Our Wednesday News Analysis | Being Jewish after Gaza: Peter Beinart's 'reckoning' is a bid to rehabilitate Zionism

Peter Beinart's latest book, 'Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza', makes for a perplexing read (Azad Essa/MEE)

"In the story of Jewish liberation, Beinart says it's time
for a new story for the Jewish people - one in which they can be oppressors, too.

'We must now tell a new story to answer the horror that a Jewish country has perpetrated, with the support of many Jews around the world," Beinart writes in his prologue, adding that the "book is about the stories Jews tell ourselves that blind us to Palestinian suffering.

It's about how we came to value a state, Israel,
above the lives of all the people who live under its control.'

But the book is not really about that."

In the summer of 2010, the prominent Jewish American writer Peter Beinart dropped a bombshell on America's liberal elite.

He observed, as Israel continued to build illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and completed the first round of what it called "mowing the lawn" - the name given to the periodic bombing of Gaza - that attitudes towards Israel were dramatically shifting among young American Jews.

The winds were changing, Beinart noted in the New York Review of Books.

"Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral," he wrote.

He cautioned that the American Jewish establishment's refusal to change track on Israel's brutal occupation of the occupied territories would alienate young Jewish Americans from the Israeli state...

Read more: Being Jewish after Gaza: Peter Beinart's 'reckoning' is a bid to rehabilitate Zionism

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‘NO TO ETHNIC CLEANSING’: OVER 350 RABBIS SIGN US AD ASSAILING TRUMP’S GAZA PLAN

Source: The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/13/rabbis-ad-trump-gaza-plan

By Maya Yang
Published February 13, 2025

Jewish creatives and activists also sign New York Times ad after US president’s proposal to ‘take over Gaza’

Donald Trump speaks to the media in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

More than 350 rabbis, alongside additional signatories including Jewish creatives and activists, have signed an ad in the New York Times in which they condemn Donald Trump’s proposal for the effective ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.

“It is utterly horrifying to see the degree to which people who enjoy great legitimacy and respect in our community are willing to support something that would be considered one of the greatest crimes of the 21st century.”

Peter Beinart
Editor-at-Large of Jewish Currents

The ad, which was signed by rabbis including Sharon Brous, Roly Matalon and Alissa Wise, as well as Jewish creatives and activists including Tony Kushner, Ilana Glazer, Naomi Klein and Joaquin Phoenix, says: “Trump has called for the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza. Jewish people say no to ethnic cleansing!”

The ad follows Trump’s proposal to “take over Gaza” and leave 2 million Palestinians who have survived Israel’s deadly onslaught against the narrow strip with “no alternative” but to leave their homes.

Trump has called on Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries to take in Palestinians – a proposal that has been met with widespread criticism from Arab countries and other allies while being condemned as an ethnic-cleansing plan.

Cody Edgerly, director of the In Our Name Campaign and one of the organizers of the ad, said it came at “a critical time as political redlines that were once thought immovable are rapidly shifting as the Trump-Netanyahu alliance takes hold again”.

He said it had been “heartening to witness such a rapid outpouring of support from across the denominational and political spectrum”, adding: “Our message to Palestinians is that you are not alone, our attention has not wavered, and we are committed to fighting with every breath we have to stop ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”...

Read more: ‘No to ethnic cleansing’: over 350 rabbis sign US ad assailing Trump’s Gaza plan
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From Turtle Island to Palestine: On the Forced Transfer of Indigenous People from Their Land

Source: Palestine Chronicle
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/from-turtle-island-to-palestine-on-the-forced-transfer-of-indigenous-people-from-their-land/

By Benay Blend
Published February 14, 2025

Displaced Palestinians return to their home city of Rafah on the first day of the ceasefire agreement. (Photo: via QNN)

Trump’s proposal to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza echoes historical settler-colonial tactics, but Palestinian resistance—like Indigenous struggles worldwide—continues to defy erasure.

On February 1, 2025, President Donald indicated that he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about potentially relocating more than 1 million Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries.

“'You’re talking about a million and a half (1.5 million) people, and we just clean out that whole thing,' Trump explained.

He concluded that Palestinians deserved something better than their alleged
'bad luck,' thus sweeping aside the decades-long role of Israel in their plight.”

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Editor’s Note: About 1.5 million people? What happened to the other 700,000 people in Gaza? Where are they? Lost under the rubble? Unaccounted for?

Just wondering!

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Trump couched his plan with humanitarian concerns in line with previous settler-colonial agendas.

“I said to him (King Abdullah) that I’d love you to take on more, because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

“You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump explained. He concluded that Palestinians deserved something better than their alleged “bad luck,” thus sweeping aside the decades-long role of Israel in their plight.

In response, 72-year-old Fathi Abu al-Saeed looks out at Khan Younis’s al-Katiba neighborhood, now a pile of rubble due to many months of Israeli bombs...

Read more: From Turtle Island to Palestine: On the Forced Transfer of Indigenous People from Their Land