Peter Beinart: “What Israel Is Doing in the Name of the Jewish People Is a Desecration”

From his home in New York, Jewish-American writer and commentator Peter Beinart has been watching events in Israel and Gaza with mounting grief — and growing determination to speak out. He recently talked to Haaretz about his shift from Zionism to anti-Zionism.

Beinart, once a staunch liberal Zionist, has undergone a profound ideological shift in recent years. No longer a defender of the two-state solution, he now advocates for full equality between Jews and Palestinians in a single state not defined as Jewish. His stance — uncomfortable even for liberal Israelis — reflects his conclusion that Zionism itself is the root of systemic inequality.

The transformation is captured in his recent book, Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, which became a New York Times bestseller earlier this year. In it, Beinart describes his anguish as a religious Jew over the war in Gaza, where he says the devastation inflicted on Palestinians represents a violation of the most basic Jewish moral commitments. “Are we honoring the idea of the image of God that exists in all human beings?” he asks. “When I see what Israel is doing in the name of the Jewish people and with my money as an American taxpayer, to me it is a desecration.”

Beinart points to the tens of thousands of children wounded and maimed in Gaza as a searing moral indictment. “There are more children with amputated limbs in Gaza than anywhere else on Earth,” he notes, adding that these images haunt him daily. For Beinart, Jewish identity is not simply about law, ritual, or tradition — but about honoring the humanity of others.

His position has brought sharp criticism from many Israelis, including former friends, who see his opposition to Zionism as betrayal. But Beinart insists his arguments come from solidarity, not hostility. “It’s difficult because it’s a set of values that comes from love,” he explains, “but that also led me to a place very different from most Israeli Jews.”

In conversation with Jon Stewart earlier this summer, Beinart argued that Jews are not safer in a state built on domination. Instead, he believes Jewish security lies in equality: “Ironically, Israel is currently the least safe place for Jews in the world. Jews are safer in the Diaspora.”

Beinart traces this conviction to his own upbringing. The child of South African immigrants who opposed apartheid, he grew up keenly aware of how systems of supremacy are justified in the name of survival. This legacy, he says, left him determined not to make the same moral compromises.

Today, he openly calls Israel an apartheid state — citing its segregated school systems, discriminatory laws, and military rule over Palestinians. He does not shy from analogies others avoid, comparing Israel’s policies to Jim Crow in the American South or colonial suppression in Kenya.

Beinart also challenges the discourse of eternal Jewish victimhood. Yes, Jews were victims of Hamas’s atrocities on 7 October and of antisemitism worldwide, he acknowledges. But he warns that framing Jews only as victims obscures the legal and political reality of Jewish supremacy in Israel-Palestine. “We should question not only chants like ‘globalize the intifada,’ but also slogans like ‘we stand with the IDF,’ because both legitimize violence against civilians,” he argues.

His message has found a receptive audience among younger American Jews, even as establishment organizations cling to unconditional support for Israel. Beinart calls this worship of Israel a dangerous form of idolatry: “It’s become something treated as extra-human, almost an object of worship, rather than recognizing that it’s a human creation capable of terrible things.”

For Beinart, resistance — rooted in Jewish tradition and moral obligation — is now essential. He invokes figures like Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. against the Vietnam War, and Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who fiercely opposed occupation. “I wonder what they would be saying at this time,” he reflects. “In my limited way, I tried to do the same.”

Source: Haaretz