Peter Beinart once published a pro-Iraq war book called The Good Fight: Why Liberals–and Only Liberals–Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again. Well there is a lien on Beinart’s liberalism. Here he is reflecting on his late splash, his piece on American Jews and Zionism, to Jeffrey Goldberg:
I’m not asking Israel to be Utopian….I’m not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state. I’m actually pretty willing to compromise my liberalism for Israel’s security and for its status as a Jewish state.
This statement is frank and helpful; it allows all readers, Jewish and not, to declare where they stand. Remember that 20 percent of Israel’s population is Palestinian, far more than blacks in the U.S. (and I’m not counting 4 million under occupation). Also, reflect that Beinart’s watershed piece (in the culture of the Jewish community) was published in the New York Review of Books, a great edifice of the American left that once put a Molotov cocktail on its cover. (Thanks to Ilene Cohen.)
