Book review: ‘The Crisis of Zionism,’ by Peter Beinart

Many books have been written on the Israeli-Palestinian struggle — by reporters, elected officials, diplomats, novelists, poets, human rights workers, Nobel laureates and ordinary citizens. But Peter Beinart’s “The Crisis of Zionism” stands out not least for the avalanche of attention it has received even before publication. It is also unusual because it offers little in the way of personal reporting on the Israelis or the Palestinians themselves. Instead, Beinart’s book is mainly about the response to this searing and seemingly intractable conflict among American Jews, who, though living far from the dusty battlegrounds, are nonetheless regarded as the linchpin by certain people on both ends of the political spectrum.

Beinart frames his book as a passionate polemic on the fatal threat that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank poses to that country’s liberal democratic ideals. The object of his jeremiad is not Israeli rightists or Palestinian terror groups but the American Jewish establishment — presented here as a monolithic cartel of powerful groups and individuals who Beinart tells us have closed their eyes to the disintegration of Israel’s higher ideals while lobbying Congress and the administration for whatever their benighted Middle Eastern brethren desire.

"The Crisis of Zionism" by Peter Beinart

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Beinart, once nearly a card-carrying member of this group, has come to abhor it. Israel, he argues, must find a way to be a homeland for one particular minority group — Jews — and still adhere to the strict imperatives of American-style liberal democracy. “Today, it is failing,” he writes, “and American Jews are helping it fail.”

“The Crisis of Zionism” is most interesting when seen for what it is, at least in part: a political stump speech for an attractive young candidate who is seeking the job of spokesman for liberal American Jews. In the pre-publication run-up, Beinart has been doing quite well, having gained the enthusiastic endorsement of certain sectors of the American Jewish community as well as former president Bill Clinton (who blurbed the book) and Jeremy Ben-Ami, leader of the self-defined liberal pro-Israel organization J Street.

Beinart has many points in his favor: He is young but seasoned, he edited the New Republic, he is active in his Orthodox synagogue. It is easy to see why many younger Jews might prefer to see him featured on CNN as a Jewish spokesman in place of the balding men in suits or enraged Israeli consular officials who are often, by whatever baffling process, chosen to fill that role.

But after reading his book, I am sorry to say that I will not be pulling the lever for Beinart. This is may be surprising, since I heartily endorse many of his talking points about the moral and political corruption that the occupation has engendered — a position that, in fact, places us both among the vast majority of American Jews. Yet I cannot subscribe to the book’s fundamental thrust, which suggests something disappointingly problematic about Beinart’s campaign.

“The Crisis of Zionism” is, in part, a history of a specific current of American Jewish life: the small, liberal Zionist groups that have, for decades, opposed the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Beinart tells this tale in a lively, character-driven narrative that underscores the moral and political urgency of the issues. He then uses this history as a foundation for eloquent denunciations of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, highlighting the mistakes and general misguidedness of some very powerful Jewish groups and ruing the dissolution of Israel’s once-noble cause.