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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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Five windows were smashed at Kehillat Shaarei Torah synagogue in north Toronto—police are investigating
Kehillat Shaarei Torah synagouge at 2640 Bayview Ave. in Toronto on April 19, 2024.
The post Five windows were smashed at Kehillat Shaarei Torah synagogue in north Toronto—police are investigating appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Nearly One in Five Young People Sympathize With Hamas, 29% Say US Should Reduce or End Alliance With Israel: Poll
Illustrative: 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
A greater proportion of young Americans sympathize with the Palestinian people and government than with the Israeli people and government, while almost one in five sympathize with Hamas and a growing number want the US to end or reduce its alliance with the Jewish State, according to a new poll.
The national poll — released by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School — was of Americans aged 18-29. It found that while 52 percent of young people sympathize with Israelis, 56 percent sympathize with the Palestinian people.
The story remained the same when it came to governments: 32 percent of respondents said they sympathize with the Palestinian government, and only 29 percent said they sympathize with the Israeli government. The question did not make clear whether it was referring only to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, or both the PA and Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group that rules Gaza.
According to the poll, 17 percent of young Americans said they support Hamas; however, when asked with the added context that Hamas is an “Islamist militant group,” support dropped to 13 percent.
Meanwhile, 29 percent said they believe the US should either no longer be an ally of Israel or reduce its allyship toward the Jewish state, and 32 percent said Israel’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre — when the terror group invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and took more than 250 hostages — was not justified. For both of these questions, though, a plurality of respondents said they were unsure.
Notably, support for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza was strong among young people — with 51 percent supporting it and just 10 percent opposing it. Only 6 percent of Democrats said they do not support a permanent ceasefire.
The question did not distinguish between a permanent ceasefire on the condition of the release of the hostages versus an unconditional permanent ceasefire, which would allow Hamas to keep all of its captives.
The Harvard poll was consistent with others on the opinions of young people regarding Israel and its war with Hamas. Traditionally, support for Israel has been strong among the American people. However, a greater proportion of young people are now questioning that support — and, in some cases, explicitly siding with enemies of the United States and Israel, such as Hamas.
A Harvard-Harris poll from October found young people (ages 18-24) were split almost down the middle when asked, as a binary choice, whether they support Israel or Hamas in the war. Additionally, a majority of young people have said they believe Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack was justified on the basis of legitimate grievance. Another poll found 51 percent said that Israel should be “ended” as a country and “given to Hamas and the Palestinians.”
These extreme views have manifested as concrete action, with large pro-Hamas protests occurring on college campuses. Most recently, at Columbia University in New York, anti-Israel demonstrators set up an encampment in the middle of campus. Protests that accompanied it — some off campus — included chants of “Al-Qassam [Hamas], you make us proud, kill another soldier now!” and “there is only one solution, intifada revolution.” Individuals also proclaimed, “We are all Hamas,” and one person yelled at two Jews, “Never forget the 7th of October. That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10…100…1000…10,000…The 7th of October is going to be every day for you.”
“Never forget the 7th of October. That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10…100…1000…10,000…The 7th of October is going to be every day for you.”
Protestors screamed this at two Jewish @Columbia students right outside campus gates tonight. pic.twitter.com/VYp0tFudGj
— Jonas Du (@jonasydu) April 19, 2024
The latest Harvard University poll was conducted from March 14-21 among 2,010 young Americans and has a margin of error of +/-3.02.
The post Nearly One in Five Young People Sympathize With Hamas, 29% Say US Should Reduce or End Alliance With Israel: Poll first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Police Stop Anti-Zionist Agitators From Accessing Florida University President’s Home as Students Revolt Nationwide
Illustrative: Pro-Hamas students rallying at Harvard University. Photo: Reuters/Brian Snyder
An extremist anti-Zionist group on Thursday was prevented by local police from marching to the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential House at Florida International University (FIU), which is the home of school president Kenneth A. Jessell.
According to the campus newspaper Panther Now, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) planned the action as part of “Palestinian Prisoner Day,” an event held by the group to honor terrorists who are detained in Israel. As the demonstrators approached Jessell’s home, a blockade of police formed to obstruct their path.
Despite the aggression displayed in marching a mob to someone’s residence, the students complained that the police’s response was disproportionate to any threat they may have posed.
“Take a look over there. Do you know how many cop cars are there? All these cops for a bunch of students who are just chanting,” SJP co-president Zuhra Alchtar was quoted by Panther Now as saying when the police arrived on the scene. “The ivory tower gets so shaken when a bunch of people speak. They can’t stand it. They have to call the big guns; they have to call the priority response team.”
The demonstration came as anti-Zionist students across the US have been recently crossing the line from peaceful expressions of free speech to riotous behavior, flagrantly violating school rules, disrupting business, and even exposing Jewish students to racist and antisemitic rhetoric unlike any uttered publicly in the US since the 1950s.
Earlier this month, Vanderbilt University suspended and expelled several protesters who occupied an administrative building and proceeded to relieve themselves and perform other private functions inside. To infiltrate the building, the students “assaulted a Community Service Officer” and “pushed” officials who suggested having a discussion about their concerns, according to school officials.
At Columbia University, students were reportedly suspended — although it has recently been alleged that the university reduced their penalties to probation — for inviting to campus a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group that has committed airliner hijackings and mass shootings. This week, two days of protest convulsed the campus and resulted in the arrest and suspension from school of US Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) daughter.
In several documented cases, anti-Israel protesters resorted to verbally abusing Black officials with racial epithets and violated their personal space. The Vanderbilt protesters told a Black police officer that his racial identity demanded his being an accessory to their machinations, according to video of the scene, and at Pomona College earlier this month, the school’s president reported that protesters called a Black administrator a racial slur.
A similar incident took place at George Washington University when US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield visited the campus last week. An SJP spinoff, formed after the school’s chapter was suspended, distributed pamphlets describing the ambassador as a “puppet” and a “Black body” who is “used … to carry out repression and dissent.” After the event concluded, a protester approached GW dean Colette Coleman and clapped her hands in the official’s face.
Such incidents have occurred alongside an unprecedented surge in antisemitic incidents and extreme anti-Israel activity on US college campuses that have upended the lives of many Jewish students.
According to the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) new annual audit, there were 922 antisemitic incidents on college campuses in 2023, a “staggering” 321 percent increase from the previous year. Across the nation, 8,873 incidents added up to the most ever counted by the ADL since it began tracking such data in 1979. Most of the outrages occurred after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
In California, an elderly Jewish man was killed when an anti-Israel professor employed by a local community college allegedly pushed him during an argument. At Cornell University in upstate New York, a student threatened to rape and kill Jewish female students and “shoot up” the campus’ Hillel center. In a suburb outside Cleveland, Ohio, a group of vandals desecrated graves at a Jewish cemetery. At Harvard University, America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious university, a faculty group shared an antisemitic cartoon depicting a left-hand tattooed with a Star of David dangling two men of color from a noose.
Other outrages were expressive but subtle. In November, large numbers of people traveling to attend the “March for Israel” in Washington, DC either could not show up or were forced to scramble last second and final alternative transportation because numerous bus drivers allegedly refused to transport them there. Hundreds of American Jews from Detroit, for example, were left stranded at Dulles Airport, according to multiple reports. At Yale University, a campus newspaper came under fire for removing from a student’s column what it called “unsubstantiated claims” of Hamas raping Israeli women, marking a rare occasion in which the publication openly doubted reports of sexual assault.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Police Stop Anti-Zionist Agitators From Accessing Florida University President’s Home as Students Revolt Nationwide first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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