This brilliant essay first appeared in the print edition of Commentary magazine in 2010. We’re publishing it here on the occasion of Peter Beinart’s tour to sell his latest book, “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning”—another broadside against Israel. As part of the monthslong publicity jaunt, Beinart has launched attacks on, among other things, Purim, the Jewish holiday which begins tonight.
We were reminded of this essay while watching his press tour to promote himself and his book, which is only his latest episode in his ceaseless political transformation. —The Editors
Peter Beinart is one of those journalists, common in Washington, D.C., who is less interesting for what he says than for who he is, or who he wants to be thought to be. He’s an exemplar, and when, in May [2010], he published an essay in The New York Review of Books announcing that “morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral,” he deserved the considerable notice that the article brought him. As a piece of reasoned argument, or even as an anguished moral plea, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” was a mess: a goulash of overstatement, baseless accusation, statistical sleight-of-hand, strategic omission, and wince-making self-regard. As a piece of attention-getting, however, it was a masterstroke, and it’s on those terms, rather than its own, that the article and Beinart are best understood.
Beinart is well-known among Washington journalists as a quick-witted polemicist and a gifted stylist. He’s also regarded as one of the most energetic careerists anyone has ever seen. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Banish careerists from the ranks of Washington journalism and the only people left would be a handful of newsroom librarians and a couple of copy editors from Human Events. What makes Beinart’s campaign of self-promotion conspicuous—week after week, year after year—is its utter lack of inhibition. There’s a kind of insouciance to it.