Book Review: Peter Beinart, Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning

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Peter Beinart, a South African-born journalist and author living in the USA, has emerged as a major intellectual and spiritual leader of the Jewish critics of Israel and Zionism. In contrast to many others, Beinart has substantial knowledge of Jewish tradition and texts, and displays this background in presenting his views.

This thin volume (120 pages of text, lacking both a bibliography and index) is a polemic in which, notwithstanding the title, only one chapter focuses on Israel’s response to Hamas’s atrocities of October 7, 2023 (described in four pages). The rest consists of a wider and often cynical indictment of Zionism, Israeli policies, and Jewish communities in the Diaspora—reflected in chapter titles such as “They Tried to Kill Us, We Survived, Let’s Eat” and “Korach’s Children.”