PETER BEINART ON “BIDEN’S MORAL FAILURE IN ISRAEL.”
Allan C. Brownfeld, Editor
Special Interest Report
December 2024
Writing in The New York Times (Oct. 8, 2024), Peter Beinart, an editor of Jewish
Currents, notes that, “Through unwavering backing of Israel, Mr. Biden has
effectively supported its unequal treatment and oppression of Palestinians—-
especially in Gaza—-and undermined the ethical rationale for his presidency…
Israel’s political system is explicitly based on religion and ethnicity. Most
of the Palestinians under Israeli control…can’t become citizens of the state
that dominates their lives.”
When it comes to Israel, writes Beinart, “Mr. Biden hasn’t supported equality
under the law. The war in Gaza has made that contradiction impossible to ignore.
It is most glaring when Biden expresses deep empathy for Israeli suffering but
relative indifference to the far larger number of dead Palestinians…In his final
speech to the U.N…what he didn’t acknowledge is that for many who believe in the
vision of equality…he has contributed to …despair by effectively treating
Palestinians as lesser human beings and treating Israel as above international
law.”
After Donald Trump’s victory in the November election, Peter Beinart provided
this assessment in The York Times (Nov. 7, 2024): “In this new era, in which
supporting Palestinian freedom has become central to what it means to be
progressive, the Palestinian exception is not just immoral, it is politically
disastrous…In the heavily Arab-American city of Dearborn, Michigan, Donald
Trump defeated Kamala Harris by six percentage points….Over the past year,
Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Palestinians—-funded by U.S. taxpayers and
live-streamed on social media—-has triggered one of the greatest surges of
progressive criticism in a generation. Many Americans roused to action by their
nation’s role in Gaza’s destruction have no personal connection to Palestine or
Israel. Like many Americans who protested apartheid or the Vietnam war, their
motive is not ethnic or religious, it is moral.”
Beinart concludes: “The outrage has been particularly intense among Black
Americans and the young…In February, the Council of Bishops of the African
Methodist Episcopal Church called the war in Gaza a ‘genocide’ and demanded that
the Biden-Harris administration stop funding it. In June, the NAACP urged an
end to weapons shipments. A June CBS News poll found voters under 30 opposed
arms sales to Israel by 3-1. Seventy-five per cent of Black voters supported
cutting off weapons…. the Biden administration kept sending weapons even after
Prime Minister Netanyahu expanded the war to Lebanon. Harris rebuffed a plea to
have a Palestinian speak to the Democratic convention…All that provided Mr.
Trump with an opportunity…. Democrats who claim to respect human equality and
international law must begin to align their policies on Israel and Palestine
with these broader principles…The Palestinian exception is not just immoral,
it’s politically disastrous. For a long time, Palestinians…have been paying for
that exception with their lives. Now Americans are paying too. It may cost us
our freedom.” *
|