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."
Comments6
Iván G. Somlai4 January at 04:15 am
With all the persistent focus on a one or two state solution, I do believe that there need be opportunities to discuss realities. There are too many disagreements, debates and ad infinitum inconclusions about the right answer.
Personally, I believe that the oft proclaimed solution of two states is unrealistic. But so is the one state alternative.
Hong Kong had been under British rule for 156 years. Pakistan became an independent state in 1947 or 78 years ago. Taiwan, in our recent history, has been independent since 1949, only 76 years. These states had, after a change in governance and in the number of years under very different governance, along with scores of other new nations, developed cultures different from their prior culture, especially as it pertains to governance. The culture of Hong Kong, for example, had evolved to be different from the Chinese mainland, to the point of considerable incompatibility. Pakistan has also developed unique features from the former greater India. And Taiwan, too, using just our three examples, has noteworthy differences from the mainland.
My point is that any society divorced from its former governance changes in many aspects, for better or worse, including governance, culture, geo-politics etc.
What has all this got to do with the issues surrounding Israel? The West Bank and Gaza, despite the 1993 Oslo Accord and its claim to respect those two areas as a single territorial unit, have had to evolve separately. Granted, that recently the prolonged war has brought many on the Gaza side to presently support Hamas.
The Indian subcontinent had a similar era during which the newly created states of East and West Pakistan could not be sustained for three reasons:
• India could not countenance being hemmed in by two Islamic states under one overarching government;
• travel, transport and other communication –regardless of the mode– between the two extremities of East and West Pakistan could be at any time disrupted by India; and…
• the two east/west entities, by virtue of their locations, had been naturally forced to develop different geo-political and societal cultures that ended in a formal split (Bangladesh and Pakistan).
West Bank and Gaza have been in a similar evolutionary mode. To now expect that the two distinctly developing cultures, bordering on different countries could be effectively united with an Israel permanently inbetween is a pipe dream.
It is therefore time to seriously weigh the possible advantages of a three-state solution.
I do think that the present treaty with UAE is not stable, as its rationale and timing are suspect (after US blunders with DPRK, Afghanistan, China and multiple international covenants, to have this particular agreement come true begs credibility).
I remain incredulous as to how there could be any theorization or planning for the realization of one state being permanently divided from its other half. It cannot work. And a federated Israel/Palestine state remains unrealistic, in my mind, as neither side would contemplate a democratic governance that may at some point result in some ‘unlikely’ majority or inequitable civil society.
Edward Shalfi30 December at 10:29 pm
First order of business of the one-state: use government resources to resettle Palestinian refugees and their descendants back in Israel. Then open all State owned lands and military areas for resettlement. After all, Israel’s military will no longer be necessary.
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.