A day after Rebecca Steinfeld asked in Haaretz whether liberal Zionists will move left to support democracy or move right for permanent ethnocracy in the wake of the two state solution’s autopsy, Peter Beinart on cue considers — and then totally avoids — the question. Writing about J Street:
Absent some crisis that forces Washington’s hand, the U.S.-led peace process is likely dead for the remainder of the Obama presidency, and perhaps forever. The Israeli-Palestinian struggle is moving out of Washington, to the campuses, church groups, labor unions, pension funds and international courts through which Palestinians will seek to Boycott, Divest from and Sanction the Jewish state. J Street is not built for this new fight…
In the short term, [J Street] may be forced to embrace forms of nonviolent, two-state oriented pressure that it previously rejected as too controversial. Over the longer term, J Street might become the core of a new progressive Jewish movement—especially among the young—that goes beyond Israel to take on domestic issues like immigration, climate change and economic inequality.
So Beinart apparently thinks young J Streeters will arrive at the two-state solution party many years too late and embrace his Zionist BDS prescription, while studiously avoiding the real question on the table. Rather than face facts that Israel is, from the river to the sea, an apartheid ethnocracy, young Jews will in the long run keep their heads buried firmly in the sand and turn their attention to other issues like U.S. immigration? I think not. I have more faith in young progressive Jews than he does.
The shine is going to come off J Street, as its current membership will see how the organization’s advocacy for “peace talks” has helped enable Israel to continue to steal land behind the smokescreen of the peace charade. “We must preserve a Jewish majority state at all costs” is not going to be a winning P.R. formula with young, progressive Jews for very much longer. “Israel has a right to exist” is going to be upended as young Jews learn this means nothing more than “Israel has a right to exist as a racist, discriminatory state where well-off Jews from Brooklyn can move anytime they want into homes on stolen land whilst the indigenous people can never return to their rightfully-owned land.” I believe one person, one vote, one state is going to become the rallying cry of a generation that sees Israeli oppression clearly for what it is, tracing back to 1948 and before the existence of the state.
I believe most of today’s J Streeters will join the coming rainbow coalition that will advocate true equality. In the early 2000s, Students for Justice in Palestine’s slogan was “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” Some progressive Jews were turned off, because it left open the question, what happens to the Jews who immigrated to Palestine and live there now? What does it mean, exactly, for Palestine to be free? I think these sorts of slogans will evolve into more inclusive chants like: “From the river to the sea, we demand equality!”
How can Beinart suggest young American Jews will ignore Israel and turn instead to pushing for progressive stance on US immigration issues, especially US illegal immigration issues?
Isn’t that a tremendous insult to the intelligence and moral/ethical principles of young American Jews? Where does he get off, saying what he said?
“the U.S.-led peace process is likely dead for the remainder of the Obama presidency, and perhaps forever.”
Israel is like a piece of rotting meat. The rot continues . There is no equilibrium.
“Peter Beinart on cue considers — and then totally avoids — the question.”
I’m not surprised. I call this “Beinart’s choice” — whether a “Liberal Zionist” so-called, jettisons his liberalism or his Zionism when the two invariably collide — and it’s clear that Beinart will chose to jettison his liberalism. At the same time, he simply doesn’t want to face up to what that means: that his so-called principles are not principles at all.
By the way, can we all agree that if the NYT is the epitome of institutional “liberal” Zionism then he who personifies it is Peter Beinart? That’s the only Zionist both Abuminah and Blumenthal repeatedly reference when they are talking to progressive audiences.
And I’d say he’s the one who matters most, at least in the wider culture, which is precisely why his avoidance of the topic matters so much.
And he keeps trying to slip away, avoiding that choice at all costs.
Beinart interprets J Street as a support group for the Obama diplomatic initiative which cannot really continue when that initiative has ceased and will therefore leave its members or subgroups to take up – wander randomly off to – whatever other causes may concern them. Looking from England I maybe don’t understand the world of Washington pressure groups too well, but I have a sense that Beinart is right or at least very plausible at this point. There is really a further implication, that neither Obama nor his supporters could work out what they really wanted to achieve, so that it’s not surprising that nothing came of it all.
Well, did nothing come of it? The reports of a Kerry Proposal seem to have faded away in favour of a vague feeling that there will be another round of peaces processes under another President. I thought at the beginning that there would be at least some public consensus, even if not a formal Proposal, about what the 2ss, inspired by what the NYT is now calling American principles, would look like. It seems that I was wrong, that it’s possible for there to be so much, so very much discussion among rational people with no idea emerging. The most that we seem to have gained is that this time there’s no consensus around talk of a Generous Offer by Israel, only a grumble about both sides being a bit unreasonable. We measure progress in steps that would disgrace the average baby.