Published: 30 September 2024
Last updated: 8 October 2024
American Jews no longer have a consensus in favour of Zionism, commentator Peter Beinart told a Jewish Council of Australia event on Sunday.
"Instead of a Zionist consensus in America, what we have is a kind of a very fierce internal civil war, often within families along generational lines," he said. While the older generation, which controls institutions, and some young Jews are firmly pro-Israel, an increasing number of young Jews were integrated in a multi-religious, multi-racial movement that is sympathetic with Palestinians and opposed a Jewish state, he said.
Beinart was for many years a leading voice of the Zionist left in the US, arguing strongly in favour of a two-state solution. But over the past few years he has come to believe the two-state solution is dead and that a bi-national single state is both a more just and a more practical solution.
A former editor of The New Republic, Beinart is a professor of journalism and political science at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, and an editor-at-large at Jewish Currents.
He said Israel as a Jewish state with a separate Palestinian state is based on ethno-nationalism that is not acceptable anywhere else and denies Palestinians their right to return to the places their families came from.
"The way a two-state solution is generally imagined in Jewish discourse is that the purpose of it is to maintain a very large Jewish majority, even within a smaller border. And that precludes the possibility of Palestinians being able to return to the places they're from... We are, really, the last people in the world who should be saying that to another people."
Beinart said while he fundamentally opposed the October 7 attacks on Israelis, the lack of basic freedoms for Palestinians and the lack of any other pathway meant armed resistance was inevitable.
"If you don't want Palestinians to kill Israeli civilians... you have to offer Palestinians some other way of fighting for their rights. But what Jewish institutions do, what Israel does, is systematically try to shut down and block any Palestinian effort at struggling for freedom... That empowers Hamas or Islamic Jihad in their efforts to use violence, including violence against civilians."
Comments4
Nick Mortimer19 October at 08:39 am
Thanks for posting this. I struggle with how to make friends with Jewish people as I’ve never really live next to any, I have lived next to families from Egypt and Gaza, they are very friendly to me and others. I felt that there must be Jewish people that I could be friends with, I watched this video and finally there are Jewish voices out there that see people as human and worthy of freedom. I have long thought that a single state is probably the best solution, how that is archived is hard to see, but in the UK we seem to have move forward with the Good Friday agreement, it’s not perfect but better than it was when bombs were going off in our shopping centres. I’ve been struggling with the actions of the Israeli state, I struggle with people who try to justify violence and segregation. I want to find a way that I can constructively help, a way that I can oppose the actions of a state without joining in the hate.
Kevin Judah White9 October at 05:59 am
While I admire Peter Beinart’s original thinking and his deft combination of intellectual rigor and compassion, his b-national state proposal seems a utopian fantasy: will Israelis voluntarily relinquish a Jewish state in favor of an unknown entity?
John Lazarus8 October at 10:34 pm
In the NSW Northern Rivers we are looking at exploring a campaign for a One Country, Three State solution, of federated states of Israel, with state governments in Tel Aviv, Ramalla in the West Bank, and Gaza, with Jerusalem as its capital (on the lines of Australian and US states, or the Scottish and Welsh parliaments of Britain), as the best shared solution for all the peoples of Israel/Palestine’s small, 600 km long, country.
My father and uncles fought against the Germans, Italians and Japanese but we are all friends now. Australians of this generation fought against the Vietnamese, but went back after the war and previous combatants hugged each other, and Vietnam is now a an Australian holliday destination. Reconcilliation can come.
David Jackson1 October at 07:15 am
Neither solution 2 State or bi-State are doable in he current climate. It is said ‘hope springs eternal’ at the moment I cannot see it. Projectiles from Gaza and from Lebanon. Israelis distrustful. No hope insight.