Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning

Beinart (The Crisis of Zionism), editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, issues an impassioned critique of the American Jewish community’s reaction to the war in Gaza. According to the author, “even Jews who are genuinely pained by Gaza’s agony” have convinced themselves that Israel’s outsize military response is necessary “to keep us safe,” hijacking historical narratives that frame Jews as a perennially victimized people as a justification for Israel to wield “life and death power over millions of Palestinians who lack even a passport.” To rebut such narratives, he draws from Israeli government records that attribute most of the Palestinian Arab departures from their homes and lands during the late 1940s to “Zionist attacks,” pointing to a deliberate strategy of expulsion to create a Jewish-majority state. In denying legal equality to most of the country’s Palestinian residents, Israel is “not merely offering Jews the right to determine their own lives” but “dominance over another people,” Beinart writes. He draws especially intriguing links between the “moral evasion” of what’s happening in Gaza by some diasporic Jews and increasing Jewish secularization, which, he argues, is replacing a more overtly moralistic “rabbinic tradition” that demands Jews “look inward and reckon with their sins.” Urgent and thought-provoking, this is sure to spark debate. (Jan.)