So where do the aforementioned liberal Jews go? What do they do? The simple existence of a homeland, a space where they will never be chased out and destroyed is what they’re looking for. They disagree 100% with what is going on, and have never supported it.
I think we’re throwing some of the babies out with the bathwater is another way of asking that I guess.
I think Jews in Israel should continue to live in Israel while accepting full citizenship for Palestinians under a constitution that guarantees safety and equal rights for all.
I think settlements in the West Bank should be governed by a provincial government like Canadian provinces. And that government should afford those settlements infrastructure no greater than that of Palestinian villages, along with a robust and accountable justice system that strictly forbids terrorism and hate crimes, and offers Palestinians displaced by settler terrorism the right to return and rebuild their destroyed villages, financed by taxes on settlements that were illegally constructed until those villages are rebuilt.
None of this is any more preposterous than the American Reconstruction, end of Apartheid in South Africa, or Irish Independence. However as in those examples, this will absolutely need to be forced upon controlling interests against their protests. It is unfortunate but how emancipation works.
There is also a very unlikely precedent in zionism itself!
Before 1948, zionism was a fringe (almost utopian) project no less audacious than the abolition of slavery or end of colonial rule anywhere. And an Israel that included the existing residents of the land was widely claimed to be a goal. So I often point this out: if the heroes of zionism could boldly envision founding a state and living in peace when the first half was considered utterly impossible and then they got so far as to complete the first half of that, then what on god’s green earth kind of excuse do any zionists today have to justify condemning part 2 as impossible?
It was in the same decade that genocide was inflicted on Jews that the dream of a homeland was realized. So how can it be suggested as farfetched for us to simply declare that we all must now afford the same thing to Palestinians? I can say it no better than the grandfather of zionism himself, Theodor Herzl: “If you will it: it is no dream.”
Absolutely but I mean, aren’t those people there now wanting that? Why do they have to secretly love what the IDF and Likud are doing? That is to say, I don’t think they do.
That’s my hang up with the premise - I know OF people who fit the Likud profile, and I know of “liberal Jews” who fit the profile we’ve established here, but I don’t know of liberal Jews who are secretly happy with Likud. Not that there can’t be any, I just have never seen it.
And, for the record, if I do see it, I don’t count them in the “liberal Jewish” category because they’ve expressed a preference for war crimes. I put them in the same category as the Jews-for-trump; very wrong.
So where do the aforementioned liberal Jews go? What do they do? The simple existence of a homeland, a space where they will never be chased out and destroyed is what they’re looking for. They disagree 100% with what is going on, and have never supported it.
I think we’re throwing some of the babies out with the bathwater is another way of asking that I guess.
I think Jews in Israel should continue to live in Israel while accepting full citizenship for Palestinians under a constitution that guarantees safety and equal rights for all.
I think settlements in the West Bank should be governed by a provincial government like Canadian provinces. And that government should afford those settlements infrastructure no greater than that of Palestinian villages, along with a robust and accountable justice system that strictly forbids terrorism and hate crimes, and offers Palestinians displaced by settler terrorism the right to return and rebuild their destroyed villages, financed by taxes on settlements that were illegally constructed until those villages are rebuilt.
None of this is any more preposterous than the American Reconstruction, end of Apartheid in South Africa, or Irish Independence. However as in those examples, this will absolutely need to be forced upon controlling interests against their protests. It is unfortunate but how emancipation works.
There is also a very unlikely precedent in zionism itself!
Before 1948, zionism was a fringe (almost utopian) project no less audacious than the abolition of slavery or end of colonial rule anywhere. And an Israel that included the existing residents of the land was widely claimed to be a goal. So I often point this out: if the heroes of zionism could boldly envision founding a state and living in peace when the first half was considered utterly impossible and then they got so far as to complete the first half of that, then what on god’s green earth kind of excuse do any zionists today have to justify condemning part 2 as impossible?
It was in the same decade that genocide was inflicted on Jews that the dream of a homeland was realized. So how can it be suggested as farfetched for us to simply declare that we all must now afford the same thing to Palestinians? I can say it no better than the grandfather of zionism himself, Theodor Herzl: “If you will it: it is no dream.”
Absolutely but I mean, aren’t those people there now wanting that? Why do they have to secretly love what the IDF and Likud are doing? That is to say, I don’t think they do.
That’s my hang up with the premise - I know OF people who fit the Likud profile, and I know of “liberal Jews” who fit the profile we’ve established here, but I don’t know of liberal Jews who are secretly happy with Likud. Not that there can’t be any, I just have never seen it.
And, for the record, if I do see it, I don’t count them in the “liberal Jewish” category because they’ve expressed a preference for war crimes. I put them in the same category as the Jews-for-trump; very wrong.