The authors’ perspectives differ as much as their backgrounds do, but it is noteworthy that all three grew up in former British colonies: South Africa, India and Israel. Peter Beinart’s “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza” reflects the author’s final break with Zionism. A prominent journalist, political scientist and professor of journalism at New York University, Beinart is a former editor of The New Republic and the author of four books. He frequently comments in American media and serves as editor-at-large for Jewish Currents. Foreign Policy has hailed him as among the “top 100 global thinkers.”
Another Foreign Policy “global thinker,” Pankaj Mishra, offers his perspective in “The World After Gaza: A History,” placing the topic within a broader historical and geopolitical context. Born and educated in India, Mishra is a prolific author and activist who has won prestigious awards for both fiction and nonfiction. A regular contributor to leading American and British periodicals, he has publicly debated ideological opponents such as Jordan Peterson and Niall Ferguson. Mishra exhibits a keen sensitivity to the self-loathing among Zionists and Indians who initially sought to emulate Europeans, becoming “more royalist than the king,” before they ultimately embraced the idea of a separate nation-state.
The fledgling state of Israel “absorbed,” as they say in the country, Avi Shlaim, who was uprooted at the age of 5 from the comfort of his parents’ wealthy home and transplanted into the alien environment of Israeli society. Now a renowned intellectual and one of the “New Historians” who challenged the dominant Zionist narrative in the 1980s, Shlaim is known for his meticulous scholarship. His works, including a study of Jordan’s complicity in dividing up Palestine with Israel, and a personal memoir, reflect his intellectual integrity. The book he co-edited, “The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948,” is an important contribution to our understanding of Palestine’s fate. His book under review here, “Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine,” collects previously published articles, including a submission to the International Court of Justice on the diplomatic history of the conflict since 1967.
Beinart’s and Mishra’s backgrounds in South Africa and India, respectively, inform their writings. Beinart draws parallels with South Africa’s history, and Mishra offers stimulating insights into the psyche of colonized peoples. Shlaim, having grown up in Israel, knows it from within, and only later develops a more critical perspective on it from the outside.