From a two-state solution to belief in a bi-national single state

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."