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<\/a><\/p>\nA Jewish-American liberal columnist, journalist, Peter Beinart attends and speaks at the rally as pro-Palestinian Jewish Americans gather at an emergency rally to release Palestinian green card holder and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, New York City, March 20, 2025. (Selcuk Acar\/Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cBy speaking earlier this week at Tel Aviv University, I made a serious mistake,\u201d the progressive Jewish writer posted on X, a day after a scheduled appearance at the Israeli school.<\/p>\n
The morning before, he had defended his plans, saying he saw \u201cvalue in speaking to Israelis about Israel\u2019s crimes.\u201d Now, he said, \u201cI let my desire for that conversation override my solidarity with Palestinians, who in the face of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide have asked the world boycott Israeli institutions that are complicit in their oppression.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beinart\u2019s apology came in the face of steep criticism from some on the anti-Israel left, where Beinart has long been one of the most prominent Jewish voices. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, publicly and privately called on Beinart to cancel his talk, and he endured a bruising volley of castigation online.<\/p>\n
Emphasizing that he had not been paid for his speech, Beinart said he had been motivated by wanting to influence Israeli Jews as he said he had with American Jews \u201cwith whom I strongly disagree, both to listen and in hopes of changing their minds.\u201d But he said he had come to understand that he could have done that without speaking at an Israeli university, and that he had erred by not consulting Palestinians when making his plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s embarrassing to admit such a serious mistake,\u201d Beinart wrote. \u201cI dearly wish I had not made this one, which has caused particular harm because international pressure is crucial to ensuring Palestinian freedom. This was a failure of judgment. I am sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
PACBI did not publicly respond to Beinart\u2019s apology. But the mea culpa ignited a wave of criticism of its own from Jewish and pro-Israel voices who said it typified an absolutist ethos in the progressive pro-Palestinian movement that they have long denounced.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe dynamics of the radical left, especially the American one (which draws on puritanical patterns) demonstrated here include social pressure, incessant border-drawing, threats of boycotts, repeated demands to confess sins, and the perception of confession as a submission that redeems the guilty from the fate of traitors to the revolution,\u201d tweeted the Israeli scholar Tomer Persico, who is currently on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley. \u201cThis is a political-social space that is purist to the point of self-destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n
An Israeli trauma psychologist said Beinart\u2019s apology reflected a stance she had seen before from abused women or people trapped in cults. \u201cThey start treating ordinary acts of agency \u2014 talking to someone outside the circle or forming a judgment on their own \u2014 as betrayals that must be confessed,\u201d wrote Orli Peter in a widely viewed post. \u201cThis isn\u2019t moral clarity; it\u2019s fear wearing the mask of conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some said Beinart\u2019s apology landed in a historical pattern in which Jews who have sought to ally themselves with antisemitic movements are cast out themselves, sometimes with mortal consequences.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo Jew is ever good enough for the Jew-hater,\u201d tweeted the Scottish Jewish pundit Ben Freeman. \u201cThe goal posts are always moved. The Jew is always left begging for acceptance. They are the ultimate parvenu. Always seeking approval, never gaining it. A Jewish tragedy if ever there was one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some moderate pro-Palestinian voices also weighed in critically. \u201cThis is truly embarrassing and deeply self-deprecatory behavior,\u201d tweeted Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gazan emigre who is critical of much of contemporary pro-Palestinian activism and who himself spoke to an Israeli news organization this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cAsking for forgiveness because you spoke to Israeli students who belong to your tribe, are your people, and part of your community is not going to make you more liked, accepted, or embraced by the rabid elements of the \u2018pro-Palestine\u2019 movement and the BDS cultists who have long stopped viewing their efforts as a tactic and devolved into demonizing Jews, Israelis, and Zionists as the actual end goal,\u201d Alkhatib added.<\/p>\n
Before his apology, Beinart had spoken to a number of Tel Aviv students, including some who attended because they disagree with his views on Israel. Gabi Schiller, a social media activist who has worked at the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs, wrote that some of her Tel Aviv University classmates had spoken with Beinart after his talk to challenge him on his ideas, including his promotion of a one-state solution.<\/p>\n
\u201cPutting aside the content of what they discussed, what took place in that moment was inherently valuable, despite how much I oppose Beinart\u2019s stances: the exchange of opinion and ideas in an academic space in a respectful way,\u201d Schiller wrote on Instagram, where she posts under the account name Yehudim Omrim. The experience, she said, was \u201cincreasingly impossible on North American campuses around domestic politics and certainly around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where anti-normalization has become the new litmus test to be permitted into social spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n