If you spoke to me seven years ago about Israel – Palestine, my view would have been a lot closer to those of the commenters who oppose me than the one I espouse today. I would not have been as bombastic as they. But, on balance, I believed that Israel should exist as a Jewish homeland and that its military actions were largely defensive in nature.
Obviously, my views have changed. How that occurred is a story for perhaps another post, and certainly a topic for my talk to the East Valley PDA this coming Thursday. But the fact is that my views have changed in a huge, huge way.
I’m not alone. Although I consider myself an Atheist religiously, my heritage is 100% Jewish. Many, many of the pro-Palestinian voices you hear these days are actually Jewish: Noam Chomsky, Philip Weiss, Gideon Levy, Norman Finkelstein, Henry Siegman, and Miko Peled, to name a few. Jewish Voice for Peace has over 100,000 on its mailing list.
So, I and all these other Jews support the Palestinian cause, but precious few Palestinians support the Zionist point of view. Why is that? Mind you, I’m not saying there are zero Palestinians who oppose the Palestinian cause. We actually have a Muslim here in Arizona who the conservatives trot out on a regular basis to justify their Muslim bashing. My guess is there may be a Palestinian or two somewhere shilling for Israel. But there are precious few of them compared to the number of Jews who support the Palestinian cause.
Why is that the case? If the Israeli position is as righteous as the Zionists claim it is, why are there nowhere near the number of Palestinians speaking for Israel as there are Jews speaking for Palestinians?
