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Peter Beinart Bends Truth in New York Times Essay Accusing American Jews of Idolatry

Peter Beinart, a prominent anti-Israel writer, being interviewed in January 2025. Photo: Screenshot
Israel has no right to exist, New York Times “contributing opinion writer” Peter Beinart writes in a new opinion article accusing “mainstream American Jewish life” of being idolatrous.
The article appears under a general-purpose headline: “States Don’t Have a Right to Exist. People Do.” Yet after a bit of throat-clearing and hypothetical speculation about Scotland, Britain, Iran, and China, Beinart gets down to making his case for eliminating Israel, or, as he delicately puts it, “rethinking the character of the state” by replacing Israel with something else.
The one country that Beinart is really determined to rethink just happens to be the only one with a Jewish majority. The URL or web address that the Times team gives the article also exposes the game, “https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/opinion/israel-state-jewish.html.”
This isn’t some sort of abstract political theory philosophy project — it’s an effort by Beinart, platformed by the New York Times, to wipe the Jewish state off the map. At this point, it’s predictable and tired. Beinart had already announced in the New York Times back in 2020, “I no longer believe in a Jewish state,” part of what earned him the status of the New York Times‘ most favorite Jew.
So what, if anything, is new in this latest Beinart screed? Beinart has a new book to publicize, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. It is issued by publisher Knopf, whose parent company, Bertelsmann AG, collaborated with the Nazis during World War II and subsequently covered it up.
As is often the case with hatred of Israel, Beinart’s article is marred by factual errors. He claims that “roughly half the people under Israeli control are Palestinian.” That’s simply false; Israel’s population is about 9.8 million, of which about 7.2 million, or 73 percent, are Jewish, according to Israel’s central bureau of statistics. Beinart’s math depends on defining people in Palestinian Authority-controlled Ramallah and Jenin, or in Hamas-controlled Gaza, as being “under Israeli control,” which is not accurate.
Beinart also falsely claims, “Even the minority of Palestinians under Israeli control who hold Israeli citizenship — sometimes called ‘Israeli Arabs’ — lack legal equality.” Just because a group suffers from discrimination or has lower achievement doesn’t mean it lacks legal equality. Israel’s Declaration of Independence states, “It will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture.” Israel’s Supreme Court has enforced that promise of equality. Israeli Arabs have the right to vote and serve in the Parliament. An Israeli Arab politician, Mansour Abbas, even recently served as a minister in an Israeli government.
Beinart also complains that “this form of idolatry — worship of the state — seems to suffuse mainstream American Jewish life.” That’s not true. Yes, most mainstream American Jews — unlike Beinart and, apparently, his New York Times editors — care deeply about Israel and oppose the enemies that hope to eradicate it. Yet the comparison to idolatry is inaccurate. It’s also inconsistent with Beinart’s previous claims. Already in his 2012 book The Crisis of Zionism, or even before that in his 2010 article “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” Beinart was predicting that American Jews would abandon Israel as it became, he claimed, more illiberal and right wing and undemocratic. Now, more than a decade later, he’s accusing American Jews not of abandoning Israel but of worshiping it. At least with his reference to “mainstream Jewish life” Beinart is defining himself clearly outside that. Given that, one wonders why the New York Times has chosen to rely so heavily for analysis of American Jewry and Israel on such an extremist, fringe figure.
I offered a couple of theories last year, including that “some portion of the Times online readership — alienated graduate students and other young, college educated liberals, along with increasing numbers of non-Americans — are looking for someone to give them a pass to hate Israel, basically to excuse their antisemitism. Beinart serves that function.”
In that regard, a Times colleague of Beinart’s offers some useful analysis. In a 2012 review for Tablet of a Beinart book, Bret Stephens, then still at the Wall Street Journal, paraphrased Leon Wieseltier’s observation “that characterizing antisemitic acts as a response to something Jews did doesn’t explain antisemitism. It reproduces it.”
From Beinart’s latest New York Times piece: “When you deny people basic rights, you subject them to tremendous violence. And, sooner or later, that violence endangers everyone. In 1956, a 3-year-old named Ziyad al-Nakhalah saw Israeli soldiers murder his father in the Gazan city of Khan Younis. Almost 70 years later, he heads Hamas’s smaller but equally militant rival, Islamic Jihad … The failure to protect the lives of Palestinians in Gaza ultimately endangers Jews. In this war, Israel has already killed more than one hundred times as many Palestinians in Gaza as it did in the massacre that took the life of Mr. al-Nakhalah’s father. How many 3-year-olds will still be seeking revenge seven decades from now?”
It’s amazing that Beinart blames “Israeli soldiers” for the “murder” of Ziyad al-Nakhalah’s father in 1956 in Khan Younis. In 1956, Egypt, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, controlled Gaza. A Jerusalem Post article describes it more accurately: “Nakhalah’s father, Rushdi, was killed during the joint Israeli-British-French attack on Egypt in response to the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956. The Gaza Strip back then was under Egyptian control.”
The New York Times itself provides useful historical context: A dispatch from Gaza on Nov. 2, 1956 reported that “at the roadside weary Israeli soldiers sat beside their weapons waiting for vehicles to remove them to points in the Gaza Strip where diehard commandos were offering resistance … Talking through interpreters to correspondents, residents of the Strip in the outskirts of Gaza said life as stateless displaced persons under the Egyptian government in the last eight years had not been happy. Although they had been allowed to vote in Egyptian elections this year, they said they had had none of the rights that had been given Egyptians on the other side of the Suez Canal zone.”
Another Times dispatch from Gaza, on Nov. 6, 1956, reported, “Israeli army units were cleaning out the last pockets of fedayeen (commando) squads … All along the road were wrecked and burned out Egyptian military vehicles and mobile weapons … Israeli troops expressed surprise at the joyous welcome they had received from Palestinian Arabs who had spent eight years under Egyptian control. There was no fear shown by the people, who seemed thankful that the Israelis had taken over the territory.”
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
The post Peter Beinart Bends Truth in New York Times Essay Accusing American Jews of Idolatry first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.