Peter Beinart

Beinart was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His parents were Jewish immigrants from South Africa (his maternal grandfather was from Russia, and his maternal grandmother, who was Sephardic, was from Egypt).[3][4][5] His father's parents were from Lithuania.[6] His mother, Doreen (née Pienaar), is a former director of the Harvard's Human Rights film series at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and his father, Julian Beinart is a former professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1] His stepfather is theatre critic and playwright Robert Brustein.[7] Beinart attended Buckingham Browne and Nichols School in Cambridge. He then studied history and political science at Yale University, where he was a member of the Yale Political Union and graduated in 1993. He was a Rhodes Scholar at University College, Oxford University, where he earned an M.Phil. in international relations in 1995.[8]

Beinart worked at The New Republic as the managing editor from 1995 to 1997, then as senior editor until 1999, and as the magazine's editor from 1999 to 2006. For much of that time he also wrote The New Republic's "TRB" column, which was reprinted in the New York Post and other newspapers. From 2007 until 2009 he was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Beinart is a Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York. He has written for Time, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and other periodicals. He has appeared on various TV news discussion programs and is a political commentator for CNN.[8] His editor-in-chief at the Forward called him a "wunderkind".[9][10] In March 2012, Beinart launched a new blog, "Open Zion", at Newsweek/The Daily Beast.[11] He was also a senior political writer for The Daily Beast. In 2012, Beinart was included on Foreign Policy magazine's list of 100 top global thinkers.[12]

On November 4, 2013, Haaretz announced that Beinart would be hired as a columnist beginning January 1, 2014.[13] The same day, the Atlantic Media Company said he would join National Journal and write for The Atlantic's website beginning in January. Beinart would cease operating his blog at The Daily Beast.[14] In January 2017 he left Haaretz and became a columnist for the The Forward,[15] where he stayed until the beginning of 2020, when he joined Jewish Currents as an editor-at-large.[16]

In August 2018, Beinart said he was detained by Shin Bet at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport and questioned about his presence at West Bank protests and outspoken criticism of the Israeli government's policies toward the Palestinians. Beinart called his experience "trivial" when compared to the experiences of others, particularly Palestinians and Palestinian Americans who travel through Israel's main airport.[17][18] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Israeli security forces, was told that Beinart's detention was an administrative mistake, and that the country "welcomes all—critics and supporters alike."[19]

Beinart is the author of the 2006 book The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again.

His second book, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, published in 2010, "look[ed] back at the past hundred years of U.S. foreign policy in the baleful light of recent events [and found] the ground littered with ... the remnants of large ideas and unearned confidence [as demonstrable in] a study of three needless wars", World War I, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War.[9]

In his 2010 essay "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" in the New York Review of Books,[20] He argued that by abetting Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, American Jewish leaders risk alienating generations of younger American Jews who find the occupation morally wrong and incompatible with their liberal politics.[3]

In 2016 Beinart said that greater military engagement against ISIS could be detrimental to America.[21] Beinart also attracted criticism for proposing that America secure peace in East Asia by allowing Mainland China to take control of Taiwan.[22]

In a 2018 essay in The Atlantic, Beinart wrote that Trump voters care more about murder by illegal immigrants than about the cover-up of the Trump's affairs.[23] He also wrote in 2018 that there is rising authoritarian nationalism in many countries with diverse situations. The conditions include both booming and poor economies, with only some concerned about immigration. He said the true common thread among right-wing autocrats is both a hostility to liberal democracy and the desire to subordinate women.[24][25]

In a 2020 essay, Beinart rejected the two-state solution in favor of a one-state solution,[26] detailing his views in a longer essay in Jewish Currents.[27] Beinart followed this essay with a shorter opinion piece for the New York Times, "I No Longer Believe in a Jewish State."[26] He argued that the two-state model has become untenable and that Israel's permanent control over millions of Palestinians who lack basic rights will result in war, and perhaps even ethnic cleansing. Israel and Palestine, Beinart wrote, should instead work toward creating a fully democratic binational state representing both Jewish and Palestinian identity, along the lines of Belgium or Northern Ireland following the Good Friday Agreement. He argued that much of the Jewish community views the world through an outdated "Holocaust lens", in which a sovereign Jewish state is required to prevent a second Holocaust, and that this causes both Israelis and Palestinians to suffer.[27]

Subsequent commentary in the media ranged from outright praise[28] to allegations of dishonesty;[29][30][31] author Daniel Gordis wrote, "Beinart strings together an astonishing array of sleights of hand and misrepresentations ... little more than a screed that is an insult to the intelligence of his readers."[32]

As of 2012, Beinart lives in New York City.[8] He keeps kosher,[3] regularly attends an Orthodox synagogue, and sends his children to a Jewish school.[33]

• The Crisis of Zionism. New York, NY: Times Books. 2012. ISBN 978-0-8050-9412-1.
• The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris. New York, NY: HarperCollins. 2010. ISBN 978-0-06-145646-6.
• Peter Beinart (June 10, 2010). "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment". The New York Review of Books.
• The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror. New York, NY: HarperCollins. 2006. ISBN 978-0-06-084161-4.

• Column archives at The Daily Beast
• "Zion Square. Open Zion website". The Daily Beast.
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • C-SPAN Q&A interview with Beinart, April 3, 2005
• Peter Beinart on Charlie Rose
• Peter Beinart at IMDb
• Works by or about Peter Beinart in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Jeffrey Goldberg (May 18, 2010). "Goldblog vs. Peter Beinart. Interview with Peter Beinart Part I". The Atlantic.
  Jeffrey Goldberg (May 18, 2010). "Goldblog vs. Peter Beinart. Interview with Peter Beinart Part II". The Atlantic.
• The Special Kind Of Hate That Drove Pittsburgh Shooter — And Trump by Peter Beinart
• Shield of the Republic: A New Democratic Foreign Policy by Peter Beinart
• David Friedman. "Read Peter Beinart and you'll vote Donald Trump; His reflexive reaction to my involvement in the Trump candidacy lays bare how dangerous the Jewish left is to the State of Israel," Arutz Sheva (op-ed).