Bombshell: Peter Beinart, On The Collapse Of The "Pro-Israel" Establishment

[laststeamtrain]

MJ Rosenberg

Senior Fellow Media Matters Action Network
Posted: May 17, 2010 12:24 Am



Bombshell: Former New Republic Editor, Peter Beinart, On The Collapse Of The Pro-Israel" Establishment


Peter Beinart, former editor of Marty Peretz' New Republic has written a groundbreaking piece in the New York Review Of Books about end of the "pro-Israel" lobby's hold on American Jews.

Beinart, in his late 30's, is one of the journalistic stars of his generation (he was editor of TNR at 24). He comes from an Orthodox background. He is a former (and, I'd say, penitent) neocon.

He is also pro-Israel. (In Beinart's case, I use the term pro-Israel without the quotation marks that I use when I describe organizations like AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee and The Israel Project which are in the "pro-Israel" business and insouciantly support policies that are destructive to Israel)..

Beinart cares about Israel and I think he is rather sad to have to conclude that most young American Jews do not. As the excerpt below points out, Israel is very foreign to young Jews. And that means that the the lobby's base is eroding daily and will soon consist only of seniors (mostly the baby boomers' parents) and the very Orthodox (a small percentage of the Jewish population).

Basically, the decline of the lobby is good news for America, for Jews and for Israel. That is because it is primarily the clout of the lobby that has led the US government to support an occupation that has virtually eliminated America's influence in the Middle East, has turned off younger Jews to Judaism, and will -- unless ended by Israel under US pressure -- lead to Israel's demise. The "pro-Israel" lobby is anything but pro-Israel.

Read the whole article. Start with the excerpt. But don't confuse one very important piece with the trend it is describing. It is the "pro-Israel" establishment and the Israeli government's horrific policies (capped by the Gaza war) that has produced this sea change. But also know that the fact that this piece is written by Peter Beinart makes it a major part of the very phenomenon it describes. ... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/sea-change-former-new-rep_b_578153.html

Beinart's NY Review of Books article:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/?pagination=false

[Jefferson23]

1. Excellent, thanks for posting. I wonder if Dershowitz and Horowitz

will respond to Beinart.

[whosinpower]

2. Excellent article - nt

[Union Yes]

3. K&R nt

[starroute]

4. But it's already too late for what Beinart wants

Beinart writes, "Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral. If the leaders of groups like AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations do not change course, they will wake up one day to find a younger, Orthodox-dominated, Zionist leadership whose naked hostility to Arabs and Palestinians scares even them, and a mass of secular American Jews who range from apathetic to appalled. Saving liberal Zionism in the United States—so that American Jews can help save liberal Zionism in Israel—is the great American Jewish challenge of our age."

But no way is that going to happen. "Liberal Zionism" is already as much an oxymoron as "moderate Republican" -- and for much the same reason. Zionism got captured by a small group of very wealthy, conservative individuals, allied with rigid ideologues, who sucked all the life out of it. And that's not something it's possible to recover from.

[DLnyc]

5. Hard to see how a worse example could have been provided:

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“For the first time we shall be the majority living with a minority,” Knesset member Pinchas Lavon declared in 1948, “and we shall be called upon to provide an example and prove how Jews live with a minority.”
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