Peter Beinart’s Liberal Fantasies
It is a difficult thing to keep one’s head when the world is in a state of euphoria. This is probably why so much of the coverage of recent events in Egypt, including the recent resignation of Hosni Mubarak and the installation of a military government, has lacked the kind of elementary skepticism that ought to be applied to any event of such potential magnitude. To a certain extent, this is understandable. The intoxicating power of revolutionary change is very real, and can overwhelm even the most cynical personality. It becomes problematic, however, when people become so addicted to it that, like any run-of-the-mill alcoholic, the suggestion that they might have a problem throws them into a defensive rage. The reaction toward Israel’s cautious skepticism in regard to the Egyptian revolution provides a case study in the phenomenon, with many apparently intelligent and worldly journalists throwing themselves into spasms of inchoate fear and loathing at the Israelis’ refusal to jump on the happy bandwagon. What this has revealed is not so much the childlike naïveté lurking beneath the sophisticated exterior of many commentators, but also their tendency to abandon their own intelligence whenever Israel is involved.
An extraordinary example of this was published in The Daily Beast on February 7, several days before Mubarak’s resignation, titled “What Israel is Afraid of After the Egyptian Uprising.” It was penned by Peter Beinart, a former member in good standing of the American pro-Israel camp who has recently become one of its more violent critics. Beinart’s take on the situation — and I do not think it is an unusual one among American Jewish leftists and American leftists in general — is equal parts wishful thinking and willful self-deception. His thesis, to the extent that one can be gleaned from Beinart’s grab-bag of homilies, is that Israel is opposed to the Egyptian revolution because it is opposed to Arab democracy. The reason Israel is opposed to Arab democracy is that a democratic Arab world would make it much harder for Israel to do evil unto the Palestinians. Beinart presents no evidence whatsoever that this is actually the case, and it should be noted that the Israeli government has thus far declared no opposition to democracy in Egypt, though it has expressed strong concerns about where the current upheaval in that country may be leading. In Beinart’s eyes, however, even this elementary skepticism is simply incomprehensible and unconscionable. While he admits that “a theocracy that abrogated Egypt’s peace treaty with the Jewish state would be bad for Israel,” he informs us that this is “unlikely” because Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood “abandoned violence decades ago, and declared that it would pursue its Islamist vision through the democratic process.” He asks, “Might the Brotherhood act differently if it gained absolute power? Sure, but it’s hard to foresee a scenario in which that happens,” and reassures us that “Mohammed ElBaradei, the closest thing the Egyptian protest movement has to a leader, has called the peace treaty with Israel ‘rock solid.’”
Indeed, Beinart appears to believe that Israel’s concerns about radical Islam are caused by nothing more than paranoia and craven self-interest. He illustrates this by drawing a rather tenuous connection between the unrest in Egypt and the Hamas regime in Gaza. In fact, Beinart appears to hold Hamas — which is nothing more than the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood — in special affection. He reminds us that the group “won the freest election in Palestinian history,” and “the organization has been basically observing a de-facto cease-fire for two years now, and in the last year its two top leaders, Khaled Meshal and Ismail Haniya, have both said Hamas would accept a two-state deal if the Palestinian people endorse it in a referendum.” Any opposition to the Hamas regime meets with Beinart’s violent disapproval: “Ever since 2006,” he notes angrily, “Hamas, Egypt, Israel and the United States have colluded to enforce a blockade meant to undermine the group’s control of the Gaza Strip.” While he admits Hamas is “vile in many ways,” he nonetheless asserts that “a shift in U.S. and Israeli policy towards Hamas is long overdue.” In his opinion, “Israel and America are better off allowing the Palestinians to create a democratically legitimate, national unity government that includes Hamas than continuing their current, immoral, failed policy.” Beinart’s obsession with Islamic theocracy in Gaza leads him back to Egypt; since a democratic Egyptian government would not, he believes, help Israel and America contain that theocracy, “partly because Hamas is an offshoot of the Brotherhood, but mostly because a policy of impoverishing the people of Gaza has little appeal among Egyptian voters.” In fact, he says, a democratic Egypt that refuses to “collude” against Hamas “may be doing Israel a favor.”
Beinart is just another ”useful idiot” – another Tom Friedman, mush-for-brains Left/Liberal hacks, glib, superficial, spouting unsupported assumptions unconnected to reality.
You’ll never penetrate their thick skulls, they’re impervious to evidence or logic, they live in an alternate universe constructed out of BS rhetoric.
Sorry but this Beinart is insane, as are many Leftists. Liberal fantasies are insane fantasies, so ipso facto the people who promote them are stark raving nuts. In a sane world they would be committed. Instead these guys are running the asylum.
I have noticed this in my conversations with liberals, that they are essentially suffering from a mental disorder (I didn’t *get* this before), a mental disorder far more serious than any other (including even paranoid schizophrenia), because at the end of the day far more deadly. I am not exaggerating or just indulging in rhetorical puffery when I write that. I really mean it – a mental disorder. As such they cannot be reasoned with.
“I really mean it – a mental disorder. As such they cannot be reasoned with.”
I came to the same conclusion a few years ago. I now simply keep silent at family gatherings. It isn’t worth the aggravation to argue with them. They are incapable of uttering anything more than pc soundbites, and there is no way they will change their minds, no matter how much of reality they encounter.
Larry, not every left leaning person is Noam Chomsky, just as not every right leaning person is Rush Limbaugh. I lean a tad to the left, but I would pick Edmund Burke over a vast array of leftist thinkers. I think you should grant the same courtesy to John Maynard Keynes. Sometimes government intervention in the economy is a good idea — and is not always a step in “The Road to Serfdom.”
Try to find some common ground with left leaning folk, instead of dismissing every last one. I have a feeling you are going to scream and yell in response to this post instead of engage in a thoughtful dialectic.
You need to support your contention that sometimes government intervention in the economy helps with verifiable facts of actions linked to outcomes. Here is one to the contrary, all the intervention by FDR did not end the Great Depression. The depression ended in 1943 as the result civilian employment for the war effort. Obama is repeating FDR’s mistakes and achieving the same result. John Maynard Keynes? Please provide examples where his theories were the cause of economic progress. He was a socialist and socialism is crashing in Europe. An unbiased reading of Adam Smith, “Wealth of Nations,” might be helpful.
What on earth are you talking about Alex?? I wasn’t addressing the pros and cons of govt intervention in the economy whatsoever, not even tangentially. Keynes??! I wasn’t talking about economics at all, that’s not what this is about. My post and this article relate to Israel, Egypt, the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Left’s blindness to that and foreign policy, not economics and govt fiscal and economic policy whatsoever. Not even remotely. These are separate issues.
I’m not even a conservative, just not a liberal neither. I think somebody has a reading comprehension problem.
“Dialectic”? Good Lord, who let the self-important schoolboy in the door? As for the Rush/Noam “dialectic” — give me Mr. Limbaugh ANY day of the week! Rush Limbaugh loves freedom, loves America, and would seek to steer us back onto the course that once made this nation great and respected throughout the world. Chomsky’s pedantic mission is the exact opposite of that. Not that such fact has ANYTHING to do with Kerstein’s critique of Beinart’s recent musings on the Egyptian meltdown.
Let all clear thinkers cut to the chase-my advice is to tell Petey thusly-IF he dares to test out his delusions of fantasy,continually foisting them on the heads of the Israeli people, he must be willing to first do two things-(put up or shut up)live in Gaza for at least a few months AND live on the border towns in the south of Israel.
As the missiles fly overhead he must insist on standing put,not even to scurry to one of the bomb shelters on EVERY street-even if he wets his pants!This way he can ‘test’ out the good will of the Gazans etc, of course for ‘peace’ to be ushered in the region.
Excellent analysis of Beinart and the so called “pro-Israel pro-peace” movement who are indeed just the opposite. J Street, one of their chief groups, is holding their convention in DC this weekend and will undoubtedly blame Israel not only for preventing a peace settlement with the Palestinians, but for every other problem arising out of the on going Middle East conflagration. To
“The reason Israel is opposed to Arab democracy is that a democratic Arab world would make it much harder for Israel to do evil unto the Palestinians.”
People like Peter Beinart just tighten my colon. What evidence, WHAT EVIDENCE, does Beinart have that any form of western-style secular republic or parliamentary democracy is going to take over in Egypt? Oh, that’s right, after Mubarak fell, the Army took over and dissolved both the parliament and the country’s constitution (for whatever that was worth to begin with). And now that crazy imam from the Muslim Brotherhood is back and last week he gave a speech that had about a million Egyptians attended. I didn’t see ANY, ANY, pro-democracy rallies that got that many people to attend, let alone was allowed by either the Army OR the Muslim Brotherhood. Yep, that democracy thing sure is working out for them, isn’t it Peter?
Within eight months you are probably going to have a theocracy taking over in Egypt just like it did in Iran. If not, either another general or a Marxist will take over the country. And then miserable fools like Peter Beinart are going to sob in shock and disbelief and scream “who in Washington lost Egypt?” Please, there was nothing ever to “lose” in Egypt. This is what they are and this is what they want.
If I’m wrong, prove me wrong. Show me, eight months from now, a pro-western secular parliamentary democracy in place in Egypt. Anybody out there want to take any bets that’s going to happen? Any takers? I didn’t think so.
Remember, the Hamas takeover was in response to an American and Israeli backed Fatah coup:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804?currentPage=all
That is an outright misleading state,emt. HAmas won the election and was sponsored by Iran.At the time it was considered proper Muslim living to vote with Iran’s mullahs.Fatah was the only side not considered a terrorist org.
Journalists are no less immune to vanity and greed than the general population. Why is it hard to understand that they subscribe to a ” get along to go along ” philosophy? The dunce under examination is no deep thinker. Perhaps he simply has sultry muslim in his sights? Offering up a twisted perspective to facilitate a quick, and from his intended targets perspective, a less than rapturous conclusion?
In any case this dolt can’t hold a candle to the two biggest frauds of our generation- Stephanopoulos and Zacharia. The former, when handed the largest journalistic coup since The Ten Plagues, dropped the ball, the latter who, abandons all journalistic fairness and resorts to language normally used in a schoolyard brawl,
whenever the Star of David comes into view.
Helen Thomas would have made the cut but she is dead. From the neck up anyway.
Yep, Beinart’s a douche all right.
“It must be said that Beinart is undoubtedly sincere in his opinions.”
Yes. It must be said that Beinart is sincerely out to see Israel destroyed, no doubt about it, and that goes for all other Jews who think as he does.
“Israel desperately needs is to begin competing for Middle Eastern public opinion”
The above statement by Beinart shows his ineptitude toward Arabs and Islam
in general. I would like to remind Mr. Beinart what a true socialist
Golda Meir said. “Peace will came to Middle East when the Arab will love
their children more than they hate the Jews”
Mr. Beinart you are nothing more than a USEFUL IDIOT
Remember that Beinart began his career, eventually becoming editor, at The New Republic, a pro-Israel liberal magazine. As soon as he left the magazine, his views turned 180 degrees regarding Israel, but with no other issue. The only reasonable explanation for this is that he hid his views while at the NR out of blind ambition. That tells us something about the man’s character. As for his views, they are shallow and sick, and I don’t need to add to what Mr Kerstein and others have already written about his blind and hateful ideology.
“…Beinart is undoubtedly sincere in his opinions.” but comes “disturbingly close to deliberate lies”.
The entire article is laced with adjuncts to this type of logic that would require an article equally as long to refute.
Suffice it to say that “many”, “childlike naïveté”, “wishful thinking”, “self-deception”, “addicted”, “angrily”, “obsession”, “pretends to be”, “willful illusion”, “convinces himself”, “deliberately false”, “pathetically narcissistic” and “unintentionally reveals” does not an argument make.
Beinart suggests, “Instead of trying to prop up a dying autocratic order, what Israel desperately needs is to begin competing for Middle Eastern public opinion,
What, after centuries of indoctrination against Jews, those descendants of Apes and Pigs?
Does he have any idea of the culture the Israelis have to confront to compete for public opinion?
The thuggish and vicious manner in which the theocratic regimes enforce their will?
The boy is incoherent. Maybe he should practice what he preaches and take a road trip from Egypt to Libya, today; if he survives, he can call it the heroic “Motorcycle Diary,” and if he doesn’t survive, the estate can perhaps add the subtitle: last will and testament of PB the Jew. He might even make it to Tripoli, ’cause Libya is on the UN human rights council, rejoined by the Americans under Obama, to give peace a chance. It’s amazing how many cloistered smart people with little practical life experience have defective bullshit detection meters, and often fail the basic situational awareness for preventing a fate worse than death. Maybe he could try the Tripoli trip in drag, as a brunette? And since 75 percent of Europe’s oil comes from Libya, I wonder if the French and Germans will reconsider their policy of “no blood for oil?” Actually, the Brits, the evil precursor Yankees, did trade American blood spilled at Lockerbie to get at Libyan oil! Live and let live, I’m sure PB will approve.
Besides all his predictable ideas, Beinart is such a flat-footed, boring writer. Who could read him?
Wonderfully put, Nancy. This guy is irrelevant. I wish there were a more productive way to channel the passion, energy and eloquence of those expressing their contempt for Beinart, so that their voices will be heard by people who can make a difference.
Expose Beinart for the self hating, terror excusing, Israel haters appeasing, left winger that he really is by exposing PA/PLO/Fatah/Abbas for what they really are – IN THEIR OWN WORDS.
Team PA/Abbas curriculum and political/media rhetoric of incitement to hate and violence. See web site PALESTINIAN MEDIA WATCH. Read/see/hear Team PA/Abbas 1)terror worship and adulation of terrorist 2)encouragement and justification for murdering Jews 3)Israel delegtimization by lying about ALL Jewish connection to ANY part of Israel – even saying Tel Aviv is a “Palestinian city) 4) Promise of endless war – never peace – the Israel.
Take out ads in your local Jewish community paper directing all to PALESTINIAN MEDIA WATCH web site.
Have large, well advertised PALESTINIAN MEDIA WATCH presentations in your community.
Once Team PA/Abbas is exposed (using their own words, of course!) Beinart will lose any and ALL credibility!
Yasmine El Rashidi: ‘The Revolution Is Not Yet Over’
The layers of checkpoints that we had navigated daily during the revolt had been reduced to just two entry points—the men on one side, the women on the other—marked by a few tanks and a handful of soldiers and civilian volunteers. At the women’s entrance, we got just one body tap-down and one bag check. No request for IDs. Three of the four women volunteers manning the entrance were young and veiled—Muslim Brother girls (the well-organized Brothers had long taken a lead in staffing the checkpoints)
Beinart is correct on one thing. The Left uniformly hates Israel (and Jews who are actual, real Jews instead of basically debased Gaian post-Calvinists). While the Right in America almost uniformly loves it. There are a few exceptions, Ron Paul and Pat Buchanon hate Jews and Israel both; a few Democrats like Israel. But on the main part he is correct.
Sarah Palin had a little Israeli flag on her desk, while Barack Obama is pals with Rashid Khalidi and obviously hates Israel. In LA there was a flap with the Black head of the Urban League or NAACP local chapter (can’t remember which, Roger L. Simon covered it) going on a tirade about “the Jews keeping Blacks down” at an award for a nice Jewish lady who headed a Jewish charity teaching Black/Hispanic kids to read. The Mayor (Mayor Tony) and Bernie Parks did not even look up from their food.
The Right is mostly American Evangelical Protestant and sees itself quite deliberately as “new Jews” who honor the previous covenant with God as the second recipients. The Right generally is also nationalistic, and racial-ethnic particularlists. They don’t adopt “one worldism” utopianism but rather an intense nationalism and attachment to people, place, religion, and culture. The Right generally views Israelis as cousins in God’s arrangements and guarantors to Jerusalem, Christendom’s holiest place. While openly despising Muslims whose entire culture (treatment of women, alcohol, animals/dogs, nationalism) they find repellent and whose national characteristics they find both evil and a failure. [Most on the Right will in confidence describe the long list of Arab/Muslim failure as one befitting a people who are a total failure in God's eyes and nationally.]
In short, the people of the Right broadly are nationalists who love their country America, and like the same characteristics in Israelis. While despising Muslims as a “little people” ala the speech from the 1980′s movie “Mountains of the Moon.”
The Left broadly holds completely the opposite views: utopian one-worldism, rejection totally of nationalism and Christianity, a desire for post-Christian trans-national elitism. The Left has more in common with El-Bareidi than it does with Joe Bob Sixpack, and considers and educated foreigner “better” morally, spiritually, and interest wise than their non-educated countrymen. They also practice deliberate “anti-kin” selection, where they generally hate and despise those who would seem like cousins and cling to their bosoms those who seem the most alien.
Tell me nothing about a man or woman but they like Israel a lot, and I can confidently predict they will be some sort of Protestant, likely Evangelical, likely from the South or Mountain West, most certainly White, likely middle class, and very attached to their country and traditions.
Tell me nothing about a man or woman but they dislike Israel intensely, and I can say there is a good chance they are Black or Hispanic. If White, they are upper class, went to an Ivy League school, hold utopian one world ideas, don’t like their nation very much, believe in the predestined saved/damned, with only a few elect saved, in some post-Christian way (Gaia, Global Warming, etc.) and love anything foreign and not American.
It is basically about which cultural group you fall into. The “hillbilly” cultural grouping, or Puritan-Progressive/Quaker group. Hillbillies like Israel, and the others hate it. Simple as that.
You can test the power of my explanatory model yourselves. That’s the beauty of it — it offers predictive power. Try it yourselves. See what results you get.
Brilliantly formulated and written, and 98% true too.
Beinart is not so much commenting on Israel’s attitude toward Egypt as he is trying to score points and settle scores with those he considers his domestic political opponents
Thank you, Benjamin Kerstein, for pointing this out. This is in fact the driver of most political punditry. Pundits paid by mainstream organizations to opine on the politics of the day are careerists: their first and only obligation is to their own survival in the world of punditry—and their opinions must shift with the political winds.
Beinart, in addition to being an editor at TNR, was a very vocal supporter of the Iraq war and a “liberal hawk.” That didn’t work out so well for him in the world of D.C. punditry.
In the early 21st century, if you’re a “liberal,” there is one sure way out of the political wilderness in Washington: denounce Israel, particularly if you’re a Jew. You will be welcomed in pundit circles, and your denunciations of Israel will be praised and circulated—even if your only outlet is the sorry and deeply unserious Daily Beast.
By the way, Andrew Sullivan took the same path out of the wilderness that Beinart took. Once (when he was at TNR) a seemingly heartfelt and loving supporter of Israel, during the eclipse of Bush and the GOP and the rise of Obama and the Dems, he became one of Israel’s most hysterical, vociferous, and propagandistic critics. Now Sullivan has toned it down. That is an obvious straw in the wind that the political winds are shifting. (More evidence of this: Stephen Walt, in his most recent post at his Foreign Policy blog, praised Israel.)
My advice: don’t take paid pundits’ arguments seriously. They are not serious people.
I think Beinart caught Matt Yglesiitis. A former reasonable person who looked critically at both sides of the issue who has abrogated all objectivity to increase his readership and then becomes so enraptured by the adulation of his leftist readers that he begins to buy into his own BS.
Beinart is a member in good standing of the professional left. He can say anything he wishes, and his loyal readers of the Daily beast will simply nod and applaud.
To become a member of the professional left is simple, all you have to do is obey the commands of Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Code Pink’s Jodie Evans and the expanding Soros cartel. You have to proclaim that you love America and democracy while you try to undermine capitalism and states rights. You must support gay marriage, abortions and pot clinics and oppose a manger in the park at Christmas. You must belittle conservative minorities and demonize any news reporting that questions the great leader. Above all, you must oppose America’s allies by bedding down with Chavez and Hamas.
Beinart is the perfect manifestation of the professional left. “We hold these truths to be self- evident.”
Beinart suffers from a revulsion that Israel’s demographics have changed wherein the Russian immigrants, the ultra-Orthodox, and the Jews expelled from Muslim countries and their descendants now dominate the electorate. My observation is that Likud is now the center, which seems to be some form of heresy.
This shatters his, and others, vision of a secular Zionist Israel that everyone will automatically love. Some of Beinart’s writings imply his desire to cleanse Israel of at least 40% of her population in order to return to that secular Zionist vision.
His blindness to Hamas, and other Islamists, can only be explained by a fever of magical thinking.
Thank you Benjamin Kerstein for this antidote to what infects too many American liberals, who are so very illiberal when it comes to Israel.
What’s the point of people like Peter Beinart? I mean, he’s neither a serious thinker, nor is he an artist of some sort, nor a politician. If he’s not a professional propagandist, then what is he?