Published: 20 May 2025
Last updated: 20 May 2025
Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza (Atlantic Books)
Peter Beinart
The American journalist Peter Beinart is the English world’s pre-eminent critic of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people. In recent years his commentary has argued that Jewish Israelis enjoy a legal supremacy that has made the country’s political system and society immoral, and its future unsustainable.
His latest book, with its provocative title Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, intensifies this critique by focussing on both “Jewish traditions” (God not only liberating Jews from being slaves but from being masters) as well as political arguments in advocating a new version of Israel in the wake of the war in Gaza, in which Jews and Palestinians live side by side with equal rights to self-determination under the law, in a confederation, binational state or something similar.
Beinart writes that he chose the title as a response to an unnamed former friend: “When I hear you thunder about the Israelis murdered and captured on October 7, I wish you would summon some of that righteous anger for the Palestinians slaughtered in even greater numbers.”
He advances many persuasive ideas in his effort to make Jews show not only compassion for the Palestinians killed by the IDF’s response to October 7, but to make them realise that Palestinian violence against Israel will continue until they are granted equality under the law.
In espousing this vision, Beinart charts the history of Palestinian dispossession and says their disillusion with the Camp David negotiations in 2000 laid the foundations for their resort to violence. “Palestinians no longer believed that Oslo would bring them freedom,” he writes.
“Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian leader who had supported Oslo but was arrested during the second intifada for helping to plan attacks that killed Israeli civilians, told an Israeli journalist that he had ‘reached a simple conclusion. You don’t want to end the occupation and you don’t want to stop the settlements, so the only way to convince you is by force’.”
Military oppression is self-defeating
However, he says Israel’s long-term response - using military firepower to suppress Palestinian violence - will be self-defeating. Despite the huge number of deaths in Gaza, Beinart argues, whatever the composition of militant and civilian, Hamas has not been eliminated, and has clearly regrouped in significant numbers. Those fighters who die will be replaced by others, whether in the name of Hamas or other resistance movements. The end result will be more violence, more deaths on both sides – with no lasting security for Israelis.
It's hard to argue with his logic. The IDF has launched an intense ground assault into Gaza, in parallel with a two-month aid blockade to squeeze Hamas into releasing more hostages, a policy that NGOs claim has pushed Gaza towards famine, and has shocked all but Israel’s most hard-bitten supporters. Netanyahu’s fixation on destruction has become increasingly difficult to defend, both morally and strategically. In doing so, he has, perhaps deliberately, pushed “the day after” the war into oblivion.
Yet that question remains top of mind for people who care. What is the path forward, and the longer-term vision? How will people live? While the prospect of two states for two peoples is slipping away fast, the level of animosity makes the thought of them living together seem absurdly utopian.
Nevertheless, Beinart asks us to look beyond today’s distrust, arguing that ultimately, this outcome would liberate Jews as well as Palestinians. “We can lift the weight that oppressing Palestinians imposes on Jewish Israelis, and indirectly, on Jews around the world… We can lay down the burden of seeing ourselves as the perennial victims of a Jew-hating world.”
Ugly realities
While the idea of a new Jewish identity that transcends victimhood is appealing, it glosses over a core of ugly realities that make his argument feel wilfully one-eyed.
In particular, Beinart’s lens on Gaza is focussed on Israel’s responsibility for the war, and Palestinian suffering, while largely ignoring the role and responsibility of Hamas in this catastrophe. Having argued that Israel cannot get rid of Hamas, he does not even engage with the question of what Israel could or should have done instead.
Granted, it is a difficult question to answer, morally as well as a militarily, given the massive number of Palestinian deaths and scale of destruction, and how to assess what would have been an appropriately “proportional” response, if that is possible.
But he has not even grappled with the fundamental principle: how would he have had Israel respond, if not to destroy Hamas but to neuter it, to protect Israeli citizens from future attacks and to secure the release of the 200-plus hostages taken on October 7?
Unlike Beinart, who simply opposes Israel’s political system, Hamas opposes the Israeli state and seeks its elimination, and appears to value that goal more than it does the welfare of the Palestinian people it purports to represent. The mastermind of October 7, Yahya Sinwar, wrote to colleagues that “civilian bloodshed in Gaza is a necessary sacrifice that will lead to the liberation of Palestine” and “he believed that the growing civilian death toll would serve to benefit Hamas more than a cessation of fighting would,” the Times of Israel reported.
The Hamas problem
How do we reconcile this admission with Beinart’s argument that Israeli Jews and all Jews will be liberated by giving Palestinians equal rights within a shared political arrangement? He also seems unconcerned that Hamas, the barbaric custodian of “Palestinian liberation” (whatever that means), has a stated aim of seeking the end of the Israeli state.
There is a conundrum here that cannot be avoided: if you give Palestinians equality with Israelis but a significant portion of them are committed to the destruction of the Israeli state, how will this free Jews from the burden of victimhood, and liberate them?
Beinart seems almost dismissive of the question. “As grave as Hamas’s crimes have been, Israel doesn’t have a Hamas problem. It has a Palestinian problem. Its problem is that Israeli security and Palestinian security are interconnected,” he writes. “Which means that it’s foolish to think that Israel grows safer when it reduces Gaza to rubble. Because if people in Gaza aren’t safe, they will sooner or later ensure that Israelis aren’t either.”
One of the central challenges for Jews, including those on the Left, after October 7 and the war in Gaza, is how to disentangle their support for Palestinian statehood with the involvement of Hamas in the alleged pursuit of that cause.
Beinart makes an impassioned case for the moral and security necessity of a shared Israeli-Palestinian existence, not separated by a hard border. But he dodges the confronting question that he raises with the title of his book: how should Jews, and the world, in pursuit of a just and lasting peace, overcome the obstacle of Hamas’s illegitimate but undeniable mantle as standard-bearer of the Palestinian cause.
Comments8
Ian Light26 May at 04:13 am
A binational state is possible if the vast majority of people are Liberal Humanistic Democrats who have ultra effective conventional and thermonuclear weapons to defend themselves against Conquerors who glorify rape pillage and atrocious barbarism.
Gwen22 May at 08:21 pm
I found this article while looking into Beinart’s book. In effect, I think the conundrum you highlight, “If you give Palestinians equality with Israelis but a significant portion of them are committed to the destruction of the Israeli state…” actually gets at the heart of the work that we Jews must do to see this conflict with moral clarity. For example, I see no reason why the IDF, a significant portion of the Israeli population, should have the extent of free reign that it currently does to destroy Gaza. I think we need to move away from these wide sweeping contradictions and see Gazans not solely as extensions of Hamas, but as persons with their own agencies. (For what other countries do we so closely lump the individual citizen with the governing body?) Furthermore, I think it is dangerous to suggest that equality be withheld for fear of those who are being oppressed. I can think of no instance in history where in the longterm that type of militaristic tactic turned out to be a sound one, or a sustainable one. Israel undoubtedly faces immense threats (and ones that often feel existential given the countries that surround it). But I think we are far overdue to relieve ourselves of these fears for even just a moment to demand that Israel does not weaponize Judaism in the name of safety.
Donn22 May at 04:49 pm
Mr. Visontay (and most of the comments here) offers nothing except the failed, fearful perspectives and generalizations that Mr. Beinart deftly addresses in his book. Mr. Visontay puts Palestinian liberation in quotes and says “whatever that means” while simultaneously arguing against giving Palestinians full and equal rights under the law. That is an untenable position in a modern world and one that will land squarely on the wrong side of history. In one of the flimsiest justifications for genocide ever asserted, Mr. Visontay asks, “what Israel could or should have done instead?” Well, what do governments do when terrorists exist in their own communities? First of all, they don’t slaughter the entire population. They use intelligence, precision, and restraint. The truth is the world is waking up to the injustice perpetrated against Palestinians the last 108 years and these tired, hollow justifications for Israeli dominance will not hold up much longer. I can tell you from personal experience, I was raised with and held Zionist perspectives for most of my life. I now view Israel’s actions as an undeniable war crimes and am a firm supporter of Palestinian rights. Mr Beinart offers a genuine and possible vision for moving forward, Mr. Visontay, in his cynical and pessimistic view of humanity, does not.
Simon Krite21 May at 04:44 am
Martin,
Your comment is beyond offensive. To accuse Israel of genocide while defending Beinart’s vision of dissolving Jewish sovereignty is not moral clarity at all. It’s hateful, vile and full of anti-Zionist political recklessness.
Beinart deliberately ignores the brutal reality of October 7 and the fact that Hamas still holds hostages and holds power and openly calls for Israel’s destruction. Calling that omission “thoughtful” is an insult to every Jew and Israeli life lost and currently endangered.
There is nothing courageous about proposing Jews give up our state while terror groups regroup and celebrate our slaughter. That isn’t peace at all!!! It’s surrender and you and your kind are a part of the problem.
This kind of rhetoric does real harm. It gives cover to those who would see Israel erased, and it alienates diaspora Jews already under siege.
Have you been to Israel? are you Jewish? do you know the history of the Muslim brotherhood and Hamas? have you any understanding of UNWRA’s role in the indoctrination of the Palestinian people for the last 18 years?
Simon Krite20 May at 10:33 am
Dear Michael,
Thank you for your thoughtful and morally grounded critique of Peter Beinart’s latest vision. In a media landscape increasingly clouded by false equivalencies and ideological posturing, your clear-eyed analysis is both rare and deeply appreciated. You’ve given voice to the discomfort many of us feel watching Beinart push a message that demands Jewish surrender under the banner of peace.
Because that’s what it is — not a plan for peace, but a campaign to dissolve Jewish sovereignty. Beinart shrouds it in compassion, but the reality is chilling it’s just a call for Jews to relinquish the one place we are not a minority, all while ignoring the genocidal intent of Hamas and the violent rejection of coexistence by large segments of the Palestinian leadership.
The real message Beinart and groups like the Jewish Council of Australia are spreading is not one of justice, it’s one of erasure. They want a world where Jewish identity is accepted only if it’s powerless. Where our presence is tolerated, but our self-determination is not. Where antisemitism is reframed as a struggle for “liberation,” and those who speak out against it are dismissed as obstacles to peace.
These anti-Zionist Jews are not offering a moral alternative, they’re providing ideological cover for those who chant for our destruction. That is the hard truth, and your piece was one of the few willing to confront it directly.
With sincere thanks,
Simon
Dawn Cohen20 May at 10:21 am
An excellent and thoughtful critique. We blame Jews and Israel as progressive Jews because if it is primarily Israel’s fault, then it is fixable by us. We are not powerless. We are the big powerful ones who can fix it through being nice. We don’t know what to do with the horrifying truth that Hamas and Islamists are not interested in sharing power with us. They really really mean from the river to the sea Sharia Law will be free. They really really want us gone, not because of what we have done, but because they believe it is achievable.
Vanessa20 May at 10:08 am
It is extremely problematic to use inflammatory adjectives to describe Hamas like ‘barbaric’. Demonising Hamas as the ground zero of all evil does nothing to help understand how to counter it’s power. It is this kind of language which has led to the current horrific dehumanistion of Palestinians. One could well call the actions of the current Israeli state barbaric. The conflation of all Palestinian civilians with Hamas as a political organisation that the citizens of Gaza have not had the opportunity to vote our of power for a decade, whether or not they still supported it, is also deeply problematic. As much as Israelis have been unable to get Netanyahu out of power, Gazans have faced a similar problem. This is not to say that some people in Gaza do not support Hamas. That support was won through extensive community work by Hamas in the complete absence of any service provision by the occupying power, Israel and the relentless denial of rights to which Gazans were subject. Note also that Netanyahu and those of his ilk spent decades propping up Hamas to ensure the Palestinian nationalist movement remained divided so that a two state solution would never be realised. Israel created its own monster through its systemic repression of Palestinians, confiscation of their land, detention of children without trial etc. etc. and it’s deliberate efforts to ensure it’s territorial expansion at the expense of a political solution. Repression inevitably breeds extremism. This is not unique to Israel. The way to undermine Hamas’s influence is through exactly the sort of democratic solution that Beinart proposes which will offer Palestinian civilians who have been bombed, tortured and starved by Israel an alternative avenue to realise their rights. Tens of thousands of civilians dead, including children killed in the most brutal manner has not ‘destroyed’ Hamas. Hamas represents an idea that cannot be bombed out of existence. It is only by offering a genuine and just political solution to Palestinians that everyone’s future can be secured and Israelis can begin to know Palestinians as neighbors with the same needs, feelings and aspirations as them. Instead we have the most extreme dehumanistion that has, as in many other contexts around the world, led to genocide. The fact that we as the descendants of those who survived the Holocaust are complicit in this horror should make us turn our lens on our own ‘barbarity’.
Martin Munz20 May at 09:53 am
Albert Einstein’s, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” could apply to this review. To criticise Peter Beinart’s thoughtful ‘Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza’ as ‘utopian’ because he doesn’t resolve the status of Hamas bearing the mantle of Palestinian resistance is like saying the good is the enemy of the perfect.
Beinart makes a series of arguments that seek to contextualise the current phase of the Israel/Palestine conflict in historical and moral terms outside the zero-sum binaries that bedevils this ongoing tragedy. By re-inscribing one of those binaries, Hamas the eternal enemy of Israel, hero of Palestine, Michael Visontay is in effect discounting Beinart’s many cogent arguments by characterising them as ‘utopian.’ The unstated corollary of that seems to be we should not take too seriously anything else he has to say because it is unrealistic.
That appeal to ‘ugly realities’ is familiar from decades of pro-Israel commentary that has, amongst other things, brought us to this sad impasse. Israel is perpetrating genocide, the promises of secular political Zionism have not been realised because of Palestinian dispossession, the Jewish diaspora is facing existential problems fanned by myopic, albeit understandable, attachments to a rogue state that elicits hostility throughout the world, in the main, because of its conduct.