"Peter Beinart Is Wrong..."

No kidding. That said, it's nice to see someone in "progressive" rag Haaretz critiquing the "progressive" blowhard who so many tout at a seer. Re Beinart's contention that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are mutually exclusive and that Israel's very existence must be challenged by the "morally superior" on moral grounds, Rabbi Gideon D. Sylvester writes:

Zionism is an outstandingly successful human rights movement. It has restored the dignity of the world's most persecuted people by returning us to our historic homeland, building a sanctuary for our survival and a country where we can flourish in a liberal democracy.   

Beinart argues that from the outset Zionism posed a terrible threat to the national interests of the Palestinians, giving them good grounds to hate us, even today.      

It's an argument frequently used by Arabs and it's totally unfair. In the decades leading up to Israel's establishment, Arabs convinced the world that this land could only support several hundred thousand people, so Jewish immigration had to be curtailed and our national rights crushed

Their argument is demonstrably false. Currently, this land comfortably accommodates over eight million people and there's room for plenty more. But the Palestinian campaign led the British to blockade the shores of Palestine, preventing Jews fleeing the Holocaust from finding refuge here. As a result, millions of Jews who might otherwise have found respite were murdered in Nazi concentration camps. Meanwhile, the Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammed Amin al-Husseini (1897-1974) recruited Muslims for the Waffen SS, toured Auschwitz and requested Nazi assistance in aborting the foundation of a Jewish State.                   

Beinart further justifies Palestinian hatred of Israel because, "It was a Zionist army that displaced roughly 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 and would not let them return." He omits to mention Israel's nascent leadership’s willingness to accept partition in 1947 and live side by side with a Palestinian state meant that no one had to die and no one had to leave. It was the Arab refusal to accept the existence of Israel within any borders at all that led them to instruct their people to leave while they sent in their armies to massacre Jews wherever they could. Israel courageously withstood the attacks and won. They have never forgiven us...

Beinart's blinkered "insights" always leave much to be desired. No wonder he's the darling of leftist elites who venerate victimhood, and the victimhood of the Palestinians most of all.