Published: 27 August 2026
Last updated: 28 August 2026
Peter Beinart’s headline session at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas last Sunday was titled Facing Moral Wreckage. True to his word, by the end of it, Israel’s political system and culture lay in ruins.
The American journalist, in conversation with ABC broadcaster Geraldine Doogue before a partisan audience of nearly 800 people at Sydney’s Carriageworks, deliberated over a wide range of subjects including the inherent dangers of Israel’s “supremacist” system of government, the fallacy that Israel is the ultimate safe haven for Jews and why it is legitimate to compare Israel’s crimes to those of the Nazis.
While Beinart’s demolition was comprehensive, and his analysis of inequality persuasive, he also sidestepped several inconvenient questions about the Middle East, notably with regard to assigning any responsibility on the Palestinian side and what sort of future its leaders see for living with Jewish Israelis.
The central argument of Beinart’s critique of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians is that Jewish Israelis have created a legal supremacy that has made the country’s political system and society immoral, and its future unsustainable.
One of the ironic byproducts of this inequality, he told the Festival audience, is that “Jews are much safer in Australia, despite the terrible incident at Bondi Beach, in the United States, and in Canada than they are in the Jewish state. The reason is that the state of Israel … inflicts tremendous violence on Palestinians. When you classify people as legal inferiors, you inflict tremendous violence on them, even if it's sometimes invisible to you. And that violence actually makes everybody less safe.”
The path to sharing the land
Asked by Doogue about the way forward for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis to share the land, he said: “Israel is based on Jewish supremacy over Palestinians. Most clearly, you can see it in the West Bank, where you have two completely different legal systems. But even in Israel proper, there are forms of legalised Jewish supremacy.
Comments2
Debbie Lustig14 September at 01:27 am
“Israel is based on Jewish supremacy over Palestinians. Most clearly, you can see it in the West Bank, where you have two completely different legal systems. But even in Israel proper, there are forms of legalised Jewish supremacy.” (Peter Beinart).
Correct me if I’m wrong, but are there not two different governing systems in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority and Israel, depending on which zone?
Mark Ian28 August at 06:35 am
Regarding supremacy it is Islam that claims supremacy over the Jewish People in the ancient Holy Land .
The Jews and Christians are dhimmi -second class citizens that can live in ancient Israel and Judea and Samaria but only after paying a protection tax and obeying laws in which Islam
has Superiority .
A Jewish Army is regarded as a completely forbidden in any part of Islamic Land .
A Jewish State even in the borders of 1937 Peel Commission the 1938 Coastal Strip the 1949 Ceasefire Lines are regarded as illegal and temporary .
Even temporary refuge for Jewish People fleeing Nazi Extermination in Europe to any Islamic Land was regarded as to be stringently limited or totally forbidden .
Many Palestinians favoured Nazism like Amin El Husayni who was the Leader of the Palestinians in 1936 and who killed any Palestinians willing to compromise on Jewish Refuge to Islamic Lands in large numbers .
That History Refusal to Save led to the Jewish Counter Reaction of demanding free immigration of Holocaust Survivors after 1945 even if there was United Nations Rule and when this was Refused a Jewish State with an Arab State was accepted by Zionism .