Published: 11 June 2025
Last updated: 11 June 2025
A packed room greeted Peter Beinart in Melbourne recently as he discussed his latest book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. Beinart called out the devastating hunger of civilians in Gaza, the callousness of some members of Knesset, and the tragic failures of the IDF.
We hear the pain he articulates. Each death in Gaza and in Israel, is a devastating human tragedy that no political analysis should obscure.
But his conclusion that therefore we must abandon Israel as a Jewish state is flawed.
Josh Szeps, writing in The Age made a similar argument last week in an article titled “My grandmother fled the Holocaust. Now it’s time for Jews to abandon Israel.”
The narrative arc for both Beinart and Szeps is familiar but illogical.
- I’m Jewish (with biographical references or Hebrew terminology).
- I publicly condemn Israel.
- I’m moral – and if you don’t speak up, maybe you’re not.
- Jews no longer need a nation-state.
- Now I can sleep at night.
Beinart weaves in kippah references, quotes from Talmud, and nostalgia for Yavneh (the ancient city not the Melbourne school), in a persistent refrain: Don’t forget, I’m very Jewish.
Szeps draws on his family’s Holocaust trauma to ground his moral stance. (All four of my grandparents were Holocaust survivors but I won’t do the same. Frankly, wielding their suffering to justify my arguments feels a little uncouth.)
For progressive Jews, it’s easy to be swept up by Beinart and Szeps. Their language is persuasive, emotional, and full of code words that feel like home. We agree with many, maybe most, of their observations and heartache.
Imperfect countries scatter the world. Why are Jews uniquely disqualified to have our own country?
But they seem to think that they are the first Jews to worry about harming others, that you cannot be a Zionist without succumbing to the worse excesses of the state.
The claim that Jews shouldn’t have a nation-state because we can’t handle power is, in itself, an antisemitic trope. Other peoples have states, borders, governments – often terribly flawed. Imperfect countries scatter the world. Why are Jews uniquely disqualified to have our own country?
Progressive Zionists are unhappy with Israel’s failure to facilitate more humanitarian aid into Gaza but many of us are also unhappy with the campaign against Israel, which is not a safe place for people who identify as Zionist. That’s why many of us felt unable to sign recent letters protesting Israel’s actions.
Israel’s government deserves scrutiny. It should be better, a lot better. But collapsing a government into the question of a country’s right to exist is intellectually dishonest.
Beinart and Szeps can take flight with their own identity in part because there is an Israel – a country where half the world’s Jews live, argue, protest, and create.
Their arguments depend upon a Diaspora that is kind to Jewish continuity. They seem to have forgotten that Diaspora antisemitism was the reason for Israel’s creation and that Israel has been a refuge for Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees from Arab lands alike.
To criticise policies, yes, but not to question the country’s existence every time we feel discomfort or grief
We have a diverse and thriving Jewish Diaspora culture in many countries, but we also have rampant assimilation, which is not kind to Jewish continuity.
Just as we have both the Babylonian and Yerushalmi Talmud, we need both Diaspora and Israel-centred Jewish life. This is the Zionism articulated by Ahad Ha’am who, unlike many other Zionists, recognised the need for both a Jewish homeland and a thriving Diaspora.
We need progressive Zionists to be confident and informed understanding Israel– to criticise policies, yes, but not to question the country’s existence every time we feel discomfort or grief.
Progressive Zionists need to be able to celebrate both Israel and Diaspora Judaism. Zionist literacy – history, complexity, language – are, and should continue to be, core curriculum in our schools and youth movements.
The issue isn’t educating non-Jews. It’s building clarity and courage within our own community: among Jews and those who marry in, among those who lean in, among those who care, and among all those who understand Jewish destiny as theirs.
We need to ensure Jewish people know what Zionism is, why it exists, and how to hold its nuances. That means being able to be critical of the Israeli government and exposed to others who are critical, without cynically and naively undoing the whole country.
Beinart and Szeps want to give up on Zionism. That might feel emotionally compelling — we all see what they see — but it is historically narrow, intellectually selective, and politically unpragmatic.
Diaspora Jewish communities can do better than surrendering to despair. We can reach for a more nuanced, confident, hopeful, optimistic, generous, and literate approach to being Jewish in the modern world.
Comments11
SFE16 June at 09:47 pm
Thank you for drawing my attention to the comments and work of Beinart and Szeps, which I was not previously aware of. Unfortunately for you I find what they have to say, and the material they link to, much more persuasive than what you have written.
I don’t read them as being anti-Zionist but as unwilling to support Israel “[u]ntil Israeli politics can radically reorient itself” (to quote Szeps). It seems to me that you are so invested in Israel that you have closed your eyes, ears, heart and mind to any other possibility than supporting the Israeli State, with no apparent limit. Giving a blank cheque to the current Israeli government (or any government) is morally bankrupt and it’s also doing a disservice to Jews everywhere who will be living with the fallout of the current Israeli government’s actions for a long time to come.
Harold Zwier15 June at 05:34 am
It’s difficult to understand Adele Stowe-Lindner’s article as other than part of Israel advocacy from the heart of the rigid part of the Zionist community. The playbook is to undermine Peter Beinart and Josh Szeps. The method is classic – reduce their intellectual content to 5 simplistic points that make them seem like people incapable of grasping the complexity of Israeli policy and action in its war against Hamas and ordinary Gazans (let’s not avert our eyes from the 50,000 deaths of civilians and militants). Look at point 5 (now I can sleep at night) and tell me with a straight face that this article is serious! The nearest Stowe-Lindner comes to actually engaging with the issues raised by Beinart and Szeps is when she says, “Israel’s government deserves scrutiny. It should be better, a lot better.”
Is that all that needs to be said about the Israeli government? And in reference to withholding aid to Gazans she writes, “Progressive Zionists are unhappy with Israel’s failure to facilitate more humanitarian aid into Gaza but many of us are also unhappy with the campaign against Israel”. Zionist organisations and spokespeople are like pro-Palestinian groups who can see the need for justice for “us” but are unwilling to enagage with the injustice for “them”. Starvation in Gaza on one side and the atrocities carried out on 7 October 2023 by the other. And no, I’m not trying to equate the 2.
But opposition to the appalling conduct of Israel in Gaza can no longer be contained within even the mainstream Jewish community, and instead of ignoring, or at best deflecting those concerns, the Zionist organisations and the various roof bodies need to face them head on. It is not just the increase in antisemitism that is causing trauma and grief in our community.
Ian Grinblat12 June at 11:34 pm
Beautifully argued, Adele.
People such as Beinart and Szeps forget how perilous Jewish life was in Europe, even the most advanced nations, before WW2. Until the establishment of Israel, Jews, wherever they lived, were a vulnerable minority. Israel is a small state but, as a state, is able to defend itself. It has also acted to protect diaspora Jews as it did in 1976 with the raid on Entebbe.
Danny12 June at 09:37 pm
Excellent article Adele. I also wonder why people find it so hard to hold nuance. I can disagree with a government, a leader, a political strategy, but when in history has that delegitimised an entire country? My simple rule is that if you replace Israel with another country, would the sentiment sound reasonable? I would love to ask josh szeps if he thinks there are other countries we should ‘abandon’ as an idea.
James12 June at 12:03 pm
Ian, the reason “being Arab after the Holocaust” hasn’t been written is because there is zero Arab culpability for the Shoah. To say there was is to diminish German and European responsibility. Even Yad Vashem makes this clear: https://www.yadvashem.org/docs/haj-amin-al-husseini.html#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20claims%20raised,Jewish%20people%20by%20Nazi%20Germany%2C
Rachel Sussman12 June at 09:03 am
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for this beautiful spot on article!
Your words are mine and I could not say it any better…you answer all the self righteous and indeed each of us who are struggling with a mixture of feelings in the difficult reality we are now facing.
Your words strentgen, clarify and heal
Thank you!
Robyn12 June at 08:52 am
Well done Adele! A well articulated and thoughtful response to Beinart and Szeps. They are what Einat WIlf described in her recent visit to Oz,- the ‘Tikkin olam Jews’ who can only tolerate the good times. When times get challenging for the Jews they turn their back. Good luck to them
Pauline Grodski12 June at 07:29 am
Well said Simon!
Ian Light11 June at 07:13 am
The Jewish People need a militarily strong state as a refuge .
The State of Israel will makes mistakes and be ruthless at times .
But who knows when severe anti- semitism break out .
After the fall of the USSR from 1989-1991 many Jewish feared an anti-Semitic backlash .
It happened in Poland in 1967 after the Israeli victory in the Six Day War .
Ian Light11 June at 05:01 am
The situation in Gaza is very harsh but the Hamas would if they had the power be exponentially worse . Long before 1987 when Hamas was formed ,many Arab Leaders like Amin al -Husayni collaborated with the Nazis in WW2 and supported the Genocide of the Jewish People in Europe and in the Arab World and the Ancient Holy Land . A book being an Arab after the Holocaust has yet to be written .
Simon Krite11 June at 04:24 am
Well done !! Finally, someone calling out the self-righteous theatre. Beinart and Szeps dress up surrender as virtue… all heartbreak, no history. Sorry, but wrapping anti-Zionism in a tallit doesn’t make it holy.