OK, before the rumor mill spins out of control, I think I should just come clean.

I’m the one who wrote that parody article about Israel being responsible for repression in the Arab world and submitted it under Peter Beinart’s name.

1/8 https://jewishcurrents.org/israels-repressive-diplomacy/

It was a silly prank designed to make him look foolish. I now see that I went too far, and I’d like to apologize to the readers and editors who were taken in.

2/8

Honestly, I was sure I’d get caught before the article ran. By no empirical measure are Arab countries more repressive now than they were in decades past, and by no measure are the 3 new normalizers any more repressive than their immediate neighbors who haven’t normalized.

3/8

And it’s just a little weird to think that diplomatic relations between, say, Bahrain and Norway or UAE and Japan don’t taint those countries in guilt for repression, but somehow Israel’s relations with two Gulf monarchies render it responsible for every sin imaginable.

4/8

I also thought it would be obvious this wasn’t Beinart’s writing. There is no moving encounter between obstinate American Jews and an enlightened Peter, no Jewish father figure being torn down as a symbolic offering for the problem of the day (not even an Elie Wiesel swipe).

5/8

Most of all, there is an acknowledgment that the Arab rejection of Israel’s existence is an actual thing, backed up by real public opinion data. Anyone who knows Beinart’s views on the Middle East would know that this is verboten.

6/8

For actual Beinart, there is only a Jewish occupier/displacer and a Palestinian victim. That Arab publics and elites reject both the presence of Israel & normal relations with it should never be acknowledged and should certainly never be taken to have any explanatory value.
7/8

To those of who fell for my childish antics and were forced to read through 2000 words of deliberate nonsense, I offer my sincerest apologies.

8/8