Peter Beinart and his Imaginary Homies
Imaginary Homies as a Phenomenon
Legendary Swedish music journalist and author Fredrik Strage is a huge hip-hop fan. He went to all the rap and hip-hop concerts he could find in Sweden and quite a few in the States as well. He wrote a book in 2001, Mikrofonkåt (Horny for the Microphone? Yeah, I know, completely lost in cringy translation). Anyway, in the book, he tells the following story. He was sufficiently into the hip-hop culture and the lingo that when he got to Los Angeles he was quivering with excitement. He wanted to see the heart and the guts of where hip-hop and rap culture had sprung. So, just to see the real deal, he rented a low-rider and started driving toward South Central LA. But he wasn’t prepared in the least. Listening to hip-hop does not in any way make you “get the ghetto”. Unsurprisingly, the white boy from the small town of Linköping got a hell of a fright when he started to see the gangs appear on the street corners. They looked like they meant business. They looked at him! By the time he noticed that cars stopped caring about red lights, he scampered back toward Hollywood. He realised what a fool he had been, chasing what he called his “imaginary homies”.
Westerners and their Palestinian Imaginary Homies
I think a lot about imaginary homies when it comes to westerners supporting the Palestinian cause. The demonstrators with imaginary homies in Gaza who supposedly are so happy about them shouting about genocide in city squares half a world away. What do the groups really know about each other? The leftists and the jihadis. They come together for the oppressed and oppressor narrative and the hatred of the Jewish state. But do they really understand each other?
Even at a slightly mellower level in the relationship between the Jewish peace activists and the Palestinian Authority there seems to be a huge disconnect. A lot of imaginary homies to go around. Peter Beinart seems to be stuck in this world, a world of slogans and imagery. Beinart, the prominent American Jewish left-wing activist, has tried his best to find a middle ground between the Palestinian and the Israeli story. In 2012 he called for his own version of the BDS movement focusing only on the settlements in the West Bank and wanted to boycott their produce. He has written extensively about the Nakba and all the Palestinian complaints about Israel to do with the military rule of the West Bank.
The Heartbreak of Shattering Fantasies
He is not alone of course. It can be pretty jarring when these kind of fantasies collapse. I was at a supposed meeting of minds in Stockholm. A peace-loving Jewish film director brought together a very left-wing Israeli film director and a Palestinian film director. The event should have been an honest exchange of people wanting peace. Yet it wasn’t. The meeting turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. The Israeli film director had just made a film about the disengagement from Gaza, something he was very much in favour of. Supposedly the Palestinian director would agree. This was certainly not the case. The absolute fury by the Palestinian director against all things Israel, including the other director, meant real discussion was impossible. Her anger pulled all the oxygen out of the room.
Another example I saw personally was in a peace conference in Tel Aviv University. I remember a theatre director lamenting the fact that the Palestinians wouldn’t let Israeli peaceniks put up shows in the Palestinian-controlled areas. He claimed that he “understood why they did it” but still disagreed. Did he really understand the boycott? I am not trying to be facetious; I just have a feeling that the “imaginary homie” phenomenon is a lot more widespread than we might think. He is right of course that if the PA let Israeli cultural events into the areas they control, there is potential for deradicalisation, but is that really what the PA wants?
Beinart and the Disconnect
Beinart got a taste of the disconnect this week. Earlier this year he wrote a book called Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. A casual glance at the title is pretty revealing. Note the religious connotation in the word “reckoning”. The idea of repentance and sin is thus hard-wired into discussions of Israel. Then we have the word “destruction”, an apocalyptic suggestion. The closeness to heaven and hell and prophesy is endlessly rehashed when speaking about Israel; the Holy Land can never shake the Holy. Then Beinart produces a flower even less sweet-smelling. He promulgates the idea that the war in Gaza (never mind that Hamas started it with a massacre) is something distinctly Jewish. So, in this short title we have several noxious, interrelated ideas. That the Gaza war is something so catastrophic, so unlike other wars that it deserves a reckoning, a repentance. This catastrophe of the war and its need for redemption have something to do with being Jewish per se. Perhaps something to do with the darkness of the Jewish soul. Therefore, the war is not about the political and military leaders of Israel, it also, somehow, has to do with the Jewish tradition. The result is a toxic cocktail that antisemites everywhere can use for their purposes. All so that Beinart can ingratiate himself with Israel’s critics, telling them that they are right about Israel’s wicked ways, and right that this has something to do with being Jewish. A brew of desperately misguided ideas, all of it.
The TAU Debacle
This week he brought his message to Israel. He had a talk at Tel Aviv University, a left-wing hotspot in Israel, where 16% of the students are Arab. The name of the talk was “Israel, Trump and the Future of American Democracy” with some disparaging images of the face of The Donald. Not much of an audience magnet. The Donald is perhaps more popular in Israel than anywhere on earth. He brought a ceasefire to Israel and brought the hostages home. Therefore it was aimed at that tiny set of Israelis who want to hear about the “Gaza genocide” and how terrible Trump is.
So, are Israel’s critics happy that he is spreading the bad news of the bad Israel oppressing the Palestinians in Israel itself? Not a bit of it!
BDS were livid. They wrote a furious pamphlet about it: “Palestinians Condemn Peter Beinart’s Event at Tel Aviv University in the Midst of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza”. Great name. It just slips off the tongue. Sweet, as well, that they make themselves the definitive spokespersons of “Palestinians” as a whole. If I were a Palestinian, I would love that.
Anyway, the laundry list of complaints that BDS has is of course given through the same kind of venomous language about Israel that all antisemites always have used against the Jews, from Goldenmouth to Martin Luther to Goebbels. “TAU is deeply complicit in enabling and trying to whitewash Israel’s US-armed and funded genocide as well as its decades-old regime of settler-colonialism, military occupation and apartheid.” So thunders BDS. The list of bad things that TAU had done includes that it has a technical department that has created weapons and drones, that it has made software used by the IDF, and that the INSS is situated there. All these uses of the university are “crimes” according to BDS. Because Israel may not have weapons and may never discuss foreign affairs, duh. For BDS, of course, Israel is one big crime. Most Palestinians who follow this idea would, according to the ideology of evil Israel, like to level the university that brings in billions to Israel in order to bring back a village that existed in the 1940s of 800 people called Sheikh Muwannis.
Free Speech? Not for the Craven!
So what did Beinart do? Did he tell them to stuff it because free speech is an inalienable fundamental of a free society? Did he stand up for himself and say that to convince Israelis you have to talk to Israelis? Of course not. This craven movement tolerates no dissent and will, by God, have your submission. So, like a moth, helpless but to fly right into the flame, Beinart caved. He said that he had made a “serious mistake” to talk to this smattering of Israelis who want to hear his talk words of repentance or about the eternal sins of Israel. So, the reckoner reckons and the repenter repents. Indeed, the apology is worthy of an encounter with the Spanish Inquisition: “I let my desire for that conversation override my solidarity with the Palestinians.” Then he invokes the blasphemy law he has broken, because there “are ways for me to have conversations with Israelis without violating BDS guidelines”. Amen. He finishes with a flourish of abject groveling. “This was a failure of judgement. I am sorry.” Well. That’s a relief. Now he will stop talking to all these Jews infected with Zionism. He will do this just to get BDS to forgive him; they are his imaginary homies, after all. The point for BDS, of course, was never to convince Israelis that they are wrong. It is about dehumanising them and robbing them of agency. The whole thing reminds me of Han Solo in the Space Bar in “Star Wars, A New Hope”. He says “I’ll be careful” and they say “you’ll be dead”.
Imaginary Homies are not Good People
The imaginary homies phenomenon is a true disaster for the Middle East. It makes millions of people believe that solutions will come only when you do what you are told by fanatics. But the fanatics are the problem. If people didn’t hate Israel there would be no conflict. The people doing this want to believe that the other side fundamentally want the same things they do. But they are not listening to the other side. Not really. They don’t believe Hamas when Hamas says it wants to obliterate Israel. Because their imaginary homies are the good guys. They believe that if Israel stopped with all this oppression business, peace would come. But there is no peace with Hamas, or with any narrative that wants Israel erased.
Beinart even believes that he has “hurt the Palestinian cause” just by speaking at TAU. Unbelievable. Someone needs to tell him. No. One. Cares. Apart from the fascist mob on X and in BDS who crave his utter obedience.
My ideology does align with the Israeli left; this is because tradition and religion mean little to me personally, and I believe in modern values like equality and fairness. It’s just that even as a leftist Zionist, there is no “combining” the exclusivist Palestinian narrative with the Israeli one. The people who want peace among the Palestinians world do not, on the whole, respect people like Peter Beinart. They would like to move on from the traditional Palestinian narrative of evil Jewish invaders and look at the future much more pragmatically. Eid Bassam, Hamza Howidi and Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib want to end the failed strategy of chasing the Jews away and embrace a radically more pragmatic approach. These are the people who can make peace. They want a warm peace, Abraham Accords style, not a “peace” on the ruins of Israel. They are not impressed by Beinart’s groveling. Trying to get close to the BDS but being a tiny bit less foaming-at-the-mouth genocidal is not a winning strategy. Because people like Beinart will not decide how Israel will be “decolonised”. The people with the guns and masks will make that call. Make no mistake, their call is for extermination.
Don’t make any imaginary homies. They are not your friends.
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