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Peter Beinart Thinks He Is a ‘Good Jew’ — The Truth Is Anything But
Peter Beinart. Photo: Joe Mabel via Wikimedia Commons.
In April 2024, Guardian columnist Naomi Klein said that Zionism is a “project that commits genocide in” the name of the world’s Jews. We argued at the time that this op-ed was one of the most despicable pieces published at the outlet in the 15 years we’ve been monitoring their content.
Last week, they published an essay by Peter Beinart (adapted from his new book) that arguably has the potential to incite even more hatred against Jews than Klein’s screed.
Beinart, a Guardian columnist, is a former “Liberal Zionist” turned anti-Zionist, and now fancies himself one of the few Jewish voices brave enough to speak out about what he claims is the moral corruption at the core of Zionism — which he’s characterized as “supremacism” — and the Jewish community more broadly.
He also largely blamed the Oct. 7th massacre on Israel’s long “denial of Palestinian freedom,” and began describing the IDF’s early response to Hamas’ pogrom, including even the relocation of Palestinian civilians to keep them out of harm’s way, as “monstrous crime” and another potential “Nakba,” before even the ground invasion began.
He focuses his Guardian essay on the “dark side” of Purim, which he likens with Jewish support for the “slaughter in Gaza.”
What’s the “dark side” of Purim to Beinart?
Writing as if he’s the only Jew who’s ever read the Megillah — and then serving the role of a Jewish informer, “revealing” to non-Jews the sinister truth about this seemingly joyous Jewish festival — Beinart chides the Jewish community for “forgetting” that the book of Esther doesn’t end with Haman’s execution after his plan to annihilate the Jews was thwarted.
Since the genocidal edict couldn’t be annulled, Beinart recounts, Jews were allowed to defend themselves by striking, “slaying and destroying” their “enemies with the sword.”
The Jews, he adds, “killed 75,000 people” and then declare the 14th “a day of feasting and merrymaking.”
He then writes that “with the blood of their foes barely dry, the Jews feast and make merry” — before warning, in a sentence that “Purim isn’t only about the danger Gentiles pose to us. It’s also about the danger we pose to them.” [emphasis added]
The Book of Esther, however, couldn’t be clearer that the Jews’ enemies prepared a genocide, and Jews fought back and killed their enemies, preventing the genocide.
Though this is indeed cause for celebration, antisemites through the ages have distorted and weaponized the text, claiming it shows that Jews are vengeful, bloodthirsty, and even genocidal.
Beinart’s agenda here in using rhetoric redolent of the ancient blood libel, about the “blood-soaked massacre” celebrated during Purim, is clear, as he begins pivoting to Israeli sins, and, eventually, to the Gaza war, moralizing that “today, these blood-soaked verses should unsettle us.”
Why should we be “unsettled”?
Beinart answers that by chiding contemporary Jews for a “false innocence” when discussing Israel. He criticizes Israelis and Jews who (correctly!) point out that “the Palestinian refugee issue originated in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.” In Beinart’s telling, the attack by five Arab armies of the nascent Jewish State was justifiable — a war launched to protect the Palestinians from the Jews.
Turing to Gaza, he not only blames “establishment Jewish officials” for promoting what he suggests is a lie — or, at least, a huge exaggeration — that Hamas uses Palestinians civilians as human shields, which vastly increases the number of non-combatants killed, but seems to defend the terror group’s use of human shields, writing that this tactic is “typical of insurgent groups.”
Mocking those who would hold the terror group itself responsible for hiding fighters and weapons in homes, mosques, and hospitals, and using a tunnel system below civilian infrastructure, Beinart wonders what precisely Hamas should do, “put on brightly colored uniforms, walk into an open field, and take on a vastly more powerful conventional army?! ”
The answer is painfully obvious to all but the most extreme anti-Zionist ideologues: they shouldn’t have attacked Israel and slaughtered Jews in the first place.
To most Jews, Beinart continues in his complaint, the “human shield” argument is designed “to prove that Israel is always innocent“ — and that the state is never the author of Palestinian suffering. In this, we see the stunning moral obtuseness that informs his discourse on Judaism and Israel.
For anti-Zionist Jews like Beinart, it is Palestinians who are never assigned agency, but, instead, are infantilized, with their deep-seated antisemitic pathos framed as a legitimate grievance.
Whether we’re discussing the Palestinian leadership’s alliance with Hitler, their opposition to the 1947 UN Partition Plan, decades of terrorism, including the Second Intifada, which was launched during the peak of the peace process, or the rejection of several Israeli offers of Palestinian statehood, bad Palestinian decisions are inevitably framed in a way exculpating Palestinians, while imputing an Israeli root cause.
At his core, Beinart refuses to hold Palestinians morally culpable for participating in, supporting, or providing succor to, the death cult whose bloody pogromists murdered, raped, tortured and mutilated Jews with glee — and whose leaders knew full well that the response to their unprovoked attack would bring untold suffering to civilians.
Moreover, no lessons were learned by the pro-Palestinian movement on that dark Shabbat day. Instead of anything resembling self-reflection, most, as Beinart’s reaction in the days and months following the massacre showed, actually doubled down on their beliefs, intensifying their denunciations of Israel.
“Western activists for Palestinians,” Shany Mor wrote, “are dedicated to two nearly theological precepts: that Israel is evil, and that no Palestinian action is ever connected to any Palestinian outcome”. Hamas’s gruesome attack, he concluded, “poses a threat to this worldview, and the only way to resolve it is by heightening Israel’s imagined malevolence. The terrorist atrocities don’t trigger a recoiling from the cause in whose name they were carried out; they lead to an even greater revulsion at the victim.”
Finally, Peter Beinart is not a self-hating Jew.
Rather, he fancies himself a better Jew — in fact, one of the very few genuinely “good Jews.” In his book, Trials of the Diaspora, Anthony Julius calls Jews like Beinart “scourges” — a term which relates to their self-anointed role as prophets, whipping the wayward Jewish people into line. By indicting most Jews, and the Jewish State, he puts himself on the “right” side of the moral divide, proclaiming his own superiority to the ruck of his sinful fellow Jews.
What Beinart now peddles, Haviv Rettig Gur observed, “is an ideologically updated version of the same claim of deep-seated and defining criminality in the Jews” as Theobald of Cambridge, a Jewish convert to Christianity who leveled the first known accusation that Jews ritually murder Christian children. Beinart, a convert to anti-Zionism, confirms “to our tormentors that [Jews’] criminality is the distillation and apotheosis of the great evils of our age”.
The fact The Guardian employed Peter Beinart’s services as a Jewish informer, a modern-day Theobold, should surprise nobody.
Adam Levick serves as co-editor of CAMERA UK – an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a different version of this article appeared.
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US Vetoes UN Security Council Demand for Gaza Ceasefire
Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion, as seen from Israel, June 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The United States vetoed a UN Security Council demand on Wednesday for an “immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire” between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza and unhindered aid access across the enclave.
“The United States has been clear we would not support any measure that fails to condemn Hamas and does not call for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza,” Acting US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea told the council before the vote.
“This resolution would undermine diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire that reflects the realities on the ground, and embolden Hamas,” she said of the text that was put forward by 10 countries on the 15-member council.
The remaining 14 council members voted in favor of the draft resolution.
Israel has rejected calls for an unconditional or permanent ceasefire, saying Hamas cannot stay in Gaza. It has renewed its military offensive in Gaza – also seeking to free hostages held by Hamas – since ending a two-month ceasefire in March.
The war in Gaza has raged since 2023 after Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people in Israel in an Oct. 7 attack and took some 250 hostages back to the enclave.
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Trump Picks Lawyer Who Called Oct. 7 Attack a ‘Psyop’ to Lead Federal Watchdog Agency
Paul Ingrassia. Photo: Screenshot
Paul Ingrassia, a 29-year-old lawyer who was recently nominated by US President Donald Trump to lead a federal agency dedicated to combating corruption and protecting whistleblowers, seemingly dismissed the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2o23, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel as a “psyop,” or “psychological operation, in resurfaced social media posts.
“This ‘war’ is yet another psyop to distract Americans from celebrating Columbus Day,” Ingrassia wrote on X/Twitter on Oct. 8, 2023.
“I think we could all admit at this stage that Israel/Palestine, much like Ukraine before it, and BLM before that, and covid/vaccine before that, was another psyop,” he posted a week later. “But sadly, people fell for it. And they’ll fall for the next one too.”
On the actual day of the Oct. 7 massacre, Ingrassia compared illegal immigration into the US to the Hamas-led onslaught.
“The amount of energy everyone has put into condemning Hamas (and prior to that, the Ukraine conflict) over the past 24 hours should be the same amount of energy we put into condemning our wide open border, which is a war comparable to the attack on Israel in terms of bloodshed — but made worse by the fact that it’s occurring in our very own backyard,” he posted. “We shouldn’t be beating the war drum, however tragic the events may be overseas, until we resolve our domestic problems first.”
Trump announced last week that he picked Ingrassia to serve as head of the US Office of Special Counsel, a position that requires confirmation by the Senate.
The Office of Special Counsel is an independent federal ethics agency that works to ensure fairness and accountability within the government. Ingrassia’s role, if he is confirmed, would involve investigating claims of wrongdoing, such as retaliation against whistleblowers or improper political activity in the workplace. The official can recommend disciplinary action and reports serious findings to Congress, helping to protect federal employees and uphold the integrity of the civil service system.
Ingrassia also maintains a relationship with and defends alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate, who has promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media. Tate wrote on X/Twitter that he refuses to “listen to women, Mexicans, or Jews” and that Jewish people are “subverting Western populations into mass genetic suicide” by advancing what he described as misguided immigration policy. Tate has also accused Israel of committing a “genocide” in Gaza against Palestinians and engaged in Holocaust denialism.
The furor surrounding Ingrassia is the latest dustup the Trump administration has had regarding controversial personnel and antisemitism.
The Trump administration’s appointment of Kingsley Wilson as deputy press secretary at the Department of Defense also sparked widespread criticism due to her history of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories and extremist views. Wilson, formerly associated with the Center for Renewing America, has a documented history of social media posts endorsing white supremacist ideologies, including claims about the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank — a Jewish man whose wrongful conviction and subsequent murder galvanized the founding of the Anti-Defamation League. In 2023, she tweeted that Frank “raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl,” a statement aligning with neo-Nazi narratives.
Late last month, the Pentagon announced that Wilson will be promoted and serve as the department’s new press secretary.
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US Congress Pushes to Designate Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization
US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaking at a press conference about the United States restricting weapons for Israel, at the US Capitol, Washington, DC. Photo: Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Members of the US Congress are moving quickly to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as an official terrorist organization.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced on Tuesday that he will reintroduce an updated version of the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act.
“In the coming days, I will be circulating and re-introducing a modernized version of the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, which I have been pushing for my entire Senate career,” he posted on X/Twitter. “The Muslim Brotherhood used the Biden administration to consolidate and deepen their influence, but the Trump administration and Republican Congress can no longer afford to avoid the threat they pose to Americans and American national security.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) sent a letter to the White House on Tuesday asking US President Donald Trump to open an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood, saying that the group maintains “a documented history of promoting extremist ideologies.”
“Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE all declared the Muslim Brotherhood an FTO [foriegn terrorist organization] over a decade ago, and France is considering its own action. Following suit would help the US disrupt the Muslim Brotherhood’s ability to recruit and finance terror around the globe,” Moskowitz wrote on X/Twitter.
The push to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood gained momentum last month, when the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) organized a meeting to help members of Congress develop “strategies to ban the growing threat of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States,” the research group said in a press release.
“The Muslim Brotherhood appears to be the intellectual inspiration behind all Islamist groups (and their jihadist offshoots) that operate today, such as ISIS, al Qaeda, and Hamas,” ISGAP wrote in a 2023 report. “Sunni jihadist groups are grounded in the firm ideological roots that key MB [Muslim Brotherhood] ideologues pioneered in the last century.”
Hamas, the internationally designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades and perpetrated the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust with its invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, is a Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Both Cruz and Moskowitz noted that Hamas is a “branch” and an “affiliate” of the global Islamist movement.
While several countries in the Middle East have already classified the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, the United States has yet to do the same, despite several attempts by Congress over the years. During Trump’s first term in office, officials in both the White House and Congress took initial steps toward sanctioning the group’s international branches, but a formal designation was never finalized.
US lawmakers believe they have identified multiple pathways to economically cripple the internationally designated terror organization. Congress could combat the Muslim Brotherhood by designating it a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) or placing it on the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) list. Both options would levy heavy penalties on the group through methods such as freezing its assets or sanctioning its leadership.
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