Bari Weiss wants to speak for the Jews – but to do that she has to try and demonise Peter Beinart
JVL Introduction
The attempt to police discussion in Jewish communities worldwide is generally strong.
But it has been challenged in the USA by Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow and other groups in which younger members of America’s varied Jewish communities are very active.
That movement received a major boost recently when liberal Zionist, Peter Beinart, a thorn in the side of the Zionist establishment for a decade now, finally broke decisively with its two-states commitment.
Attempts are being made to marginalise and discredit his important voice.
How? By accusing him of consorting with antisemites – for being willing to appear on platform with those demonised by the establishment for speaking out strongly in criticism of Israel.
This article was originally published by Mondoweiss on Fri 27 Nov 2020. Read the original here.
Bari Weiss wants to speak for the Jews
Bari Weiss’s rage over Peter Beinart’s role in a panel on antisemitism with Rashida Tlaib and Marc Lamont Hill next month shows that Weiss is in a battle with Beinart about who will represent American Jews. Weiss represents a tribal perspective of sacred victimhood; and Beinart’s universalism and openness to the Palestinian story is a threat to her.
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I guess it comes down to who the MSM want to support – ie which view they decide to condone, and which view they decide to condemn. And given what has gone before……
To hell with the Main Sewer Media! Pandering to them – as Starmer seems industriously to be doing – grovelling to the Mail, and even to the Sun (try that in Liverpool !) though as far as I know he has’t yet flown half way around the world to genuflect to Murdoch as Blair did.
If you look at Bob Worcester’s pretty authoritative account of the 1997 landslide carefully, or elsewhere too, you will see that Blair’s ‘apotheosis’ came pretty well exclusively from a drastic decline in the Tory vote. BW also notes the crass incompetence of Major’s handling of sleaze etc (though no worse than Blair’s grovelling to F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone as soon as Balir became PM, not to. mention the peerages for cash (loans, just to make sure the donors stayed completely in the saddle)… The journalists of the MSM can smell a good story when they see one, and sometimes the desire for bigger circulation (and hence advertising revenue) overcomes the general capitalist class interest that unites the lords of the presstitutes…None of this means that those journalists will pursue working-class or socialist (do I repeat myself?) interests even spasmodically. Peter Oborne, the late Robert Fisk (now the target of a vicious slander campaign) and a few others are left-liberals – honourable enough, and in certain conjunctures and on certain issues supporting serious communist interests. But they cannot do so consistently, welcome though their support may be..
The answer is independent working-class socialist media – print if possible, but certainly electronic. The competition for attention amongst the latter is stronger than that amongst the print media ever was – intense. But TINA – there is no alternative.