Friday, July 18, 2014

Anti-Zionist?

I have no issues with Zionism, though I oppose expansion of the West Bank settlements for two reasons. First, the settlers often do not acquire legal title to the land they settle on, and often simply appropriate land which is privately held by Palestinians. Second, the expansion of the settlements convinces the Palestinians that Israel is not serious about peace, and makes them less trusting and less willing to work to an equitable solution. Similarly, I opposed the home demolitions (which have largely stopped) because they did not seem to inhibit terrorist activities, but just radicalized people who were not involved in terrorism. I opposed targeted assassinations, first because they killed innocent bystanders, and second because there was no legal recourse for the 'accused', and both are contrary to Jewish law. I have taken issue with Jews trying to reclaim land east of the green line which had been owned by Jews prior to 1948, while refusing to grant the Palestinians rights to land west of the green line. We are supposed to have one set of laws applying to everyone - not laws which grant more rights to Jews than to non-Jews.

I oppose terrorist activities by the Palestinians, and have openly disagreed with people and said that if the Palestinians had been led by a Gandhi and pursued non-violence, they would likely already have their own nation. One time, I actually got one person to agree that just because the rockets from Gaza did not kill many people did not make them okay, and he even reluctantly conceded that Israel might have some justification for retaliating for rocket attacks.

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