Gharib: Weiss writes, “And so when Peter Beinart reassures his friends in the Israel lobby that it is OK with him that Palestinians are second-class citizens in the Jewish state, one should ask, If you think that’s such a great system, why don’t you live there? We don’t do that to minorities here…”
I don’t think this is fair. Beinart can be criticized for bending over too far backwards for his goal of a Jewish State, but this “why don’t you live there?” line is specious.
Beinart never called for a tiered system of citizenship here, and I don’t know that the tack of ‘why don’t you leave?’ would be correct even if he did. Supremacists are entitled to their views in the U.S., though not to enact them as public policy. This is why many progressives nod their heads when the ACLU defends the right of the KKK to march peacefully and non-violently.
But for the same reason that we don’t treat minorities poorly (as second-class citizens, at least) right here in the ole Red White and Blue, we don’t ask questions about ‘why don’t you just leave America then.’ Likewise, methinks, with ‘why don’t you just go to Israel then.’ It comes off as a juvenile comeback, just as when conservatives do it.
We shouldn’t pose these ill-considered questions that attach consequences to the freedom of expression we should all enjoy — to say whatever we are thinking whenever we are thinking it, and having our ideas evaluated on their intellectual merits alone. Asking Beinart to condemn second-class citizenship in Israel does that; telling him to put up or shut up doesn’t. To my mind, it’s a straw-man that raises the attack of dual loyalty. On this issue, I like what Steve Walt has to say: that everyone is subject to a complex system of “competing loyalties” or interests. The ‘stay here or go there’ framing obfuscates this complexity.
With Peretz, it’s different: He did choose to live in Israel; we look at why.
This website focuses on fighting the ‘war of ideas.’ If you are confident that your ideas are upright, you shouldn’t need to resort to a tactic of saying ‘put your money where your mouth is.’ The tactic should be as simple as ‘your mouth saying the wrong things, professing bad ideas, and here’s why.’
Beinart, like others, should be allowed to be an American Zionist who stays in the Diaspora – he should be allowed to believe in any of the misguided or wrongheaded aspects of his ideology. If you’re convinced that his ideology is so bad, and you have any faith in humankind, you should be confident that by simply pointing out where Beinart is misguided and wrongheaded, the arc of history will bend away from him.
Weiss responds:
Maybe it came out wrong, Gharib, but what I was trying to say was, The guy chooses to live here not in Israel, which is fine, but why? Because he likes the system here more, which safeguards minorities (or like Jeffrey Goldberg, he realized he could go a lot further with his career here– again fine by me). What I have a problem with was him reassuring Goldberg, as I recall, well I don’t believe in equal rights for Palestinians and Jews in Israel. He’s down with two-tier citizenship in a country he doesn’t live in. And this is no idle comment; it helps sustain Jim Crow; and that’s when I say, Why don’t you live there? And, again, I think I know why: Because he likes our system more. And I’m saying if he had integrity, he would actually try and teach his friends, like Marty Peretz, about respecting minorities, rather than working to uphold a system of– etc.
