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israeli apartheid
The Status of Palestinian Resistance: an Interview With Jibril Rajoub
The secretary general of Fatah’s Central Committee delivers indispensable insight on topics such as Fatah-Hamas unification, Israeli fascism, the importance of international law, and the peace process.
Jul 20, 2025
“If the Israelis fail to make the deal with our generation, believe me that the future will be worse,” claims Jibril Rajoub. The secretary general of Fatah’s Central Committee, Rajoub is widely considered one of the most powerful figures within the Palestinian Authority. Rajoub’s life has been filled with both militant political activities and institutional roles. In 1970, Israel sentenced Rajoub to life imprisonment for throwing a grenade at an Israeli army bus, but he was released during a prisoner exchange in 1985. In 1988, Israel deported Rajoub to Lebanon because of his activities during the First Intifada. After returning to the West Bank in 1994, Rajoub headed the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security Force until 2002. Apart from his activities as secretary general, Rajoub has led the Palestine Football Association since 2006.
Recently, I had the chance to interview Rajoub at his office in Ramallah. While I’ve previously interviewed various political commentators and government officials (including former Palestinian Authority officials, such as Sari Nusseibeh), Rajoub is easily the most intense figure I’ve ever conversed with. Since the Palestinian Authority is famously repressive of political dissent (such as utilizing torture to punish critics), I tried to directly confront Rajoub with criticisms of his government. In this interview, Rajoub delivers indispensable insight on topics such as Fatah-Hamas unification, Israeli fascism, the importance of international law, and the peace process. According to Rajoub, Palestinian resistance must uphold the principle of nonviolence.
Richard McDaniel (RM): You’ve maintained that Palestinian independence requires unification. What are the steps needed to unify Fatah and Hamas? Do you think that this is a realistic possibility in the near future?
Jibril Rajoub (JR): First of all, as a matter of principle, I do believe that the emergence of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state requires issues on the national level in order to convince the international community to support [the Palestinians]. The first is a Palestinian national unity, with all Palestinians united behind one leadership, one goal, and an agreed upon strategic resistance approach or tool. This national unity should recognize international legitimacy, [such as] all United Nations resolutions as still of reference to settle this conflict. The second [is to] present our perspective about the shape of the future state, [or how] this state will contribute to regional stability and global peace.
I think this [Israeli] government and those crazy [figures in the Israeli government] are the existential, real threat to the State of Israel, not anything else.
Is it possible? Sure, it’s possible. I think that, according to my own experience and understanding, it’s a must. It’s a necessity, but it’s possible to achieve that by developing a national ideology on two faces. The first one is literally between Fatah and Hamas to develop a common ground about a political plan. [This includes] convincing Hamas to accept the 1967 borders, accept nonviolence and peaceful means as a strategic choice, and also accept the principle that the shape of the future state will be [one of] political pluralism with one authority, one gun, one police, and one law. If we have this kind of bilateral agreement as a common ground, then we go for national ideology with all Palestinian political factions. I think we do need the civil society to participate in a comprehensive, national ideology hosted by Egypt to develop a Palestinian political plan, with all Palestinians supporting and accepting an independent, sovereign [state] according to the U.N. resolutions. I think the whole world is fed up with the blood shedding. Therefore, we believe, in Fatah, that the nonviolence, the peaceful could, and should, [be] a strategic choice for all Palestinians.
The second is also that the future state will have democracy, freedom of expression, law and order, but with one authority. The sharing of power should come through general democratic processes, through general elections. The only way should come through this process. This is what I think. Now, we have this Israeli unilateral aggression on all Palestinians: genocide in Gaza, starvation, targeting everybody and everything to deport the Palestinians from Gaza through terror and crazy, fascist means. The other side is this resilience, this steadfastness of the Palestinians. Also, what [the Israelis] are doing here in the West Bank: the Israelization of East Jerusalem, the creeping annexation of the West Bank (dictating realities, building settlements, expanding existing ones). Some [Israeli ministers] are making it clear that it’s a matter of time that, officially, they will declare the annexation of all Palestinian territory. This is what we have, and we are trying to expose our justice cause. I think Israel now is in a very difficult situation. It’s a shame for the grandsons of the victims of the Holocaust to do the same, to use the same means against our people in Gaza, Tulkarem, Jenin, Hebron, Jerusalem, and everywhere in the Palestinian occupied territories.
Here, there are realities in this conflict. The first reality is that any settlement, any solution for this long and arduous conflict is a political solution. A political solution with a mutual understanding of each other’s rational concerns. For us, [our concerns include] independence and freedom to live in our legitimate territories (the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967). For the Israelis, I think security is a rational [concern]. But, to use security as an excuse to invade and to declare war—I think, today, no one is ready to swallow this fascist and racist Israeli policy. The second [is] the demographication. We are living here between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordanian River. [There’s around] 15 million [people], Jews and non-Jews. This is a reality. [There’s] no military, no religion, [and] no other means to settle this conflict. The only game on down is the political solution. Recognizing the very existence of the Palestinian people and our right to self-determination is the only way to make business in this conflict.
The third reality is [that] unilateral steps will never achieve [peace]. Dictating facts, building settlements, suffocating the Palestinians, killing, starving, and so on will never achieve anything. The fourth reality is that trust is nonexistent. Therefore, here, we do need a third party to bridge the gap, to build confidence. I think the international community [should be the third party]. The Americans could be the ones who can lead, but they should be fair. They should start by recognizing the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, recognizing the U.N. resolutions, and raising a red card to the racism, fascism, and new Nazism [in this Israeli government]. I think this [Israeli] government and those crazy [figures in the Israeli government] are the existential, real threat to the State of Israel, not anything else.
The other reality is that disengagement, divorcing each other by an agreement is the solution. But, if you want to divorce your partner, you should go to the court, and the court is the U.N. resolutions. It’s not a fascist, racist Israeli right-wing messianic [court]. It’s the same model that we all faced in the 1940s. This is what I think. We, as Palestinians, whether in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, we have no other place. We will not leave. We have been here. Since 1948, we are facing the same policies, the same means. Go back to the history [and read about] the atrocities. The genocide started in 1948. [Why should] the Palestinians be a scapegoat for what happened to the Jews in Europe [during the] last century, which I think was a shame? But, we were not part of it. We were not the ones who [committed the Holocaust], and we should not pay the price.
I think it’s now the time for three reasons. The first one is that this conflict will continue, will remain open as long as the Palestinian cause is not settled, is not solved, and as long as the Palestinians are not enjoying the right to self-determination. Second, I think this conflict is a real threat to regional stability and global peace. Third, the whole world will be distant, according to their position or policy toward this conflict.
RM: You’ve prioritized methods of nonviolent resistance, such as sport. In your view, when is violent resistance justified? Is there a point at which violent resistance is justified?
JR: No, no. Listen, I’ll tell you. I was part of militant resistance. I was arrested, and I spent 17 years in Israeli jails. I was even deported by the Israelis in a very brutal way. But, we are now in the 21st century. I think our generation, including Abu Mazen, does believe that, for many reasons, the most effective means of resistance to convince and keep the momentum of support all over the world should be based on nonviolence. No matter what the Israelis are doing, we have to expose our justice cause. We have to present our cause through our people’s steadfastness, resilience, and nonviolence. I believe that violence and killing in the 21st century is no more.
I never gave up, and I will never give up. I was, and will remain, optimistic.
Our cause is no more a local or a regional [problem]. Now, it’s on the agenda of the whole world. The whole world is engaged. The sympathy and support will never be sustained if bloodshedding is part of it. This is what I think, and this is what I believe. For example, I am in charge of the sports sector. I do believe that exposing our justice cause through sport, through athletes and players, could contribute to, achieve, and lead a very effective, convincing [message] everywhere.
RM: When I talk to both foreigners and Palestinians about the Palestinian Authority, some of them tell me that the Palestinian Authority is complicit with or powerless compared with the actions of the Israeli government. What do you make of these accusations?
JR: Listen, I don’t want to [talk about] the internal mess. In the long term, we should have democracy [and] freedom of expression. People have the right to criticize. I’m not satisfied with the function of the Palestinian Authority. I’m very critical. But, I think the reforms and the change should come from inside. [The changes] should come through a democratic process. We should not go to some Arab models like what happened in Egypt or Tunis. We should develop a democratic internal dynamic to change, to achieve our goals, to remove this or that, but not through any means which is not according, as I said, to processes [such as] elections.
RM: Since you mention you’re critical, what do you think is the most legitimate criticism directed toward the Palestinian Authority today?
JR: Excuse me. I’m not satisfied with the whole [government]. I think we can do a lot of things. We can, and we need, to make a lot of reforms: political reforms, security reforms, administrative reforms, financial reforms, judicial system reforms, media reforms. But, we should do it. We should initiate that. We should invest in that. The occupation, the suffocation, the checkpoints, the restrictions are preventing everything. I think the Israeli occupation is the worst model and terrorism.
RM: Related to that, after Hamas’ actions on October 7, 2023, you stated that “the next conflagration will be more violent in the West Bank”—[The next question was supposed to be: Is a Third Intifada from the West Bank still imminent?]
JR: Excuse me. This is not true. This is not true. Excuse me. What I said, and what I say today, is that he who is responsible for 7 of October is this crazy, stupid, and fascist Israeli government. I never supported killing civilians or kidnapping kids and women. Never! Even in the past. Okay?
RM: I know—
JR: Excuse me, please. He who should be blamed is this Israeli, fascist, racist, and expansionist—they are responsible. What I said is that if there is no international wake up—in the West Bank, it’s a matter of time. Until today I say, it’s a matter of time. Are you following the settlers? Are you following the army, the occupation? What do you expect? This is what I said, and this is what I believe. It’s a matter of time. What happened in Gaza will be [in the West Bank] because here we are living together. We are not isolated. The Americans should understand that the Israelis cannot enjoy security, official recognition, integration in the Middle East [while simultaneously perpetrating] occupation, expansionism, and unilateral activities including killing, arresting, humiliating [Palestinians].
RM: Right now, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of Palestine?
JR: I was born optimistic. Revolutionaries are always optimistic. I spent 17 years in Israeli jails, and I was deported. I spent years outside in exile. I never gave up, and I will never give up. I was, and will remain, optimistic. Once again, we are here. The non-Jews [make up] 50%. Look and see the Palestinians who are inside Israel—the racism, the apartheid. Do they enjoy equal rights? All of them [come from this land] before Israel was established. I think what happened in Europe [was terrible], but the Palestinians were not part of it. In spite of that, Israel is a reality. We are ready. Within their internationally recognized borders, [Israel has] the right to enjoy security and official recognition. This policy [of expansionism] is a real threat. The existential threat is not Iran or anything. It’s this expansionism and this stupid, fascist government. If the Israelis fail to make the deal with our generation, believe me that the future will be worse. The Palestinians will never give up, and will never leave.
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Palestine And Its Metaphors
Palestine is not a symbol. It is a real place, under siege. And to see it clearly, we must burn the language that keeps us blind.
Jun 06, 2025
Metaphors kill. Not with bullets or bombs, but with confusion. They blur what demands clarity. They sentimentalize what should horrify. They distract.
Susan Sontag wrote that the most honest way to understand illness is to strip it of metaphor. To stop saying cancer is an invasion, or tuberculosis is romantic, or AIDS is punishment. Disease is not a morality play. It is a condition of the body. What burdens the sick is not just the illness itself, but the stories society tells about it.
So too with nations. So too with Palestine.
Palestine is not just a land or a people. It has been made into a metaphor. For resistance. For loss. For stubbornness. For martyrdom. For chaos. For terrorism. For hope. For grief. It is everything except what it is: a place where people live, suffer, starve, and die.
Palestine punctures the fantasy of Western innocence. That is why it must be abstracted, medicalized, moralized, silenced.
Turning Palestine into a symbol allows the powerful to avoid the facts. You don’t need to look at checkpoints if you’re talking about “conflict.” You don’t have to name apartheid if you’re debating “disputed territories.” You don’t have to say stolen if you say contested. You don’t have to say killed if you say clash. Metaphor is how power talks about violence without taking responsibility for it.
Palestine becomes intolerable not because of what Palestinians do, but because of what they represent: an open wound that refuses to close, a people who will not disappear. This is why their story must be constantly reframed, misnamed, wrapped in euphemism and myth. Their existence disrupts the fantasy that liberal democracies are just, that settler states are stable, that history is over. And so, the metaphor persists. It buries reality. It protects the liar.
We must refuse to speak in code, refuse to let metaphor do the work of silence. Palestine is not a symbol. It is a real place, under siege. And to see it clearly, we must burn the language that keeps us blind.
Palestine resists. That much is true. But once you say it like that—without detail, without names, without time or place—it becomes a slogan. And slogans consume clarity. The world loves the idea of resistance more than the reality. It loves the photo of the boy with the slingshot. It loves the keffiyeh, the flag, the tear gas. It loves the spectacle of defiance. What it does not love is the cost.
It does not love a broken spine from a checkpoint beating. It does not love a family digging their daughter from rubble. It does not love the dull terror of drones. That kind of resistance is not romantic. It’s not metaphor. It’s not poster-ready.
Palestine is trapped in a paradox. Its resistance is admired as long as it stays symbolic—noble suffering, poetic dignity, children throwing rocks at tanks. But when resistance becomes material—when it demands rights, when it takes up arms, when it names its oppressor—it is immediately recast. Now it is extremism. Now it is terrorism. Now the metaphor turns toxic. This is the trap of metaphor: It flatters, and it criminalizes, depending on what power needs.
The powerful don’t fear Palestine because of its military strength. They fear the idea of it. The persistence of it. The fact that something so small, so wounded, so systematically crushed still refuses to submit. Palestine is proof that domination is never total. That’s what makes it dangerous.
And so, the metaphor must be managed. Contained. You can wear the keffiyeh but not name the Occupation. You can say “Free Palestine” on Instagram but not mention Gaza. You can quote Darwish but not talk about bulldozed olive groves. You can mourn the dead but not accuse the killers. In this way, metaphor becomes a leash. It lets you gesture toward justice without ever touching it.
But Palestine doesn’t need symbols. It needs liberation. Not metaphors, no myths needed, only land, water, safety, and return from exile. These are not poetic demands. They are concrete, measurable, and deliberately denied. To really see Palestinian resistance, you must stop calling it resistance. Call it what it is: survival under siege. Organizing under surveillance. Memory under erasure. It’s not metaphor. It’s real life.
Once you frame a people as pathology, you don’t need to justify what you do to them. You only need to call it medicine. And when treatment fails to sterilize the threat, the language escalates. Now the body must be purged. Now the neighborhood is a target. The entire population becomes suspect.
They say Hamas “hides among the population.” But what does that mean in a fenced in strip of land 40 kilometers long, where there is no army base, no safe zone, no separation between life and resistance? The phrase is not a statement of fact—it is a metaphor. And like most metaphors in war, it serves a purpose: to erase the line between fighter and civilian, to turn every man, woman, and child into a potential target. If you can’t see your enemy, then everyone becomes your enemy. The home is now a military site. The hospital, a command center. The school, a shield. “Among the population” doesn’t describe a tactic, it justifies indiscriminate killing. It is how the language of war collapses into the logic of extermination.
But what if the patient isn’t sick? What if the disease is the system choking him? What if the diagnosis is projection? There is no vaccine for settler colonialism. No cure for apartheid—except dismantling it. But if Palestine is spoken of like a disease, its survival will always be framed as a threat.
Power never calls itself by name. It prefers neutral terms. Clinical. Procedural. Empty terms. Palestinians aren’t starved—they face a humanitarian crisis. Their homes aren’t stolen—they’re part of a property dispute. They’re not imprisoned—they’re under security lockdown. Their lives aren’t ended—they’re neutralized. This is not just bad language. It’s policy disguised as grammar.
Words like conflict, clash, cycle of violence—these are metaphors of balance. They suggest symmetry, as if this is a fair fight, as if both sides are equally armed, equally culpable, equally free. But this is not a clash. It is not a cycle. It is a colonizer and the colonized. An occupier and the occupied. The difference is moral. The difference is material. The metaphor erases both.
The demand is not poetic. It is logistical: land back, borders erased, walls down, refugees returned, bombing stopped, sanctions imposed, settlers removed, rights restored.
Sontag wrote that when people described cancer as an “invasion,” they were borrowing the language of war to make sense of something terrifying. But when the war is real, and the invasion is actual, language flips. War becomes operation. Invasion becomes security measure. You speak of it like infrastructure. This is how you sanitize occupation.
The wall isn’t a scar across the land—it’s a barrier fence. Settlements aren’t illegal—they’re new neighborhoods. Checkpoints aren’t instruments of control—they’re points of coordination. And Gaza isn’t under siege—it’s self-governed, as if a prison becomes free the moment the guards move outside its walls. Metaphor in this context does not reveal. It anesthetizes.
It allows liberal democracies to wash their hands with language. You don’t need to condemn apartheid if you can call it a complex situation. You don’t have to intervene in ethnic cleansing if you can label it a tragic escalation. You don’t have to listen to the grieving if you describe their pain as incitement. This is not metaphor as poetry. It is metaphor as smokescreen.
The media uses it. Diplomats use it. NGOs use it. Even well-meaning activists get trapped in it, calling for dialogue, for both sides to come together, for peaceful resolution, without ever naming the violence that blocks peace at every turn. But clarity is not extremism and precision is not incitement. To describe things as they are is not radical—it is necessary. There is no symmetry between the boot and the neck. And any language that suggests otherwise is complicity with the boot.
Palestine is not a wound in the Western psyche. It is a mirror of that psyche. And what it reflects is unbearable. The reason the world can’t look at Palestine directly is not because it is too foreign, but because it is too familiar. It shows the West everything it claims to have outgrown: apartheid, racial hierarchy, empire, extermination. Not in the past tense, but right now. Daily. Live-streamed.
Palestine is where the myth of Western moral authority collapses on itself. It’s easy to denounce the crimes of the past: slavery, fascism, genocide, so long as they stay in museums or textbooks. But Palestine breaks the frame. It puts the vocabulary of historical evil in the present tense. It makes Holocaust-committed Europe complicit in a same kind of ethnic cleansing. It makes the U.S., champion of “rules-based order,” the primary funder of impunity. It makes liberalism look like a mask, not a principle.
This is what makes Palestine dangerous—not its resistance, but its clarity.
Palestine exposes the real function of international law: who gets to break it, and who must obey. It exposes journalism’s quiet racism: who gets names and childhood photos, and who becomes “a number.” It exposes the limits of identity politics: how many doors are slammed shut when the oppressed are inconvenient. The metaphor of Palestine-as-problem allows Western institutions to avoid seeing the problem in themselves.
To look clearly at Palestine is to confront questions most people would rather leave buried. What does it mean that the state born from the ashes of the Holocaust has become a jailer? What does it mean that human rights groups whisper what Palestinians scream? What does it mean that the most surveilled, bombed, and besieged population on Earth is asked to behave peacefully, while their occupier is praised for restraint?
Palestine punctures the fantasy of Western innocence. That is why it must be abstracted, medicalized, moralized, silenced. Because if you face it directly—without metaphor, without euphemism—you must admit that the world is not post-colonial. That we live in a global system where some lives are sacred, and others are collateral. Where entire populations can be punished for existing. Where the worst crime is not violence but remembering.
Palestine remembers.
The time for symbols is over. Palestine is not a metaphor. It is not the universal struggle. It is not the world’s conscience. It is not an allegory for Brown resistance, or the dream of return, or the poetry of loss. It is not an Instagram aesthetic. It is not a stand-in for every injustice on Earth. It is a place, with borders and people, a colonial regime, a military occupation, a blockade and a death toll. It is a place where a child drinks from a bomb-cracked pipe. Where a mother sleeps in a school because her house is dust. Where a man counts the names of his dead before checking if his leg is still attached.
To speak of Palestine clearly, we must break the habit of metaphor. We must stop treating it as a narrative arc, a tragedy to be admired from a safe distance. It is not art. It is not history. It is the present, and it is now, as we ourselves live and breathe. We must reject the language of soft avoidance: Say occupation, not “conflict.” Say apartheid, not “dispute.” Say siege, not “border closure.” Say massacre, not “escalation.” Say starvation not “hunger.” Say Palestinian, not “Hamas.”
The demand is not poetic. It is logistical: land back, borders erased, walls down, refugees returned, bombing stopped, sanctions imposed, settlers removed, rights restored. This is not metaphor. This is what justice looks like; anything less is a performance.
Sontag understood that metaphor, in the wrong hands, becomes a weapon. It doesn’t soften violence—it smuggles it in. It doesn’t reveal truth—it repackages it in palatable form. She wrote against metaphor to rescue the ill from stigma. We must resist metaphor to stop the disappearance of Palestine.
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The Shame of What We've Done: Assessing Jews' Responsibility for Israel's Actions
A new book by Peter Beinart analyses how the maudlin story we Jews tell ourselves of our virtue and heroic endurance inoculates Jews from seeing Israel's agency in creating the resistance it faces.
Feb 02, 2025
The dominant self-conception of the Jewish story is innocence, repeated persecutions, and then redemption by creation of the Jewish nationalist State of Israel.
This narrative is critically examined in Peter Beinart's new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.
Beinart's book says the maudlin story we Jews tell ourselves of our virtue and heroic endurance inoculates Jews from seeing Israel's agency in creating the resistance it faces: "We must now tell a new story to answer the horror that a Jewish country has perpetrated… We are not history's permanent virtuous victims."
The predicted consequence of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine to Jews in "diaspora" is happening. Jews feel they are being scrutinized and called to account for Israel's actions, on campuses and in the streets worldwide.
Beinart, former editor of The New Republic, is now an editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, and a New York Times contributor.
He has been in a 20-year progression of seeing, more and more sharply, the "Jewish and democratic" state of Israel as anti-democratic and incompatible with Jewish tradition.
He writes that support for a Jewish state has become "idolatry," permitting endless killing, torture, and oppression of Palestinians "There is no limit. No matter how many Palestinians die, they do not tip the scales, because the value of a Palestinian is finite and the value of a Jewish state is infinite."
Contemporary Jewish life is filled with that idolatry, he observes: "In most of the Jewish world today, rejecting Jewish statehood is a greater heresy than rejecting Judaism itself."
The book attributes the horrors imposed on 2 million human beings in Gaza not only to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) but to Jews: "Worshipping a country that elevates Jews over Palestinians replaces Judaism's universal God—who makes special demands on Jews but cherishes all people–with a tribal deity that considers Jewish life precious and Palestinian life cheap."
Beinart is not playing the peekaboo game of saying Jews are not responsible for Israel, and the other half of the time saying Israel is the Jewish State.
He's not saying "all Jews," but fairly saying "representative," "mainstream" Jewish organizations worldwide are now Zionist. Anti-Zionist organizations are dissident.
He observes that many synagogues have an Israeli flag on the bima (platform where the Torah is read) "and a prayer for Israel in the liturgy."
It was predicted and warned about, as the Zionist movement grew, that the effect of creating a Jewish nation-state would be Jews being seen in the light of that state's actions.
The predicted consequence of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine to Jews in "diaspora" is happening. Jews feel they are being scrutinized and called to account for Israel's actions, on campuses and in the streets worldwide.
Beinart places the Hamas violence of October 7, 2023 in context, as consistent with the history of suppressed peoples without peaceful means to contest their status, as is seen in slave revolts and anticolonial guerilla wars.
I note that Beinart's thoughts are resonant with what, almost 100 years ago, historian and then-Zionist Hans Kohn wrote of 1929 anti-Jewish riots after 12 years of Zionist colonization in Palestine under British authority:
We pretend to be innocent victims. Of course the Arabs attacked us in August… They perpetrated all the barbaric acts that are characteristic of a colonial revolt… We have been in Palestine for 12 years [since the Balfour Declaration] without having even once made a serious attempt at seeking through negotiations the consent of the Indigenous people.
Israeli retribution since October 7, 2023 on the 2 million-plus population of Gaza and their means of life—homes, utilities, schools, universities, hospitals—has officially resulted in over 46,000 deaths and innumerable injuries directly from IDF attacks.
The medical journal Lancet estimates deaths as likely much higher, counting "deaths from starvation, disease, or cold."
Most of the population of Gaza was made homeless, huddled in improvised shelters, pushed by IDF warnings from one "safe zone" to another, often then bombed.
Beinart's book is an analysis of Zionist apologetics that are necessary to both regard oneself as moral and defend what Israel has done, from the 1947-49 Nakba—terroristic expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from their communities within present-day Israel—to Gaza in 2025.
He denounces dehumanizing, demonizing, Zionist lies about Palestinian resistance: "These claims don't withstand even modest scrutiny. They're less arguments than talismans. They ward off dangerous emotions like grief and shame."
Using the model of the dismantling of apartheid South Africa, he tries to envision what principles could heal Palestine :
The details matter, but they matter less than the underlying principles. Wherever they live together, Jews and Palestinians should live under the same law. And they should work to repair the injustices of the past. The Israelis who were made refugees on October 7 should be allowed to go home. And the Palestinians who were made refugees in 1948 should be allowed to go home. Historical wrongs can never be fully undone. But the more sincere the effort, the greater the reconciliation that ensues.
This would be a radical reconception of Jewish life in Palestine, that in abandoning the role of conquerors, Jews may live as Jewish Palestinians. He makes the point that whites relinquishing apartheid was a more peaceful process for South Africa than having it overthrown.
In the summary chapter of the book, Beinart says Israel's conduct is from a heretical Jewish tendency to believe Jewish people are sacred, rather than people with extra obligations: "So what if a few dreamers in Moorish Spain or the Silesian shtetl [Eastern European Jewish village] consoled themselves with the idea that deep within us lies a special spark of the divine? They didn't have the power to do anything about it."
This self-deification, first proposed by an Israelite named Korach, who challenged Moses' leadership, hadn't mattered as much until the creation of "Jewish" national power: "All that changed with the creation of Israel. Only once Jews control a state with life-and-death power over millions of non-Jews does Korach's claim of intrinsic Jewish sanctity become truly dangerous."
Beinart calls for liberation for Jews from the Zionist doctrine that Jews are only victims, never victimizers: "We can lift the weight that oppressing Palestinians imposes on Jewish Israelis, and indirectly, on Jews around the world… We can lay down the burden of seeing ourselves as the perennial victims of a Jew-hating world."
More than level of observance or denomination, the question of Zionism is going to be a fault line in Jewish fellowship, Beinart believes:
Remove Jewish statehood from Jewish identity and, for many Jews around the world, it's not clear what is left. But the benefit of recognizing that Jews are not fundamentally different from other people is that it allows us to learn from their experience. Jewish exceptionalism is less exceptional than we think. We are not the only people to use a story of victimhood to justify supremacy.
Israel's perpetual peril is the Arab population it has displaced but not exterminated. They are determined to redeem their birthright to live as freely in Palestine as Jews do.
Instead of conquest, Beinart proposes a model of restraint, cooperation, and respect—along a line of Jewish thinkers from Ahad Ha'am to Judah Magnes to Albert Einstein.
Many of the visions for Jewish settlement in Palestine were universalist and pacific.
In 1927, Zionist writer (and Chaim Weizmann protege) Maurice Samuel mused, in his book I, The Jew, that Jewish civilization "for 60 generations" demonstrated "that neither conquest or oppression was necessary to its survival… a group can survive without mass murder."
Whether trauma or hubris allows Zionists in Israel and elsewhere to trust that model—finding the image of God even in their "enemies"—is the question.
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