THE OVERDOG:

Peter Beinart's "The Crisis of Zionism" is an important new book that rejects the manipulation of Jewish victimhood in the name of Israel's domination of the Palestinians and asserts that the real issue for Jews today is not the challenge of weakness but the demands of power.

"We are being asked to perpetuate a narrative of victimhood that evades the central Jewish question of our age: the question of how to ethically wield Jewish power," he writes. That power, for 45 years now, has been exercised over millions of Palestinians who enjoy none of the rights of citizenship and all the humiliations of an occupied people.

Beinart, a prominent liberal journalist, is right to invert the treacherous victimhood trope. This is not 1938 revisited, or even 1967. Israel is strong today, a vibrant economy and the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state. Its unwavering ally, the United States, is home to a Jewish community that has never been more integrated or influential. Turbulent Arab states are focused on their own reinvention, not Israel; Iran's principal regional ally, Syria, teeters on the brink. [...]

Beinart notes (well-meaning Israeli diplomats who would "rebrand" Israel take note): "Israel does not have a public relations problem; it has a policy problem. You can't sell occupation in a postcolonial age." That occupation, prolonged in perpetuity, would mean, as President Barack Obama has put it, that "the dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled."

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