Against “Jewish Innocence”: A Conversation with Peter Beinart on his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.

Speaking Out of Place

Today on Speaking Out of Place we sit down with Peter Beinart to discuss his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. We ask what led him to write this intense, and intensely provocative book, which declares that Jews “need a new story” other than the current one, in which, Beinart argues, Jews see themselves as innocent with regard to the genocide in Gaza. I ask Peter to fully unpack this claim, among others:

“Many Jews treat a Jewish state the way the Bible feared Jewish monarchs would treat themselves: as a higher power, beholden to no external standard. Again and again, we are ordered to accept a Jewish state’s ‘right to exist.’ But the language is perverse. In Jewish tradition, states have no inherent value. States are not created in the image of God; human beings are. States are mere instruments… The legitimacy of a Jewish state—like the holiness of the Jewish people—is conditional on how it behaves. It is subject to law, not a law in and of itself.”

PETER BEINART is professor of journalism and political science at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also editor at large of Jewish Currents, a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, an MSNBC political commentator, and a nonresident fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is the author of Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, and writes the Beinart Notebook newsletter on Substack.com. He lives in New York with his family.