Friday, November 28, 2025
Elder of Ziyon
Beinart is very smart. He knew about the BDSers' anger at his talk beforehand, and he went ahead and gave it anyway. So why would he defend his decision before the talk and then, afterwards, apologize for it? The BDSers who aren't accepting his apology have a point - if he really cares about their feelings, as his apology stated, then he was as aware of their objections before the talk as he was afterwards.
Something must have happened at the talk that prompted him to reverse his opinion on the propriety of his speech.
Unfortunately, there is no video of the speech or the Q&A. But there is one detailed article about it as a blog at Times of Israel, by Alec Mauer.
Mauer says that Beinart was one of his childhood heroes. He shares Beinart's ideas of 15 years ago about the two state solution, of being against BDS. He is disappointed that Beinart's position today makes no sense to living, breathing Israelis - including the liberal ones who attend TAU or who make films. Beinart repeated BDS claims that they are not boycotting individuals but only institutions, and being at one such institution, he understands that this is a nonsensical distinction.
Based on his report, it appears that many of the students who attended were like him - people who are liberal, who want Palestinians to have a state and equal rights, but who actually live there.
In other words, Beinart 2025 met Beinart 2010 - and couldn't win an argument with himself. He was confronted with people who share his stated goals but actually think about them realistically. And he failed to move them.
In the past 15 years, while Beinart moved more and more to the anti-Israel Left, he came up with reasons that sounded reasonable to his new audience - but that made increasingly little sense to those on the Israeli Left who would be affected by his desired policies. He spoke to echo chambers of progressives in America who look at the world through the simplistic oppressor vs. oppressed lens and the feedback in that echo chamber prompted him to keep moving that way.
One crucial point that is not often mentioned in these contexts: his livelihood became more and more dependent on his political positions. It is incredibly difficult to think independently when your income depends on thinking only one way. As progressive Americans moved more towards blatant antisemitism, Beinart had to work not to alienate them.
His talk at TAU showed him that his progression from liberal Zionist to anti-Israel activist, which he pretends was a natural evolution, did not impress those who are exactly like he used to be. They knew his arguments and they wanted to hear him answer their questions about them. He couldn't do it.
Before the talk, he believed the praise heaped on him by his followers, that his arguments are airtight, that he can convince any sincere liberal Zionist of the righteousness of his new positions by quoting Amnesty and B'Tselem. When he realized that he was not nearly as consistent or smart as he thought he was, he decided that going to TAU was a mistake. But he cannot admit he couldn't win the arguments.
Beinart didn't go to Israel for dialogue. He went to admonish the students. He went not as an intellectual but as a prophet. And the students would have none of that.
A truly humble person would have listened to the students and admitted that he doesn't have the answers. A conceited person blames those who refuted him as being part of the evil enemy.
Beinart's apology was not an act of contrition. It was an act of conceit to avoid admitting his hypocrisy. Usually apologies are signs of humility, but in this case, Beinart's apology was an act of self preservation. And the BDSers understand that.
Humility is a necessary component of growth. Beinart's arrogance shows what happens when one believes that they are infallible - their own ethics go out the window to keep from admitting they are wrong.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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