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A review by marcynewman
Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning by Peter Beinart
hopeful
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Peter Beinart's book is a gift every antiZionist Jew should give to every Zionist relative, friend, neighbor. That is the audience here. Still, I found some parts of the book - especially the opening chapter - to be extremely profound because of the way he links Torah and Talmud to antiZionism. I expect that it may be a game changer for a lot of American Zionists.
What I didn't appreciate so much was how he talked about Palestine in some places. His choice of not using the word genocide to talk about the last 15 months in Gaza I think is atrocious. Using that word isn't inviting comparison, as he suggests; it's about a legal term that legal scholars have decidedly demonstrated applies to Gaza. I also take issue with the fact that when discussing campus protests and how college students in the US have been impacted, he spends pages upon pages on Jewish students but never mentions the fact that the only people who were murdered or maimed in the US in the last 15 months were Palestinians.
Still, I think this book presents an important opening and way of understanding how Israel has become a false idol for Jews and I think it's critical that this book is widely distributed in Jewish communities.
What I didn't appreciate so much was how he talked about Palestine in some places. His choice of not using the word genocide to talk about the last 15 months in Gaza I think is atrocious. Using that word isn't inviting comparison, as he suggests; it's about a legal term that legal scholars have decidedly demonstrated applies to Gaza. I also take issue with the fact that when discussing campus protests and how college students in the US have been impacted, he spends pages upon pages on Jewish students but never mentions the fact that the only people who were murdered or maimed in the US in the last 15 months were Palestinians.
Still, I think this book presents an important opening and way of understanding how Israel has become a false idol for Jews and I think it's critical that this book is widely distributed in Jewish communities.