Professor Beinart,
As CUNY colleagues, I’ve always valued our civil, if spirited, exchanges. We’ve disagreed sharply on Israel and Jewish identity, but you’ve always struck me as a man of principle whose critiques of Israel flow from a deep commitment to Jewish ethics. That’s why I write this as a friendly wake-up call, not an attack.
The Left that you’ve courted – and whose rhetoric you’ve sometimes echoed – is turning on Jews in ways that have nothing to do with Israel. Your own positions, once a bridge to the antisemitic fringe, have now become so mainstream on the Left that they no longer need you or your Jewishness to launder their hate.
Sooner or later, they will come for you, too. The question is: Will you still be standing with them when they turn, or will you take a stand arm-in-arm with the Jewish community and me right now?
Antisemitic incidents
Consider what just happened at the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn, a quintessential left-wing institution.
During a meeting about lowering the threshold for a boycott of Israeli goods, a member named Michael Huarachi declared: “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country.” He compared Jews to Nazis. Some 50 people applauded.
Longtime Jewish member Ramon Maislen stood up and called it out: “Applauding a speech that labels Jews as supremacists is not principled. It is wrong.” The room fell silent.
Note the language: not “Israeli supremacism,” but “Jewish supremacism… in this country.” This was mainstream progressive applause in a socialist-leaning coop. Other Jewish members have reported being called “Nazi,” shouted at with “Sieg Heil,” or told they “smelled of Palestinian blood.” The pro-BDS faction shrugged it off as “diverse viewpoints.”
This is part of a broader pattern. Left-wing and Islamist-aligned activists increasingly traffic in classic antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and supremacy detached from any specific Israeli policy. Progressive podcaster Briahna Joy Gray tweeted about the Epstein files: “The mainstream media’s disinterest in the rampant Jewish supremacy in these documents is fascinating.”
Similar rhetoric appears in activist spaces, invoking “Jewish supremacy” as a domestic American problem. Anti-Defamation League audits and campus reports document harassment of visibly Jewish students – kippah-wearers and Orthodox Jews – not for their views on Gaza, but for their Jewish identity.
The harassment takes form in swastikas on dorms, assaults on Jewish diners told “Hitler was right,” and vandalism of synagogues and kosher businesses with no connection to Israel.
These attacks don’t require knowledge of anyone’s views on Israel. They target Jews as Jews.
Your own work has, unfortunately, helped normalize elements of this worldview. You’ve rejected American Jews’ “idolatry” of Israel and called for a post-Gaza “reckoning” that frames Jewish victimhood narratives as enabling oppression.
In activist circles, you’ve challenged what some call “Jewish supremacy” in the context of Zionism. These positions put you at odds with the overwhelming majority of Jews worldwide. By framing Jewish ethnicity, ancestry, indigeneity, heritage, and connection to the Land of Israel as the problem, you’ve given intellectual cover to those who see any assertion of Jewish particularism as illegitimate.
Once, your voice as the “good Jew” – progressive, critical of Israel, Orthodox yet anti-Zionist – was uniquely useful to the Left. You humanized their cause and shielded it from charges of Jew-hatred.
But that era is over.
Your influence and the positions you pioneered have gone mainstream. Progressive coalitions now routinely echo the same rhetoric about Jewish power and supremacy without needing a Peter Beinart intermediary. In short, to them (your quick wit and sharp brain notwithstanding): you’re becoming expendable.
Antisemitism on the Right
To be clear, I have publicly and consistently rejected the antisemitic and isolationist fringe on the Right, the so-called “Woke Reich” associated with figures like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly. But that fringe remains very much marginal.
The mainstream Right, by contrast, has overwhelmingly stood with the Jewish community and Israel. Republican-led congressional committees have held multiple high-profile hearings exposing campus antisemitism and holding university leaders accountable, all while those on the Left unfathomably reject.
Just last month, in April 2026, Senate Republicans stood united in defeating resolutions introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders to block arms sales to Israel. Forty out of 47 Senate Democrats voted to prohibit the sale of military equipment to Israel.
This was not a vote on foreign aid. It was a direct effort to prevent the United States from selling any defensive arms to a key ally. Congress has used this mechanism in the past against adversaries such as Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Cuba, or to restrict sales to Saudi Arabia during the Yemen conflict. Treating Israel this way, nearly akin to viewing it as an enemy, reveals how far the position has shifted.
History offers a chilling precedent. In the early 1930s, the Verband nationaldeutscher Juden (Association of German National Jews), led by decorated World War I veteran Max Naumann, rejected Zionism as disloyal and insisted that Jewish identity must be erased in favor of nationalism.
These Jews welcomed Hitler’s rise as a “national awakening,” supported the regime, and argued Nazi measures targeted only “un-German” elements. They believed that by discarding Jewish particularism, including ties to Jewish ethnicity, culture, and the Land of Israel, they could prove their loyalty and be accepted as true Germans.
It didn’t work.
In November 1935, just weeks after the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of German citizenship, the Gestapo dissolved the group as “hostile to the state.” Max Naumann was arrested and imprisoned in the Columbia concentration camp. The “good,” patriotic, anti-Zionist Jews who had distanced themselves from their people received no protection. They shared the same fate as the wider Jewish community they had scorned.
Peter, like the leaders of the VnJ, you have made rejection of Jewish Zionism and particularism central to your public identity. In doing so, you distance yourself from the overwhelming majority of Jews who see these elements as core to our peoplehood. You position yourself as the “good Jew” acceptable to the progressive Left because you have shed the “problematic” parts of Jewish identity.
The same dynamic is playing out today. The progressive Left’s problem isn’t really Israel – it’s Jews and the belief in a broader “Jewish supremacy.” Like it or not, that includes you. Your support for them won’t shield you when usefulness wanes.
I implore you to reaffirm that Jewish peoplehood and identity are not supremacist sins, but legitimate expressions of a people’s right to exist, live, and thrive like any other. I believe with all my heart that the Jewish community – your community – will welcome you back.
Please wake up before it’s too late, my friend. The new Left is coming.
The writer is a CUNY professor of law.