Amanpour & Co., a CNN International show that also airs on public television, invited rabidly anti-Israel voice Peter Beinart to discuss his latest screed of a book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. Beinart, former editor for the once-respected liberal journal The New Republic and political analyst for the not-so-respected cable channel MSNBC and editor at the even more ridiculous Jewish Currents, made excuses for the deadly rape-cult Hamas and the atrocities it committed on October 7, 2023.
You know you’re making a hard-left argument if fellow journalist Michel Martin, who worries about Democrats as she co-hosts NPR's Morning Edition, is obliged to prod you politely (occasionally) from the center regarding your virulently anti-Israel premises.
Martin: This latest book is titled Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. It's not being Jewish after October 7th. It's not being Jewish after 1947. Why after the destruction of Gaza? Why is that the beginning point?
Beinart: Because I think that the Jewish community feels and wrestles with the horror of October 7th that we -- that's for all of us omnipresent. I'm doing it for myself, one of the most traumatic days of my life. I know people are already wrestling with the horror of that. But what led me to write this book was seeing so many good and decent people that I know who day after day after day somehow seem to be able to block out the scenes of what was happening in Gaza….most of the buildings are being destroyed, most of the schools, most of the hospitals, most of the agriculture, the number of children who've been killed just dwarfs what we've seen in Ukraine or almost any conflict of the 21st century, more child amputees than any other place in modern history...
This was not one of the “centrist” questions from Martin.
Martin: How did this understanding start for you? Because you have a reputation as a person who has long been concerned about Israel's role in the world, the way it manages its governance, of its territories, and the story it tells the world about itself.
Beinart’s actual reputation involves the fantasy of bringing Donald Trump to trial for war crimes and of bringing down the state of Israel so that Muslims and Jews will live in peace and harmony in a single state. Yeah, right.
Beinart explained that when he reached his thirties, he finally saw the light: “I had no idea what it really meant for people to live under the control of a state where they had no rights, where they couldn't become citizens, where they couldn't vote, where they lived under military law, where they needed military permission to travel….”
Beinart is overstating restrictions on Palestinians and ignoring why security measures were necessary (Terrorism? What terrorism?).
Martin quoted one of the book’s most offensive lines.
Martin: ….I want to talk about what you call the story that Jewish people tell themselves about being history's permanent, virtuous victims. What do you mean by that?
Beinart: ….if you want to understand this terrible act of violence by Hamas, you have to be willing to face the fact that Palestinians live without basic rights….
Martin perhaps felt obliged to steer the conversation toward a recognizable moral reality.
Martin: Peter, one of the points that you make in your book is that criticizing the way Israel conducts itself on the world stage and the way Israel conducts itself within Gaza and the West Bank is not the same as being anti-Semitic, OK? But you can acknowledge, can you not, that Hamas and Hezbollah are, that Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups have been or are anti-Semitic and want to kill Jews. So, how should we think about that?
Beinart: The way I think about it is that when people are denied their rights, they resist that oppression. And they do so in a range of ways. Some of which are ethical and humane, some of which are unethical and inhumane….
