Atrocities exist widely across the globe, just as do advocates fighting for social fairness.

On May 11, journalist and thinker Peter Beinart addressed engaged residents in person at the New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. The talk was organized by Little Rock Peace for Palestine, a regional human rights group.

Beinart visited Little Rock the previous June during a nationwide book tour for his recent work, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. Following a personal request from a local group member, he chose to return.

Peter Beinart was born in South Africa two decades prior to the close of apartheid there. After completing studies at Yale and serving as a Rhodes Scholar, he led The New Republic as editor from 1999 to 2006. He now teaches journalism and political science at the City University of New York and has contributed to The New York Times, The Forward, and The Daily Beast. He holds strong recognition among progressive audiences.

Professor Beinart highlighted the risks of failing to scrutinize actions by the State of Israel. A common element in Israeli messaging to American audiences frames Zionism as supportive of democracy and secular values. Yet Beinart views this as inconsistent. Should American Jews persist in accepting it, especially older community members, they risk diverging from growing global majorities who regard Israel as an instance of settler colonialism and state-backed wrongdoing.

Beinart disputed the notion that the State of Israel serves as the singular Jewish homeland. He described something essentially regressive in the idea that Israelis hold an exclusive bond with the divine. Numerous American Jews suffer from a form of spiritual disconnect that merges a political entity with the sacred. They must reconnect with the core openness and variety within American Jewish traditions.

Although the record of Jewish persecution holds truth, Zionists exploit it for political gain. He noted a notable alignment today between Zionists and Western anti-Semites.

Beinart called it misguided for Jews to assume that aggression toward others ensures their security. Evidence appears in evolving views among younger American Jews.

Professor Beinart backs a single-state resolution since Israeli Jews lack grounds to claim superiority over native Palestinian residents. He sees a two-state approach as equivalent to division.

Referencing Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, Israeli thinker Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and the Torah, Professor Beinart emphasized that ethical community requires active defense by reflective Jews. He compared principled resistance to the ongoing Gaza events with the Civil Rights and Anti-Apartheid struggles.

Beinart avoided promoting unverified assertions merely for popularity. For instance, he omitted mention of the Hamas mass-rape allegations reported by The New York Times in late 2023. Journalists have since shown those claims lack foundation, and the publication no longer advances them.

Reports have surfaced of organized sexual violence, yet not carried out by Al-Qassam Brigades members. Strikingly, segments of the Israeli public react with anger at the exposure rather than demanding removal of those responsible or rejecting involvement by Israel Defense Forces personnel.

Those recalling the 1970s may remember how certain patriotic Americans responded to U.S. actions in Southeast Asia by invoking the phrase America, love it or leave it. Similar attitudes of dominance surface in other settler colonial contexts.

Recognizing the complexity of belief systems, Professor Beinart observed that religion may function as a sedative yet also serve as a catalyst for change in social struggles. Pride in one's heritage need not conflict with regard for others. He noted that engagement with marginalized communities proves rewarding though challenging to sustain.

Regarding unjust Israeli conflicts backed by the U.S. government, Beinart concurred that the double standard runs deep. To audience approval, he questioned how U.S. and Israeli officials can fault Iran for pursuing nuclear arms while possessing such weapons themselves.

The Pentagon recently arranged with Tomer Israel for over 200 million dollars in XM1208 cluster munitions destined for Ukraine against Russia. Tomer operates as a state-controlled producer of rocket systems. Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States declined to join the United Nations Convention on Cluster Munitions. The arrangement likely aims to sustain Israeli defense manufacturing.

Addressing the recent election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor, Professor Beinart described it as a notable instance of diversity principles facing real examination. Thus far, he views the outcome positively. Mamdani, a Muslim and Democratic Socialist, has challenged influential sectors. Accusations labeling him anti-Semitic for his Israel critiques fall short, especially since many young Jewish New Yorkers back him.

Beinart examined conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who has drawn attention for criticizing Palestinian oppression, Israeli actions beyond its borders, and Trump administration Middle East approaches. Beinart argued Carlson still relies on Orientalist and ahistorical biases. He described Carlson as a Christian nationalist who treats Jewish people as a uniform bloc.

Responding to a query on views equating all Jews with Zionists, Beinart stated Jews ought to advance justice for any community. This represents a particular duty for Jews given their history of suffering. He added that victimhood narratives can also be misused by those acting in bad faith.

Beinart projected composure, assurance, and immediacy. He held audience focus regardless of agreement.

This quality emerges further in his fourth book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. He contends Zionists present themselves as promoters of secularization while appealing to Judaism and pursuing conduct at odds with it. The Gaza events mark a pivotal moment in Jewish history that exposes Zionism contradictions sharply. Though horrific, they offer Jews a chance to reject Zionism and support all oppressed groups. Jews upholding Zionism engage in moral avoidance.

Beinart grounds the discussion with stark figures on Israel and over seven million Palestinians under its authority.

Seventy percent of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories hold no Israeli citizenship. The military rule in the West Bank makes no pretense of granting them rights.
Thirty percent of Palestinians within Israel hold citizenship, yet of a markedly inferior status.
From 2000 to 2023, over 13,000 Palestinian children endured detention in Israeli facilities.
The Jewish National Fund, controlling more than 90 percent of land inside Israel, declares allegiance to the Jewish people rather than the Israeli public.

In this setting, which aligns with the UN General Assembly definition of systemic racism, supporters of Jewish dominance operate with official backing.

Professor Beinart possesses a strong sense of history. He recognizes the world's intricate nature. To clarify he does not minimize the Shoah or overlook context, he shares his family background and outlook.

I have passed through the area in northern Lithuania where my paternal grandmother originated, and through the woods where its Jews were killed. I have led Shabbat services in Rhodes, in a sixteenth-century synagogue that draws a minyan only when remnants of that dispersed community return from far places. Many Jews have known this. Our communal narrative does not falter in recognizing the harms we endured. It falters by overlooking the harms we inflict.

Professor Beinart opposes every form of violence. While he does not address recent evidence of mistreatment in Israeli detention centers, he covers the October 7, 2023 events.

Beinart identifies clear parallels between Hamas actions on October 7 and other conflicts in the Global South over two centuries. In each case, attacks on colonists and families proved brutal yet predictable after prolonged exploitation of colonial populations, including enslaved individuals, tenant farmers, and displaced natives.

Beinart notes earlier Zionist generations, less focused on Jewish blamelessness, spoke plainly about their aims in Palestine, particularly hardline figures like Ze'ev Jabotinsky.

Born in Ukraine and a World War I veteran of the British forces, Jabotinsky openly praised Benito Mussolini and advanced the Greater Israel plan. He founded the Revisionist Hatzohar organization in 1923. Its youth wing, Betar, remains active in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, France, Israel, Italy, South Africa, the United States, and Uruguay. Jabotinsky also led the Irgun paramilitary group, which targeted Palestinians in the 1930s and British troops after his death in 1940.

In a 1948 letter to The New York Times, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and other leading American Jews condemned the Revisionists Herut Party as a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist body.

Four decades later, Herut evolved into Likud under Menachem Begin, a Jabotinsky follower and Israel's ninth prime minister. In a 1982 address, Begin described the 1956 and 1967 Sinai invasions as elective conflicts.

Begin was no pacifist. He pursued his own elective war by ordering the 1982 Lebanon invasion. During that operation, the IDF permitted Lebanese Phalangists to carry out mass killings of Palestinian civilians at Sabra and Shatila.

Jabotinsky was not alone among candid Zionists. IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan stated after Palestinian fighters killed a security guard at a kibbutz near Gaza in 1956.

Let us not assign fault to the killers. For eight years they have remained in refugee camps in Gaza, watching us convert the lands and villages where they and their forebears lived into our property.

Returning to Beinart, he has long shown intellectual depth, even amid a significant shift in perspective over the past twenty years.

Shortly after leaving The New Republic editorship in 2006, Beinart released his debut book, The Good Fight: Why Liberals and Only Liberals Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again. It critiqued George Walker Bush administration policies in the Greater Middle East within conventional bounds that avoided broader economic and social issues.

At that stage, Beinart supported U.S. global dominance. His roles as Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations or the centrist stance of The New Republic may have influenced his outlook then. The key point remains that Beinart has experienced a profound change in perspective.