"In Peter Beinart's view, one story has long dominated Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of sacred Jewish tradition and history, and also warps our understanding of modern history. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, he argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: what does it mean to be a Jew? Beinart imagines an alternate story that would draw on other nations' efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish history: a story in which Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined."
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