte, nationale Heimstatte, Jewish national home, commonwealth, Jewish commonwealth. However, the accepted view is that the ultimate aim of the mainstream Zionist movement was to recreate a Jewish state in Palestine. It remained open how best to reach that goal. A widely accepted position supported an evolutionary path, ‘practical Zionism’, meaning a gradual process of economic, social and institutional development

Moreover as Jan Zouplna writes:

It had to be clear to everyone that the first and ultimate goal of Zionism was the establishment of a Jewish majority in Palestine. It was yet to be decided what form of autonomy the state should possess. Like Herzl before him, Jabotinsky did not insist on immediate national and political independence…The only legitimate terms to be used were either Jewish majority or an administrative and political self-government. Jabotinsky claimed that the term “national home” was nothing else than an invention of a hostile Mandatory administration…Jabotinsky had a vision with a positive cultural content as well. As the above-mentioned ideas suggest, his vision, unlike the one of Herzl, does not stand in opposition to Ahad Ha’am and his concepts, but in opposition to his self-appointed interpreters, mostly associated with the Brith Shalom group.

Shmuel Katz in Volume One of “Lone Wolf”, p. 100, describing the affair, quotes Jabotinsky from his Autobiography as ruefully admitting that it was ironic that he, of all people, took the position to downplay the demand for statehood but given the time and place. He wrote that despite his “lov[ing] State Zionism…I love logic more”. Was Jabotinsky “guilty” as charged by Beinart? Not really, especially if one does not review and weigh the circumstances of that time and place when the article was written and not subject the article to a close reading of the actual text as opposed to relying on and interpreter such as Shumsky who, as I have shown, mistranslates Jabotinsky.

Later, in 1934, Jabotinsky's definition of Revisionist Zionist was a program that:

"The aim of Zionism is a Jewish state. The territory – both sides of the Jordan. The system – mass colonisation. The solution of the financial problem – a national loan. These four principles cannot be realised without international sanction."

Even then he was still aware of the tension between political goals and practical achievement.

One need not to be sympathetic to Jabotinsky to realize that Beinart was being imbalanced and plainly unfair in how he treated that quotation. Beinart has done this before in his Crisis of Zionism book seeking not to argue with him but rather to mischaracterize him and even demonize him. He didn't like that Jews carried a moral message (p. 100).  He held to a "racist" view (p. 101).  Nationalism, which he "revered", "bred" in him. (p. 103).

On page 101, Beinart, who describes Jabotinsky a page earlier as “brutal” and as one who of the Jews did not like “their belief that they carried a moral message”, quotes a 1910 article of Jabotinsky so:

“Only in the Bible is it written: “You should not wrong a stranger nor should you oppress him; for strangers you were in the land of Egypt”. Contemporary morality has no place for such childish humanism”.

In the first place, the second sentence in that article, “Homo homini lupos”, should more properly be

In our contemporary code of morality there is no room for this type of slobbering love and childish humanism of fellow man it would seem”.

But more importantly, that section is not referring to Jews. Jabotinsky is writing, foremost, about the situation in the United States after the race riots that year and of simply a “hate of one race against another, a devious hate, wide-open for all our eyes, arbitrary, without reason and without cause” which he denounces. It is “a sickness” just like the Kishniev pogrom and anti-Kurdish attacks. He then notes that the same German who sought freedom just a few years later is now persecuting Poles seeking the same goal and observes “Would the same German patriot of 1860 who shed tears when listening to village school pupils singing songs of a united Germany also have taken a strap to the Polish youngsters who refused to study religion in German?” It is here that his “only in the Bible…childish humanism” words follow. No Jews.

In fact, Jabotinsky adds: “the Poles see the Jews – and they do not hide this – as material to be exploited to strengthen their rule in the country” to illustrate how this process goes on and on as those who gain strength from a struggle then seek to stifle other struggles of weaker people, and the Jews are the weakest as he describes there.

That “childish humanism” was written in a rhetorical deprecatory, disdainful fashion. 

A corruption of the original content and intent. Indeed, on p. 104, in opposition to he trying to paint Jabotisnky as not wanting a Jewish state, Beinart writes that the Revisionists, the party Jabotinsky established in 1925, as being "feverently opposed any restraints on the Jewish pursuit of statehood".

On page 102, he returns to this, writing, “whereas Jews mocked the idea that Jews have a special responsibility to the stranger as ‘childish humanism’”. A second time he prevaricates. Indeed, anyone who has read Jabotinsky’s “Arab Angle – Undramatized”, in his Jewish War Front, knows how Beinart has perverted Jabotinsky.

A short excerpt, starting at p. 188, will suffice:

1. Civic Equality

1.1. Providing nothing be done to hinder any foreign Jew from repatriating, and, by doing so, automatically becoming a Palestinian citizen, the principle of equal rights for all citizens of any race, creed, language or class shall be enacted without limitation throughout all sectors of the country’s public life.

1.2. In every Cabinet where the Prime Minister is a Jew the vicepremiership shall be offered to an Arab, and vice versa.

1.3. Proportional sharing by Jews and Arabs both in the charges and in the benefits of the State...

2. Languages

2.1. The Hebrew and the Arabic languages shall enjoy equal rights and equal legal validity...

3. Cultural Autonomy

3.1. The Jewish and the Arab ethno-communities shall be recognized as autonomous public bodies of equal status before the law ...

3.2. Each ethno-community shall elect its National Diet with right to issue ordinance and levy taxes within the limits of its autonomy...

On page 103, Beinart terms Abba Ahimeir and Avraham Stern, who rejected Jabotinsky and who Jabotinsky had to rein in, at times unsuccessfully, as his “disciples”, as if he is directly responsible for their thinking. On the next page, he asserts Jabotinsky sought that the Arabs be “militarily and psychologically crushed”, a misleading use of language. On page 36, he quotes Stephen Wise in 1935 denouncing Jabotinsky’s Zionist Revisionist camps as “a species of fascism”, a charge untrue which, however, political rivals found it convenient to bandy about. But for Beinart, Wise is a divinity and why need he research that calumny?

In fact, in support of his new idea to denude the Jewish state concept, he could have attempted to misinterpret Jabotinsky. As Yitzhak Conforti has highlighted in his 2011 article,

“In a draft of a constitution which he proposed at the end of the First World War in 1918, he spoke of complete national equality between Jews and Arabs: ‘Both Jews and Arabs would enjoy from the start a complete autonomy equal to that of an independent nation.’”

However, Jabotinsky

“insisted that Palestine be recognized in a peace conference as the national home of the Jewish people and that emigration to Palestine be allowed for Jews from all over the world, with no limitations.” 

A crucial difference.

Can we trust Beinart to present us unvarnished Zionist history? In his "Crisis of Zionism", he wrote this on p. 51:

"There are to be sure, left-wing activists and Islamist militants who oppose Israel's existence as a Jewish state. But they are marginal compared to the much broader and more influential swath of people who seek to 'delegitimize' not Israel, but its occupation".

Eight years later, Beinart has become part of that swath, no longer believing in a Jewish state.

^

The Silence of Beinart

The following was sent to the Forward as an op-ed submission on March 24.

On April 8, due to my previous misunderstanding, I agreed to have it appear as a letter.

I checked today and my letter wasn't there. Another from April 16th was, however.

It may as yet still appear.

In the meantime, here it is:

Reading yet another Peter Beinart attack on AIPAC (“AIPAC IsPlaying The Victim, But It’s Palestinians Who Are Being Silenced”, March 26) as part of his decade-long assault on American Jewish Establishment institutions and influence, playing on one of his frequent themes that somehow the victims of an enforced campaign of silencing are the Arabs of the former British Mandate territory of Palestine who are still, after they have numerous times rejected diplomatic solutions for more than nine decades, seeking their state, I was first taken aback by his defense of Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar.

Her anti-Jewish agenda, expressed through many statements going back years, is clear. As is said, even for a “goyisheh kop” her sentiments are obvious. Money, hypnotism, etc. For Beinart, however, “Omar, has suggested, flippantly, that AIPAC wields power because its supporters give politicians money”. It was a joke. It was her sense of humor. If it weren’t so unfunny, I’d compare that remark to Hamas’ mistakes in consistently firing missiles from Gaza deep into Israel. But I realized that for Beinart, his success depends on how outlandish he can stretch his logic so that instead of disturbing people who actually think, he wows them with the most extreme convoluted possibilities.

By the way, Omar insinuated that AIPAC directly gives money, “Benjamins”, but why should Beinart need to feel he must be exact in his assertions. Many of his other assertions and ideological interpretations are also just enough inexact as to allow him to hypnotize, sorry, bewitch a younger generation of American Jews.

Beinart’s next step in this piece is to identify AIPAC with the “Right”. He does that writing “AIPAC also wields power because of a strong cultural, ideological and religious affinity for Israel, particularly on the right.” Why “particularly”? Hasn’t AIPAC been a power no matter what Israeli government has been in power? Hasn’t AIPAC been a power no matter who is on its governing bodies?

But Beinart is on a silencing campaign of his own and there is nothing better than to accuse someone or something of the exact sin in which you yourself are engaged in yourself. He is well aware of that maneuver.

He continues to silence Omar’s troping of anti-Semitic similes. Omar’s “push for allegiance to a foreign country” in relation to AIPAC and other Jewish groups “is simplistic and misleading”.  Note: Omar is not simplistic; her words are. And I would add that her intent wasn’t at all simplistic.

Beinart finally turns his rabid rhetoric on AIPAC which “is not victim but victimizer”. Why? It seeks to push the legislation of the Combatting BDS Act. As proof that that would be bad, Beinart avoids all legal opinions supporting the law and cherry-picks that of the American Civil Liberties Union. Why is their opinion better than any other in support of the law we do not know.

He attacks the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act and in doing so ridiculously suggests that “a student who called for transforming Israel from a Jewish state into a secular state with equal rights for all would be guilty of bigotry”. Firstly, Israel is secular albeit with a strong Jewish character.  That was the whole idea of Zionism as the Jewish national movement. It is worth pointing out that the United Nations recommended already in 1947 that a Jewish state be established within a portion of the original Mandate for Palestine territory. That territory, Beinart perhaps need reminding, was to become the Jewish national home due to its historical connection to the Jewish people and not just a state of its residents.

He continues and turns the most outstanding negative characteristic of the Arabs of the former Palestine Mandate, their self-imposed victimhood-for-sympathy and writes of the pro-Israel community that it acts as it does “because permanent victimhood creates moral license”.

He pooh-poohs Israel “as perennially facing existential threat” as if it doesn’t. His proof? In 1993 the PLO “recognized Israel’s existence”. That recognition was hollow as it sought to define Israel as not an expression of Jewish national identity. He trumpets that “Israel is the sole Middle Eastern nation with nuclear weapons” which may be true but that is only because Iran is not in the Middle East and a nuclear reactor in Syria, which is quite non-peaceful towards Israel, was destroyed. He is quite upset that Israel dares to claim any “moral responsibility” or that it faces “an existential threat” for in doing so, “then anything Israel does to defend itself is legitimate” as if Israel constrains itself more than any other country under similar acts of aggression whose sole aim is to kill and maim civilians whether by rockets, car-rammings, suicide-bombing or kite and balloon bombs.

He then launches his own explosive charge in comparing AIPAC to Israel’s defense measures, using the same words: “then why shouldn’t AIPAC use any means necessary to protect itself”, as if AIPAC employs lethal weapons.

Beinart challenges AIPAC to “confront the moral responsibilities of Jewish power”. He, conveniently, ignores the obverse element in his argument: will he come to an Israel which divests itself of power and live here during the horrific events that will surely follow?

_______________________

Email exchange:

Op-ed submission

Yisrael Medad
Attachments
Tue, Mar 26, 11:58 PM


Wed, Mar 27, 6:26 PM
to me

thanks, will post as a letter to the editor
--
Batya Ungar-Sargon
Opinion Editor
Forward.com

Yisrael Medad
Wed, Mar 27, 6:32 PM
to Batya

Thank you.


Yisrael Medad
Fri, Mar 29, 8:21 AM
to Batya

it will eventually appear here?
https://forward.com/opinion/letters/


Batya Ungar Sargon
Fri, Mar 29, 6:57 PM
to me

yes, edit below:

Yisrael Medad
Apr 5, 2019, 2:22 PM
to Batya

Too bad that the last update in the Letters Section is March 14 as of 10 seconds ago.

Batya Ungar Sargon
Apr 5, 2019, 4:25 PM
why too bad? I sent you an edit - just waiting on your ok... is that not clear?


Yisrael Medad
Fri, Apr 5, 4:37 PM
to Batya

Sorry.
I understood you as simply showing me.
As it you defined it as a letter, I didn't think you were requiring my approval.
It's fine.
Appreciated.


Yisrael Medad
Apr 8, 2019, 10:48 PM
to Batya

Repeat: okay.

^