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Why the New York Times Audience, and Its Editors, Find Peter Beinart so Appealing
Thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators from the Midwest gather in support of Palestinians and hold a rally and march through the Loop in Chicago on Oct. 21, 2023. Photo: Alexandra Buxbaum/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Since the Hamas terror group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the New York Times has relied on a journalism professor at the City University of New York, Peter Beinart, as its most prominent opinion page voice on the war.
Sure, the Times has highlighted other voices writing about the topic on its opinion pages, including Bret Stephens, Thomas Friedman, and Nicholas Kristof. But it’s Beinart whose work gets showcased with huge play on the front of the Sunday Opinion section, as it was on Sunday, Oct. 15, and as it was again this past Sunday, March 24.
Unfortunately for the Times and its readers, Beinart is an unreliable guide to the issue. He cherry-picks data and overstates his case. He piles up a mountain of misleading half-truths in the services of a giant lie, his false claim in his latest piece that Zionism and “liberalism” are irreconcilable.
To begin with, it’s not even accurate that “liberalism” has “for more than half a century … defined American Jewish identity,” as Beinart claims. In an article that occupies two broadsheet interior pages plus a graphic-only entire front cover of the Sunday opinion section, Beinart never defines what he means by “liberalism.” He nods at “movements for civil, women’s, labor, and gay rights,” but he doesn’t explain how backing the Hamas side of the war against Israel is consistent with liberalism, given Hamas’ subjugation of women, use of sexual assault, and killing of gay people. He doesn’t make clear if he means classical liberalism or liberalism-as-progressivism or something else. Nor does he really address any serious tensions, other than Zionism, between Judaism and liberalism-as-however-he-means-it. There might be some, as there are with Christianity, too.
Beinart devotes a lot of time to a sort of guilt by association and argument-by-endorsement. He links Israel with Elise Stefanik, Elon Musk, and Viktor Orban, and Israel’s critics with the United Automobile Workers, Human Rights Watch, and Ta-Nehesi Coates. Yet Beinart doesn’t mention that Israel has plenty of totally unsavory enemies on both the left and the right, and plenty of durable allies on the left, too—Ritchie Torres, John Fetterman, Alma Hernandez, Brad Schneider, Steny Hoyer.
Beinart saying you can’t be liberal and support Israel is the mirror-image of former President Trump saying you can’t be pro-Israel and vote for Democrats; it’s an opinion, but Beinart hypes up his own wishful thinking as if he’s empirically describing a break that is actually underway: “the rupture,” “an ideological tremor,” “an earthquake.”
A substantial section of Beinart’s piece is devoted to the false accusation that pro-Israel Jews oppose free speech. Actually, as Dara Horn memorably explained, “the problem was not that Jewish students on American university campuses didn’t want free speech, or that they didn’t want to hear criticism of Israel. Instead, they didn’t want people vandalizing Jewish student organizations’ buildings, or breaking or urinating on the buildings’ windows. They didn’t want people tearing their mezuzahs down from their dorm-room doors. They didn’t want their college instructors spouting antisemitic lies and humiliating them in class. They didn’t want their posters defaced with Hitler caricatures … They didn’t want people punching them in the face, or beating them with a stick.”
To the extent that “speech” has anything to do with it, it’s more the stunning double standard between zero campus tolerance of speech that makes some groups uncomfortable and free-speech-absolutism for cheering on Jew-killing terrorist groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
It’s all not even a surprise: Beinart has been publicly bashing Israel in the pages of the New York Times since at least 2012, when, under the headline, “To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements,” he claimed, again falsely, “Through its pro-settler policies, Israel is forging one political entity between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — an entity of dubious democratic legitimacy, given that millions of West Bank Palestinians are barred from citizenship and the right to vote in the state that controls their lives.” In 2020, Beinart declared in the Times, “I no longer believe in a Jewish state.”
Given the lack of intellectual rigor, given the inaccuracies, both small-scale and big-picture, given the sloppiness of the arguments, given the utter predictability, you have to wonder, why does the Times run so much of this stuff?
I have a couple of theories.
The first is personality driven. The upper ranks of Times opinion editing have gotten taken over by individuals — editorial director Allison Benedikt, Sunday opinion editor Max Strasser — who are generally in sympathy, substantively, with Beinart in terms of their hostility to Israel.
The second is customer driven. 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.
One day a few weeks after Oct. 7, I showed up to observe one of the anti-Israel rallies at Harvard, and I was surprised to see it begin with some woman who identified herself as a Jew telling everyone in attendance to remember her, their “Jewish friend,” if they felt worried that anything they were doing during the rest of the event was antisemitic. For Times readers, Beinart is the equivalent of that person — a permission-giver. When Beinart asserts “there’s nothing antisemitic” about wanting to wipe Israel, as a Jewish state, off the map, the Times readers experience it as liberating.
Beinart writes that “for an American Jewish establishment that equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, those anti-Zionist Jews are inconvenient.” But the Times‘ audience, and Beinart’s, isn’t the American Jewish establishment. That establishment is solidly behind Israel. The Times audience is Israel-haters. For them, the equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is inconvenient, and the existence of Beinart offers a way to hate Israel while avoiding the guilt that might otherwise accompany discrimination against Jews.
Beinart pats the liberal Times readers on the back, reassuring them that not only is there no conflict between liberalism and hating Israel, it’s actually their responsibility as good liberals to hate Israel. That the Times can find a commercial audience for the enablement of Israel-hate doesn’t make the core message any less of a lie.
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 Why the New York Times Audience, and Its Editors, Find Peter Beinart so Appealing first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US House Members Ask Marco Rubio to Bar Turkey From Rejoining F-35 Program
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard
A bipartisan coalition of more than 40 US lawmakers is pressing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to prevent Turkey from rejoining the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, citing ongoing national security concerns and violations of US law.
Members of Congress on Thursday warned that lifting existing sanctions or readmitting Turkey to the US F-35 fifth-generation fighter program would “jeopardize the integrity of F-35 systems” and risk exposing sensitive US military technology to Russia. The letter pointed to Ankara’s 2017 purchase of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system, despite repeated US warnings, as the central reason Turkey was expelled from the multibillion-dollar fighter jet program in 2019.
“The S-400 poses a direct threat to US aircraft, including the F-16 and F-35,” the lawmakers wrote. “If operated alongside these platforms, it risks exposing sensitive military technology to Russian intelligence.”
The group of signatories, spanning both parties, stressed that Turkey still possesses the Russian weapons systems and has shown “no willingness to comply with US law.” They urged Rubio and the Trump administration to uphold the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and maintain Ankara’s exclusion from the F-35 program until the S-400s are fully removed.
The letter comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed during a NATO summit in June that Ankara and Washington have begun discussing Turkey’s readmission into the program.
Lawmakers argued that reversing course now would undermine both US credibility and allied confidence in American defense commitments. They also warned it could disrupt development of the next-generation fighter jet announced by the administration earlier this year.
“This is not a partisan issue,” the letter emphasized. “We must continue to hold allies and adversaries alike accountable when their actions threaten US interests.”
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US Lawmakers Urge Treasury to Investigate Whether Irish Bill Targeting Israel Violates Anti-Boycott Law
A pro-Hamas demonstration in Ireland led by nationalist party Sinn Fein. Photo: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne
A group of US lawmakers is calling on the Treasury Department to investigate and potentially penalize Ireland over proposed legislation targeting Israeli goods, warning that the move could trigger sanctions under longstanding US anti-boycott laws.
In a letter sent on Thursday to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 16 Republican members of Congress expressed “serious concerns” about Ireland’s recent legislative push to ban trade with territories under Israeli administration, including the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
The letter, spearheaded by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), called for the US to “send a clear signal” that any attempts to economically isolate Israel will “carry consequences.”
The Irish measure, introduced by Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Simon Harris, seeks to prohibit the import of goods and services originating from what the legislation refers to as “occupied Palestinian territories,” including Israeli communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Supporters say the bill aligns with international law and human rights principles, while opponents, including the signatories of the letter, characterize it as a direct extension of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel as a step toward the destruction of the world’s lone Jewish state.
Some US lawmakers have also described the Irish bill as an example of “antisemitic hate” that could risk hurting relations between Dublin and Washington.
“Such policies not only promote economic discrimination but also create legal uncertainty for US companies operating in Ireland,” the lawmakers wrote in this week’s letter, urging Bessent to determine whether Ireland’s actions qualify as participation in an “unsanctioned international boycott” under Section 999 of the Internal Revenue Code, also known as the Ribicoff Amendment.
Under that statute, the Treasury Department is required to maintain a list of countries that pressure companies to comply with international boycotts not sanctioned by the US. Inclusion on the list carries tax-reporting burdens and possible penalties for American firms and individuals doing business in those nations.
“If the criteria are met, Ireland should be added to the boycott list,” the letter said, arguing that such a step would help protect US companies from legal exposure and reaffirm American opposition to economic efforts aimed at isolating Israel.
Legal experts have argued that if the Irish bill becomes law, it could chase American capital out of the country while also hurting companies that do business with Ireland. Under US law, it is illegal for American companies to participate in boycotts of Israel backed by foreign governments. Several US states have also gone beyond federal restrictions to pass separate measures that bar companies from receiving state contracts if they boycott Israel.
Ireland has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel on the international stage since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, leading the Jewish state to shutter its embassy in Dublin.
Last year, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, a decision that Israel described as a “reward for terrorism.”
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US Families File Lawsuit Accusing UNRWA of Supporting Hamas, Hezbollah
A truck, marked with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) logo, crosses into Egypt from Gaza, at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, during a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah, Egypt, Nov. 27, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
American families of victims of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks have filed a lawsuit against the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, accusing the organization of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing material support to the Islamist terror groups behind the deadly assaults.
Last week, more than 200 families filed a lawsuit in a Washington, DC district court accusing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing funding and support to Hamas and Hezbollah, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
The lawsuit alleges that UNRWA employs staff with direct ties to the Iran-backed terror group, including individuals allegedly involved in carrying out attacks against the Jewish state.
However, UNRWA has firmly denied the allegations, labeling them as “baseless” and condemning the lawsuit as “meritless, absurd, dangerous, and morally reprehensible.”
According to the organization, the lawsuit is part of a wider campaign of “misinformation and lawfare” targeting its work in the Gaza Strip, where it says Palestinians are enduring “mass, deliberate and forced starvation.”
The UN agency reports that more than 150,000 donors across the United States have supported its programs providing food, medical aid, education, and trauma assistance in the war-torn enclave amid the ongoing conflict.
In a press release, UNRWA USA affirmed that it will continue its humanitarian efforts despite facing legal challenges aimed at undermining its work.
“Starvation does not pause for politics. Neither will we,” the statement read.
Last year, Israeli security documents revealed that of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza, 440 were actively involved in Hamas’s military operations, with 2,000 registered as Hamas operatives.
According to these documents, at least nine UNRWA employees took part directly in the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Israeli officials also uncovered a large Hamas data center beneath UNRWA headquarters, with cables running through the facility above, and found that Hamas also stored weapons in other UNRWA sites.
The UN agency has also aligned with Hamas in efforts against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli and US-backed program that delivers aid directly to Palestinians, blocking Hamas from diverting supplies for terror activities and selling them at inflated prices.
These Israeli intelligence documents also revealed that a senior Hamas leader, killed in an Israeli strike in September 2024, had served as the head of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon, where Lebanon is based,
UNRWA’s education programs have been found by IMPACT-se, an international organization that monitors global education, to contribute to the radicalization of younger generations of Palestinians.