clear

Creating new perspectives since 2009

US Zionist charity issues ‘death threat’ for questioning Israel’s ‘right to exist’

February 4, 2025 at 2:36 pm

Pro-Israel protesters try to disrupt a protest held to support the ‘Great March of Return’ and mourn the Palestinians shot and killed by Israeli forces along the Gaza border at Union Square in New York, United States on April 6, 2018 [Atılgan Özdil / Anadolu Agency]

A leading American-Zionist organisation has issued a “death threat” against prominent Jewish commentator Peter Beinart following the publication of his New York Times article questioning “Israel’s right to exist”.

Betar US is an American non-profit organisation. It lost its charitable status in the UK in 2004 when the Charity Commission for England and Wales determined that it “appeared to be in furtherance of a political purpose rather than a charitable purpose.” The Zionist group was accused of issuing the death threat to Beinart in response to his NYT article.


“We urge all Jews on the upper west side to give @PeterBeinart a 📟📟📟,” said the group on social media. It called Beinart “a traitor, a kapo” who “must be opposed.” The pager emoji reference refers to Israel’s deadly pager attack in Lebanon and is considered to signify a death threat.

READ: How Israel’s bulky pager deceived Hezbollah

“Oppose my ideas all you want. But when you urge people in my neighbourhood to give me a pager–in the wake of Israel’s pager attack in Lebanon, that sounds like a death threat,” Beinart responded on social media.

Tweet: https://x.com/peterbeinart/status/1886552010893492354?s=51&t=w4rwOb7IfMrsoXJvryDXrw

The controversy stems from Beinart’s recent NYT article which argues that “States Don’t Have a Right to Exist. People Do”. In it, he says that while American politicians routinely affirm Israel’s “right to exist,” they don’t speak this way about other countries. Using Britain as an example, he notes that if Scotland legally seceded or Britons abolished the monarchy, “Britain as we know it would cease to exist” and American leaders would accept this transformation as legitimate because they believe states should be based on the consent of the governed.

Of the 12 million people Israel governs within historic Palestine between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, half have not given their consent to be governed by the apartheid state.

Beinart points to an inherent contradiction in US foreign policy. While American leaders insist on Israel’s “right to exist”, they regularly advocate for fundamental changes to other states’ political systems if they fail to garner the consent of the population. He notes that US policy routinely calls for regime change and transformation of states that fail to represent their people, citing examples like China and Iran where American leaders have explicitly called for replacing existing political systems with more democratic alternatives.

READ: Israel’s ‘right to exist’ challenged in expert testimonies

This, Beinart argues, demonstrates an underlying American principle that states must earn their legitimacy through proper representation of their citizens rather than having an intrinsic “right to exist” in any particular form. He suggests that Israel is exempted uniquely from this standard despite its discriminatory policies towards Palestinians.

Drawing on Jewish tradition, Beinart argues that the belief in the unconditional values of a Jewish state contradicts religious teachings. He references the Biblical story where God warns the Israelites about the dangers of appointing a king, suggesting that “kingdoms — or, in modern parlance, states — are not sacrosanct” but mere instruments that can either protect or destroy life.

Beinart challenges mainstream American Jewish organisations’ insistence on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, arguing that they “cling to the idea that it can be both Jewish and democratic despite the basic contradiction between legal supremacy for one ethno-religious group and the democratic principle of equality under the law.”

He particularly criticises Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, noting that roughly half the people under Israeli control are Palestinian, most of whom “cannot become citizens of the state that wields life-or-death power over them.” Even Palestinian citizens of Israel, he argues, face severe discrimination, citing the Jewish National Fund’s control over land allocation as evidence.

Responding to arguments that a Jewish state is essential for Jewish safety, Beinart contends that “diaspora Jews — who stake our safety on the principle of legal equality — are far safer than Jews in Israel.” He supports this by referencing a 2010 study showing that ethnic groups excluded from state power were three times more likely to take up arms than those with government representation.

The article concludes by warning that denying basic rights leads to violence that ultimately endangers everyone, citing the example of Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad Al-Nakhalah, who witnessed Israeli soldiers kill his father in Gaza as a child, suggesting that Israel’s current actions in Gaza might create similar cycles of violence for generations to come.