The ability to appreciate the merits of the other side of
a question, John Stuart Mill asserted in his 1859 classic,
“On Liberty,” is a hallmark of the liberal spirit. By this
measure, Peter Beinart’s new book, “The Crisis of
Zionism,” which has become a cause célèbre among
progressives, marks another step in the parting of ways
between progressives and that old-fashioned and
indispensable liberalism that recognized that multiple
perspectives were vital resources to a free society.
Fittingly, the book was released late last month, during
oral arguments before the Supreme Court over the
constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. The
progressive defense of the constitutionality of Obamacare
embodies the same determination to not merely criticize
but to demonize opposing points of view. Taken together,
liberals’ critique of Zionism and their defense of the
individual mandate provide an instructive window into the
growing illiberalism of the progressive mind-set.
The questions at the center of “The Crisis of Zionism”
are why does Israel occupy the West Bank -- the territory,
now home to approximately 2.25 million Palestinians and
300,000 Israelis, seized by Israel from Jordan 1967’s Six
Day War -- and what can be done to bring the occupation to
an end. Beinart answers that the occupation is a result of
Israel’s ethical failings, and that to compel Israel to
behave justly American Jews must renounce their
conservative American leadership, epitomized by AIPAC and
the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations, and exert pressure by boycotting goods
produced by Israelis living in the West Bank.
Beinart’s book has been subject to severe criticism,
nowhere more thoroughly than in an extended review by Wall
Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens in the online
magazine Tablet. Stephens shows that “The Crisis of
Zionism” is rife with factual errors, half-truths, and
partisan pronouncements masquerading as disinterested
observations.
This is not to say that Beinart’s book is devoid of
merit. His anguish over the West Bank seems heartfelt, if
promiscuously flaunted. Liberalism and democracy, as he
argues, are a part of Zionism. And because they are in
tension, balancing them is a vital imperative. He also is
right that Israel’s continued occupation of the disputed
territories between the Green Line -- the 1949 armistice
line between Israel and Jordan -- and the Jordan River
represents a grave problem, because ruling over another
people conflicts with the principles on which Israel was
founded and the liberal and democratic spirit with which
the vast majority of Israelis are imbued.
But Beinart’s insistence that occupation can be reduced
to moral blindness and racism on Israel’s part (that the
West Bank Palestinians “are treated as lesser human beings
simply because they are Palestinians”), betrays a bent of
mind determined to transform a tragic conflict into a
simplistic tale of oppressors and oppressed.
Beinart suggests that the question merely comes down to
whether Israel will exercise its overwhelming military
power in a moral manner. His readers, however, are given
little context of political exigencies and looming dangers
in which Israel must operate. He pays scant attention to
the strategic and moral calculus faced by Israeli leaders
who must balance humanitarian responsibilities against the
very survival of their citizens.
Of the long history and resolute persistence of
Palestinian intransigence and terrorism, one hears little
in Beinart’s book, and when such matters are mentioned, as
in the case of Hamas mortar, rocket, and missile attacks
from the Gaza Strip on civilian populations in southern
Israel, it is typically to discount the significance -- or
to implicate Israel.
Of Israel’s bitter experience in withdrawing from
southern Lebanon in 2000, which turned it into a launching
pad for Hezbollah rockets and missiles targeting Israeli
civilian populations, one hears next to nothing.
Of the threat posed by Iran’s funding and equipping of
Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, and of Tehran’s
decades-long pursuit of nuclear weapons (feared by almost
all Sunni Arabs of the region as well as Israel), one
hears next to nothing.
Of the dangers to the east presented by an increasingly
unstable Jordanian monarchy, vulnerable to a restive
Palestinian population within its own borders as well as a
rising Muslim Brotherhood, one hears next to nothing.
Of an increasingly hostile Egypt to the southwest, whose
parliament is dominated by Islamists and which is unable
or unwilling to prevent the Sinai Peninsula from being
used as a terrorist haven and staging ground for attacks
on Israel, one hears next to nothing.
Beinart also suppresses good news. Of Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s substantial easing of
roadblocks and travel restrictions in the West Bank and
the contribution Israel has made to a growing Palestinian
economy, one also hears next to nothing.
Indeed, Beinart brings characters with whom he disagrees
on stage only to establish their villainy. Netanyahu, in
this book, comes off as little better than a Jewish
fascist. Beinart presents AIPAC and the leaders of other
major Jewish organizations as mindless minions loyal to
Israel’s prime minister. This is an old charge, usually
tinged with anti-Semitism. That is not Peter Beinart’s
intention, but he is keeping strange company.
Beinart’s bottom line is clear: Conservative opinion
about how to resolve the conflict between Israel and the
Palestinians is not just deficient or mistaken, but
benighted, bigoted, brutal.
This style of argument is of a piece with the approach
adopted by leading progressive commentators to the debate
over the challenge by 26 states to the constitutionality
of the Affordable Care Act. A New York Times editorial
proclaimed that should the five more conservative justices
vote to strike it down, they will demonstrate that their
majority is “virtually unfettered by the law.”
Concerning the conservative argument, New York Times
online columnist Linda Greenhouse announced, “There’s just
no there there.” The belief that the individual mandate,
which requires people to buy insurance or pay a federally
imposed fine, is unconstitutional, according to
Greenhouse, “is simply wrong.”
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne declared that were
the high court to strike down the Affordable Care Act it
could only be the result of a lawless imposition of
“ideology.” Slate’s Dalia Lithwick casually observed that
the constitutionality of the health care law was
“uncontroversial.”
In the New York Review of Books this week, heavyweight
constitutional law scholar Ronald Dworkin agreed with
progressive conventional wisdom that the constitutionality
of the individual mandate “is not really controversial:
the Constitution’s text, the Supreme Court’s own
precedents, and basic constitutional principle seem
obviously to require upholding the act.” Since the
Affordable Care Act is “plainly constitutional,” he
concludes, “it will be shaming if” five conservative
justices “do what Obama’s enemies hope they will.”
Even President Obama got in on the act, declaring that
holding the individual mandate unconstitutional “would be
an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law
that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically
elected Congress.” Leaving aside that the president had
his facts wrong (the now-unpopular legislation passed
Congress narrowly, in a contentious, party-line vote that
helped Democrats lose the House in 2010), the step would
be neither unprecedented nor extraordinary. The Supreme
Court’s power to strike down congressional acts repugnant
to the Constitution was explained by Alexander Hamilton in
"Federalist 78"; affirmed by the Supreme Court in Marbury
v. Madison in 1803; and, though particular
exercises of it are always criticized by the losing side,
it is all-but-universally regarded as a central function
of the court.
The president’s efforts to walk back his remarks the next
day by insisting that he was referring only to post-New
Deal cases that dealt with economics or commerce did not
change the fundamental point. The president had joined the
progressive chorus in insisting that willful and rank
judicial activism would be the only conceivable
explanation of an adverse ruling by the court.
Actually, in assessing the constitutionality of the
Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court faces a hard
question. On the one hand, the Constitution’s Commerce
Clause gives Congress the power to regulate interstate
commerce; since the New Deal the Supreme Court has
interpreted that power broadly; and health care involves
an enormous national commercial enterprise.
On the other hand, Congress has never before sought to
compel individuals to engage in commerce by making failure
to purchase a good punishable by federal law; upholding
the individual mandate would be tantamount to changing the
structure of American constitutional government from one
of limited and enumerated powers to one in which all
activities would be subject to congressional regulation,
because all activities indirectly affect interstate
commerce in the way that not buying health insurance
indirectly affects interstate commerce; and invalidating
the individual mandate would not require the court to
overturn a single precedent, only set an outside limit on
the vast power Congress already exercises in the
regulation of interstate commerce.
The failure to acknowledge any merit whatsoever to the
conservative case against the individual mandate exhibits
a breathtaking unfamiliarity with 30 years of conservative
constitutional thought concerning the architecture of
limited government. What’s more, it bespeaks a stunning
failure of the liberal imagination.
A progressivism that has so lost its liberal bearings is
poorly suited to lead the nation in crafting reforms to
our flawed health care system. And, as Peter Beinart’s
book vividly illustrates, when it looks abroad and directs
its attention to the Middle East, that same progressivism
is unfit to instruct Israel on how to deal with its tragic
conflict with the Palestinians.
