The Jews of Brooklyn who went to Israel have much to answer for, keeping Israel at the state of war,... for what. Move back to Brooklyn and let the true Israelis get on with their lives. You are ignorant fanatics and are causing great pain to the Jewish and Arab people of the middle-east, and are putting all of us at risk of Armageddon.
Shame on you.
Dear ------,
I well know that Jews have a habit of being the most vociferous and demeaning critics of what other Jews do, and so, your remarks didn't upset me as much as perhaps you intended although I will admit, I never thought of myself as ignorant whereas I may be a bit fanatic – fanatically committed to the truth of the Arab-Israel conflict and the truth of the Jewish connection with this Land.
By the way, there are no "true Israelis". All of Israel's population is immigrants or children of immigrants. To say I am not a true Israeli or my children or grandchildren is a bit strange. Jews have been coming to Israel ever since Abraham left Ur and later, when Moses left Egypt, with a few friends and family members. Actually, in every century, whether we had political sovereignty or not, Jews always came here. And "here" is Jerusalem, Bet-El, Hebron, Shiloh as well as Tiberias and Safad. Tel-Aviv, you probably know, was established only in 1909.
We are causing "pain"? We? We who sometimes can't eat in pizza parlors or travel on buses because there may be an alert of yet another suicide-bomber on his/her way?
We are putting "all at risk of Armageddon"? We? Or that fanatic in Teheran?
And I can here you saying, "doesn't she understand, it's those darn 'settlements' that are the cause of it all." All of what the Jews have done here in the past 200 years or so is considered by the Arabs as 'settlements', no matter which side of the Green Line they happen to be. In 1922, we compromised on the territory guaranteed to us by the League of Nations (and that's how Jordan came about). In 1937, the World Zionist organization under that fanatic Chaim Weizmann agreed to another Partition scheme but that fell through. In 1947, we agreed again to a partition of our Land, although I wouldn't have agreed if I was around then, and the Arabs launched a war because they wanted all or nothing – and the still do.
In 1957, we 'returned' Sinai & Gaza to the Egyptians who used them to launch terror attacks (remember the Fadayen?). Between 1948 and 1967, Israel wasn't occupying anything nor did it establish those "illegal settlements" you get hot about. Yet in 1967, the Arab armies again amassed on our borders. After the Yom Kippur War we 'returned' to Egypt the Sinai gains and in 1981, we surrendered all of it to Egypt. And now, big Egypt can't prevent the puny Hamas from smuggling in to Gaza arms and ammunition. Nice peace that was, eh?
I won't go on. I am sure you're clever enough to get the true picture.
"Hatikva speaks to Jews - 'a Jews soul yearns," he told news anchor Liat Regev, when asked if he would sing the anthem. "You want an Arab to sing something like that?"
Regev: "You know, there's perhaps some sort of expectation that a person who is appointed to a cabinet minister in Israel will identity with all the symbols of the state, including the national anthem."
"Majadele: Where is it written that a person appointed to be a cabinet minister in Israel must stop being an Arab, and turn into a member of a different religion and ethnicity?
"Is this the enlightened, free democratic state that we wanted to see in Israel? Tell me, please - the Jewish cabinet ministers who were in Arab governments in Morocco and elsewhere, were they told that from the moment they were sworn in, that they had become Muslims?"
In my mouth and in my blood
Your breezes have stirred both light and fire.
Up! my brethren, strive for the highest.
We call to the world that we are here ready.
We salute as our emblem
God, Homeland, and King.
Broadcasting Authority Director-General Mordechai Shklar and journalist Ran Adelist denied yesterday that the Channel 1 documentary about the Shaked commando unit alleges that Egyptian prisoners of war were murdered.
Shklar said in a statement that reports about the documentary in the Israeli press - including in Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv - had relied on the Egyptian media.
He said that such publications had not bothered to watch the documentary before reporting about it. Adelist accused the Israeli media of acting with "typical indolence" in quoting the Egyptian media without verifying the validity of the claims.
A group of prominent Israeli Arabs has called on Israel to stop defining itself as a Jewish state and become a "consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews," prompting consternation and debate across the country.
Their contention is part of "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel"...
The authors propose a form of government, "consensual democracy," akin to the Belgian model for Flemish- and French-speakers, involving proportional representation and power-sharing in a central government and autonomy for the Arab community in areas like education, culture and religious affairs.
...Many of the Future Vision participants are affiliated with elite Israeli academic institutions. For example, Asad Ghanem, one of the document's principal authors, is head of the Government and Political Theory Department at Haifa University's School of Political Science.
As such, both Jewish conservatives and liberals have been taken aback by some propositions in the document. Many are angered by its description of Israel as the outcome of a "settlement process initiated by the Zionist Jewish elite" in the West and realized by "colonial countries" in the wake of the Holocaust.
It speaks volumes when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flies to Jerusalem to try to revive peace talks between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and cannot even get the two to show up when she reads out the content-free joint statement to which they have grudgingly agreed.
Ms. Rice’s diplomatic default was all the keener since this just might have been a moment for breaking the stalemate that has prevailed since Hamas won control of the Palestinian Parliament last year.
Hamas’s refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist and its people’s right to live free from terrorism is undeniably the biggest single obstacle to peace. But Mr. Abbas and his more moderate Fatah movement already accept both points. And the imperfect agreement Mr. Abbas reached with Hamas this month on a cease-fire between the two groups (reeling them back from civil war) and a coalition government gave him more authority, after months of flailing, to bargain on behalf of the Palestinians.
Israel could have reinforced Mr. Abbas’s position and increased the chances for progress with a series of low-risk steps: committing to serious negotiations, freezing the expansion of settlements and easing restrictions on civilians’ movements in the West Bank. Those steps would have given new hope to Palestinian moderates and thereby increased the political pressure on Hamas to abandon terrorism.
Instead, Ms. Rice indulged Mr. Olmert’s inherent caution and his own political weakness, settling for an agreement that the two leaders will meet again some (still to be determined) day. Israel further qualified that promise yesterday, threatening to stop talking to Mr. Abbas altogether if he forms a coalition government with Hamas. With Palestinian frustrations rising — and demographers predicting an eventual Palestinian majority between the Mediterranean and the Jordan — just saying no is not a viable option for Israel.
Jewish Voice for Peace, a San Francisco-based organization, recently launched a blog to track what it describes as a growing epidemic of intimidation and harassment from fellow Jews seeking to stifle open debate over America’s policy on Israel. The inception of the daily blog, MuzzleWatch.com, comes as one influential centrist organization, the American Jewish Committee, is facing fierce criticism for publishing an essay charging that Jews on the left, with their vocal criticisms of Israel, are helping to breed a virulent new form of antisemitism.
“As we’ve become more effective and more visible, there’s definitely been an increase in the backlash,” said Cecilie Surasky, communications director of Jewish Voice for Peace, which in the last year has grown from a local Bay Area group into a national organization with five chapters in major cities, including Boston and Washington. “Groups aren’t fighting fair,” she said.
Brian Klug bemoans an "oppressive atmosphere" that limits, he asserts, his and his comrades' freedom of expression within the Jewish community in the UK (No one has the right to speak for British Jews on Is rael and Zionism, February 5).
As Klug is well aware, it is not the principle that is in dispute but the details. When critics of Israel's policies in the territories or in Lebanon, or in Israel itself, adopt a standard of moral inequivalency, ignore Arab sins, glide over major societal and cultural differences, fudge historical facts, forget legal rights and, in general, act in a street-gang manner, they should know that it is fair and just to question their Jewish identity, or, at the very least, cast doubt whether they are interpreting to the non-Jewish public what Jewish identity is and what is Jewish nationalism.
Yisrael Medad
Shiloh, Israel
Maleiha Malik (Comment, February 2) says "Churchill wrote that Jews were part of a 'worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation'." This is a masterpiece of selection. Churchill at that time, 1920, was obsessed with the prospect of revolutions around the world directed from Moscow by the Bolsheviks, many of whose first leaders were indeed Jewish; they were the "bad" Jews he had in view, and that was the conspiracy. Because he regarded them as unrepresentative of the Jewish people as a whole, he took the trouble to distinguish them from "good" Jews whom he looked to for the economic development of Palestine (he was unusual among his class and kind in being a pro-Zionist) and whom he numbered among his friends. He was the least anti-semitic of all the Conservative grandees. If his views had really been what your quotation suggests, they would have been identical with Hitler's.
Geoffrey Best
Oxford
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