Beinart: Time for a Jewish conversation about Jewish power and responsibility

Beinart

Peter Beinart rolls out the “Zion Square” blog at Daily Beast today with a fabulous post about Jewish power and responsibility. The two state solution is probably dead, and Jews are capable of massacre.

The most important part of Beinart’s intervention is his acknowledgement of Jewish power. He is obviously going to talk about Jewish power in the U.S. establishment and surely will do some counting of Jews in prominent places. Good for him. Though the obvious problem with his “Zion Square” is that he calls this a “Jewish conversation.” This cannot be a Jewish conversation– particularly when it is hosted by Newsweek; no, it is an American conversation. Yes Jews are powerful; but are we so powerful that we must exclude all the other Americans who are affected by these policies? Including war! Help. Such framing only solidifies the problem it would address. (Jews cannot do this on their own. They need the strong voices of the people we victimized: the Palestinians. As Chris Hayes demonstrated yesterday. Beinart would seem to be rationalizing the fact that 7/10 speakers at his site are Jewish.)

My Beinart excerpt begins with Netanyahu’s gift of the Purim story to Obama last week.

But the Purim story doesn’t end with Haman’s plot being foiled; that’s the Disney version. It actually ends with Persia’s Jews retaliating with a massacre of their own.

Why didn’t Netanyahu tell that part of the story? Why don’t most American Jews know about it? For the same reason the American Jewish establishment doesn’t talk about [the settlement] Ariel: because in official Jewish discourse, the Jewish story begins with victimhood and end with survival. On the one hand, Jews delight in our newfound power. What could be more exhilarating for a people that seven decades ago were impotent to stop the Holocaust than seeing a Jewish state with nuclear weapons and an American Jewish community capable of making politicians pander in the most obsequious of ways? What is the AIPAC Conference if not a celebration of our own Purim-like transformation from terrifying weakness to intoxicating strength?  

But because the Jewish establishment still depicts Jews as victims, this celebration of power comes without the burden of responsibility. Again and again, Jewish power is described merely as a vehicle for Jewish survival. As if Jewish history means that Jews—unlike other human beings—can use power only to survive and not to destroy…

The US-led peace process is dead, perhaps permanently. The Zionist consensus that once undergirded diaspora Jewish life is collapsing. The two state solution for which many of us yearn grows ever more remote. Israel, America and Iran may soon be at war. It is time for a Jewish conversation that faces—rather than evades—the realities of our time.

P.S. Will Beinart talk about the Jewish (neocon/neolib) role in fomenting the Iraq war? I am holding my breath.