But Carolyn Glick's putting the kibosh on this self-serving anti-Israel promotion.
See, "Peter Beinart’s latest publicity stunt":
There has been a lot of hand-wringing in official Israel over the brief questioning of anti-Israel author Peter Beinart at Ben-Gurion Airport this week. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement on the episode calling it “an administrative mistake.”Keep reading.
Netanyahu added, “Israel is an open society which welcomes all – critics and supporters alike.”
Deputy Minister for Public Diplomacy Michael Oren said Beinart’s questioning is grounds “for an immediate examination of all policy towards the entry of political activists.”
Speaking to Israel National News, Oren said, “Detaining American Jewish reporter Peter Beinart is an example of how acting unwisely causes both strategic and PR damage.
“Beinart is a top-rate American media person. Most of his opinions about Israel disgust me, but he does not support BDS, and in fact defines himself as a Zionist.”
Oren’s position is problematic first and foremost because it is factually wrong.
Beinart is a major supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Indeed, he is a central figure in the movement. This mere fact renders Beinart’s protestations of Zionism disingenuous, to put it mildly.
In 2012, Beinart published an oped in The New York Times calling for the boycott, divestment and sanction of all Israeli goods produced by Israeli Jews in Judea and Samaria.
His crass insensitivity towards Israeli Jews in Judea and Samaria was striking: “If moderate settlers resent being lumped in with their more ideologically driven counterparts deep in occupied territory, they should agitate for a two-state solution that would make possible their incorporation into democratic Israel. Or they should move.”
Beinart described the boycott as part of an overall political warfare strategy that American Jews should undertake against Israel and its American supporters.
“We should lobby to exclude settler-produced goods from America’s free-trade deal with Israel,” Beinart said. “We should push to end Internal Revenue Service policies that allow Americans to make tax-deductible gifts to settler charities. Every time an American newspaper calls Israel a democracy, we should urge it to include the caveat: only within the green line.”
Even Beinart’s most fervent admirers viewed his call for BDS against Jewish products in Judea and Samaria as a transparent means to facilitate BDS against Israel as a whole.
Jane Eisner, editor of the far-left The Forward newspaper wrote, the “optics of Beinart’s proposal” are “dangerous,” because they provide “implicit support for the broader BDS movement.”
But as has since become clear, that was his goal.
Beinart devotes great energy to mainstreaming anti-Israel activists who reject Israel’s right to exist...
BONUS: Watch, at i24NEWS, "Peter Beinart on His Detainment at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport: Left-wing Jewish American writer Peter Beinart discusses his interrogation by the Shin Bet security services, the latest in a series of such incidents involving leftist personalities, with i24NEWS' Tracy Alexander."
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