Book review: ‘The Crisis of Zionism,’ by Peter Beinart
Still, Beinart’s voice is heard far and wide. He publishes much-discussed newspaper op-eds, his book will be widely reviewed, and his speaking tour will undoubtedly take him to many Jewish community centers and synagogues. Those who don’t get to see him in the flesh can click on his new blog devoted entirely to this topic on the Daily Beast.
And yet for his most passionate followers, the attention will not be enough until Beinart’s views are read and wholly accepted by every self-identified liberal. Late last month, Andrew Sullivan — a blogger with an enormous following — was presenting Beinart as an unheeded prophet speaking truth to a monolithic, repressive Jewish power center: “Repeat after me what the greater Israel lobby and its acolytes will be chanting for the next few weeks: Ignore. Peter. Beinart.”
While his book is based almost entirely on newspaper clippings and other second-hand sources, Beinart and his supporters must be credited with some real creativity. They have introduced their own repressive litmus test, this one to determine who can be considered both a liberal American and a Zionist: If you disagree with the current Israeli administration but don’t regard it as a font of evil and corruption, you are blind, deaf and dumb. “Acting ethically in an age of Jewish power,” Beinart writes, “means confronting not only the suffering that gentiles endure but the suffering that Jews cause” —which he follows with a set of very specific prescriptions, including a controversial partial boycott of goods made in what Beinart calls “nondemocratic Israel.”
And so against what they see as the self-satisfied and delusional monolith of the American Jewish establishment, Beinart and his supporters are now erecting their own self-satisfied and delusional monolith, calculated to appeal to disillusioned Jewish summer camp alumni, NPR listeners and other beautiful souls who want the Holy Land to be a better place but do not have the time or ability to study the issues, learn the languages or talk to the people on both sides whose hearts have been broken over and over again by prophets making phony promises.
Here is what those people know: Peace will be made only by Israelis and Palestinians together, and when it comes, the American Jewish community will support it, as it has every effort toward peace in the past. American Jews will not save Israel, and Peter Beinart will not save American Jews. With “The Crisis of Zionism,” Beinart has indeed transformed himself into a spokesman for some. But in the process, he has ruined his chance to be a leader for many.
These books offer keen insights into leadership and management challenges, which on a day-to-day basis can bring their own dramas, twisting plot lines and, in this city, political intrigue.
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