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Peter Alexander Beinart (; born February 28, 1971) is an American liberal columnist, journalist, and political commentator. A former editor of The New Republic, he has also written for Time, The Atlantic, and The New York Review of Books, among other periodicals. He has written four books.
He is a professor of journalism and political science at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is an editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, a contributing opinion columnist at The New York Times, a political commentator for MSNBC, and a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace.
Beinart attended Buckingham Browne and Nichols School in Cambridge, graduating in 1989." BB&N Distinguished Alumni". Buckingham Browne & Nichols School. September 2023. Retrieved February 15, 2025. He then studied history and political science at Yale College, where he was a member of the Yale Political Union and graduated in 1993 with the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize. He was a Rhodes Scholar at University College, Oxford University, where he earned an M.Phil. in international relations in 1995.
On November 4, 2013, Haaretz announced that Beinart would be hired as a columnist beginning January 1, 2014. The same day, the Atlantic Media Company said he would join National Journal and write for The Atlantic
In August 2018, Beinart was detained by Shin Bet at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport and questioned about his presence at West Bank protests and outspoken criticism of the Israeli government's policies toward the Palestinians. Beinart called his experience "trivial" when compared to the experiences of others, particularly Palestinians and Palestinian Americans who travel through Israel's main airport. A statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office said Benjamin Netanyahu asked the Israeli security forces how it happened and was told that Beinart's detention was an administrative mistake. The statement continued, "Israel is an open society which welcomes all—critics and supporters alike."
Beinart is the author of the 2006 book The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again. The book, which grew out of a 2004 article in The New Republic arguing that Democrats need to take the threat of Islamofascism more seriously, is a liberal defense of muscular interventionism abroad, particularly with a view to reforming various nations in the Middle East.
Beinart's second book, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris (2010), was born from his desire to understand how he had gotten the Iraq War so wrong. It "looked back at the past hundred years of U.S. foreign policy in the baleful light of recent events and the ground littered with ... the remnants of large ideas and unearned confidence as a study of three needless wars", World War I, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War.
Beinart's third book Is The Crisis of Zionism (2012). It describes his views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Particularly, Beinart contends that policies advocated by Zionists, especially under Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud government, are increasingly at odds with Liberalism ideals.
Beinart has argued that "a Jewish and democratic state—is in reality a contradiction" and supports a one-state solution.
Beinart's fourth book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, was released in January 2025. In it, he argues that "Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation of".
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