My Right Word

Shaul Magid purports in the Jerusalem Report that "radical settlers…rejectstate authority if it conflicts with their messianicvision” and that they are “adopting anti-Zionist andanti-state attitudes” (The Settler Secession”, Sept.20). Actually, his view is a twisted reflection ofhis own broken mirror.Our Zionism is the traditional kind, the one bothsecularists and the religiously observant lived,labored and died for for over a century since theadvent of Herzlian political Zionism, the one that wasapproved by the world’s foremost international bodyback in 1922. That Zionism sought the reestablishmentof the Jewish National Home through close settlementon the land, as the League of Nations decision readwhen Great Britain was awarded the Mandate.If there is a change of vision, it is a result ofthose, like Magid abroad and other academics and thecultural elite in Israel, who promote the idea of“State” above all. If the “State” declares the Osloprocess to be followed, when dead Jews become, asShimon Peres termed them, “sacrifices of peace” and ifthe “State” seeks to expel and exile Jews from theirhomes, but will prosecute citizens who talk of thetransfer of Arabs, then who is the radical, theextremist and the real anti-Zionist?