Peter Alexander Beinart (/ˈbaɪnərt/; born February 28, 1971) is an American liberal[2] columnist, journalist, and political commentator.

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.

[8] His mother, Doreen (née Pienaar), is a former director of the human-rights film program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University,[9] and his father, Julian Beinart, is a former professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[22] 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.

[23][24] 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.

[32] The book, which grew out of a 2004 article in The New Republic arguing that Democrats need to take the threat of Islamic totalitarianism more seriously, is a liberal defense of muscular interventionism abroad, particularly with a view to reforming various nations in the Middle East.

[33] 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.

Particularly, Beinart contends that policies advocated by Zionists, especially under Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud government, are increasingly at odds with liberal ideals.

[35] In it, he argues that "Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation [of the population of Gaza]."