It’s been more than a decade since Yossi Beilin retired from
Israeli politics, yet he continues to use his stature as a former government
official to sometimes take positions that blacken Israel’s good name.
This past summer, he appeared alongside Israel-haters Hanan
Ashrawi and James Zogby in a panel discussion organized and hosted by the
U.N.’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian
People.
The Anti-Defamation League describes that committee as “the
single most prolific source of material bearing the official imprimatur of the
U.N. which maligns and debases the Jewish State. … The meetings and conferences
organized by [the committee] are replete with anti-Israel statements such as
false claims that Israel is an ‘apartheid state’ and blatantly anti-Semitic
comparisons to the Nazis.” How sad that Beilin would choose to grant legitimacy
to the committee by appearing at its forum.
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Former Israeli minister Yossi Beilin attends a Constitution, Law and Justice,
Committee meeting at the Knesset on July 9, 2017.
Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.
|
Beilin is best known for his role in Israeli diplomatic and
political affairs. As deputy foreign minister in 1993, he was one of the
architects of the Oslo Accords. He claimed that he had brought peace in our
time, but PLO chief Yasser Arafat used the accords to create a de facto
mini-state, smuggle in tons of weapons and launch wave after wave of suicide
bombings.
In 1997, Beilin established a movement within the Knesset to
lobby for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Three years
later, Israel pulled out. Hezbollah took over the vacated area and began
stockpiling tens of thousands of missiles, terrorizing northern Israel and
kidnapping Israeli soldiers—eventually provoking the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
Today, Hezbollah has more than 150,000 missiles stationed along the
Israel-Lebanon border.
Beilin competed for the leadership of the Labor Party, was
defeated, and then defected to the far-left Meretz Party. In 2004, he became
chairman of Meretz, promising to lead the party to greater glory. At the time,
it had six seats in the Knesset. In the next election, under Beilin’s
leadership, it dropped to five. When it became clear that he would be defeated
in the next race for the party’s chairmanship, Beilin withdrew his candidacy
and retired from politics.
Over the past decade-and-a-half, he has taken some positions
that have surprised and alarmed many friends of Israel.
One involved former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. In late
2006, Carter shocked and outraged the American Jewish community by authoring a
book titled Palestine Peace Not Apartheid. Abraham Foxman, then the national
director of the Anti-Defamation League, charged that Carter was “engaging in
anti-Semitism” by promoting the apartheid libel. Fourteen board members of the
Jimmy Carter Center in Atlanta resigned in protest over the book. Even the
ultra-liberal Central Conference of American Rabbis announced that it was
canceling its forthcoming visit to the Carter Center. It seemed as if the entire
Jewish world was—with justification—furious at the former world leader.
But not Beilin. Writing in The Forward, he heaped praise on
Carter as “one of the world’s most accomplished statesmen” and “a public figure
of enormous moral clout.” Then, while not directly endorsing the apartheid
charge, Beilin in effect justified it by claiming that Carter’s accusation was
no different from what “has been said by Israelis themselves.”
It’s true that there have been a few Israeli extremists,
including some of Beilin’s Meretz colleagues, who have accused Israel of
apartheid. But the overwhelming majority of Israelis reject that charge as an
outrageous falsehood.
An incident earlier this year suggests that Beilin has no
real quarrel with the “apartheid” libel. A small group of current and former
Meretz leaders, including Beilin, staged a “protest tour” of the Jordan Valley
in June. The group’s spokesman absurdly declared to reporters that if Israeli
law is extended to the 30 percent of Judea and Samaria where Jewish communities
are located, it would create “an apartheid map” reminiscent of South Africa.
Not only did Beilin not dispute the apartheid accusation,
but he piled on, telling the reporters that the Israeli government secretly
plans to carry out “more annexation” beyond the 30 percent, even though there
is no evidence of that.
A prominent Jewish columnist writing recently in The Forward
surprisingly included Beilin on a list of six notable “Jewish thought-leaders”
who are “fostering identity-building” among young Jews. Including Beilin on
that list was a serious error. His actions and statements are more likely to
erode, not foster, Jewish and Zionist pride and identity. Whether by pushing
for territorial concessions to Arafat and the terrorist group Hezbollah, taking
part in that anti-Israel U.N. forum or siding with promoters of the apartheid
slur, Yossi Beilin has proven that he is not a thought-leader at all, but
rather, an utterly thoughtless leader.
Recent events demonstrate that while he and his ilk remain
mired in the tired old clichés of yesterday, more thoughtful leaders in the
Middle East are beginning to recognize that there are new options for finding
ways to a better tomorrow.
* * *
Well, that's what I have to say.
Stephen M. Flatow
To read more of my columns go to JNS.ORG.
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