Peter Beinart On “Biden’s Moral Failure In Israel.”

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.” *