On Feb. 20, 1922, comrade Vladimir Lenin—after losing the vote for the Constituent Assembly that would have consolidated popular support for his November 1917 Bolshevik revolution, and after surviving multiple assassination attempts (he was wounded in perhaps the most famous one on Aug. 30, 1918), peasant uprisings, the Kronstadt rebellion and seeing his economic policy fail—wrote a letter to Dmitrii Kurskii, the People’s Commissar of Justice.
He demanded an “intensification of the repression of the political enemies of the Soviet regime” to be accomplished through the “organization of a number of model trials” to be done “systematically, resolutely and with determination.” The charge would be promoting an armed struggle against the Soviet state.
A total of 33 members of the oppositionist Socialist Revolutionary activists were put in the dock, foremost among them Abram Gots, who was Jewish, as were many other defendants, like Mikhail Gendelman, Lev Gershtein and Evgeniia Ratner-Elkind. The main organizer of this and the later, more famous Stalinist Great Purge show trials, with their displays of “confessions,” was Yakov Agranov, also Jewish.
Agranov’s role developed over 15 years as part of seeking out candidates from among intellectuals vilified for anti-Soviet elements. Attributed to him is the quip: “If there is no enemy, he should be created, denounced and punished.” He himself was executed by firing squad on Aug. 1, 1938, as an “enemy of the people.”
Today, a century following that first show trial, Beinart fessed up to his own error. That error? Speaking to an audience at Tel Aviv University on Nov. 25.
He bowed his head in abject shame as the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) condemned him and called on him “to immediately cancel this unethical, unjustifiable engagement that, regardless of its content, can only be used to whitewash the unspeakable crimes committed by Israel and its institutions, including TAU, against Indigenous Palestinians.”
His expression of contrition is too long to be quoted in full. Nevertheless, here are a few excerpts:
“I made a serious mistake … [I] hoped for more conversations with Israelis, to explain why I believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and why I believe Jewish supremacy is fundamentally wrong. … I let my desire for that conversation override my solidarity with Palestinians. … As Noura Erakat and others have pointed out, there are ways for me to talk to Israelis without violating BDS guidelines and undermining a collective effort against oppression. … Had I listened more to Palestinians, I would have realized that earlier. It’s embarrassing to admit such a serious mistake. I 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.”
Back on Oct. 21, 2023—three weeks after the “Al-Aqsa Flood” invasion over the Gaza border and ensuing Hamas-led murder, rape, burnings and kidnappings in southern Israel—Beinart expressed the view that the terrorist organization “now represents Palestinian resistance” but drew no moral reflection of that reality. Again and again, he justified the worst of Muslim anti-Zionism, acting as a normalizer of anti-Jewish sentiment among the progressive left. Yet living in his own self-created dreamland, he found himself pilloried by his pro-Palestine friends. (In a previous column, I detailed Palestinian activist and organizer Nerdeen Kiswani’s attack on him.)
Kiswani, to remind ourselves, believes in and promotes that “Zionists are Nazis.”
As Soviet expert Izabella Tabarovsky responded to Kiswani’s anti-Beinart rage, it was “a useful reminder that the Yevsektsiya story always ends the same way. For those who object to Jewish peoplehood to begin with, no Jew will ever be antizionist enough … she excoriates him for whatever shreds of connection to Jewish peoplehood he has left.”
Chastised, embarrassed and afraid of losing the so-called “friends” he had collected over the years since his Open Zion platform related to his anti-Zionist struggle, he puts on a show trial of his own making with himself in the dock.
Has it helped?
Palestinian journalist Ali Abunimah reacted that Beinart “arrogantly chose to ignore [calls not to speak]. It’s hard not to see this as anything other than an exercise in damage control, to restore his marketability following the overwhelming backlash to his informed, conscious, willful decision to violate a clear picket line.” (Marketability means Jews and money.)
First, Kiswani, in a reaction to Beinart’s explanation why he would be appearing in “Zionist-land” (my term), wrote: “There’s a scourge of Zionism and normalization in so called antizionist (self-congratulatory) Jewish spaces which also happen to write books, cash in honorariums, and travel the world while talking about being morally superior for recognizing the bare minimum.”
She added that Beinart is “a Zionist. I keep saying it. He’s not interested in justice—just in looking morally superior while cashing in on our struggle. Man really thinks his ‘once-in-a-generation’ brain is gonna convince baby killers to grow a conscience.”
Afterwards, she tweeted: “Peter consistently disrespects communities he claims to support, particularly Palestinians, and then apologizes for it after. What does everyone who was defending him have to say now that even he admits he was wrong?” In other words, no amount of kowtowing on Beinart’s part can absolve him of his sins.
Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd had lashed out at Beinart that he is an “arrogant, insidious war-profiteering” and, correctly, knew you “will apologize for this in a few years, after you benefit from it, because that is what you have always done.”
Indian actress and model Sana Saeed called Beinart’s new book “tasteless” and “morally egregious, as it “put the identity of the genocidaires of Palestinians at the forefront of their genocide” and wondered why people didn’t understand “what Beinart was about when he spread the mass rape hoax and said how Palestinians/pro-Palestinian people have disappointed him in not condemning it.”
Surprisingly, James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute, was supportive, posting: “This attack on Beinart is not only wrong, it’s stupid. … He’s now bravely challenging establishment pro-Israel thought, forcing many to rethink their views.”
Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist based in Hebron, said much the same, writing on X: “I have known him as one of the most sincere friends and steadfast supporters of the Palestinian people. His voice, his courage, and his actions have helped make the occupation more costly. … Thank you, Peter, for standing on the right side of history.”
Beinart perhaps counted the pros and the cons, weighed them and decided to hang his head in shame. As the above texts seem to indicate, it will not help. He will be politically and socially hanged. The show trial will go on.
The only thing left is that we Zionists assure that he remains in his self-induced exile from the Jewish community, never to be returned to the fold. He made his choice: “Palestine.” Let him enjoy the bitter fruits he helped nourish.
