I try not to go to the Saif Ammous position, but unfortunately, so far, that position has continued to be closer to reality than the more hopeful one I hold. It's quite a depressing way to live, to insist that in fact the situation is hopeless and will never, ever, change. While events continue to disappoint me, I prefer to look at the possibilities, even if they don't manifest before my eyes.

I think that Philip is correct, that sentiments or currents in the US are changing, and that there will be a change in the future in US policy toward Israel. When that will happen, I don't know.

Is the wall permanent? Nothing in Palestine is permanent. Are the settlements permanent? Maybe the hardscape looks permanent but if you look at the really long term picture, the occupation is not sustainable.

In fact, while I used to think the two state solution reasonable, I now agree with those analysts who say that one state is probably inevitable. Maybe not in my lifetime or even my sons' lifetime. But there will be one state. It's just a question of how they'll divvy up the power.

I hope the one, multi-religious/multi-ethnic Palestinian/Israeli state of the future does a better job of balancing power than Lebanon has. Secularism seems the answer to me.

And, the traumas imprint (not a small word). And, the institutionalization of racism persists in both communities. Its not just politics. The basis of distrust on both sides is profound.

EVERY position has been represented by lies. "We renounce terror" (spoken by Arafat, while still occassionally assisting and certainly turning a blind eye to others continuing terror). "We abide by the hudna" (spoken by Hamas, while assisting other groups to shell Sderot). "We will not threaten the peace process", (spoken by Olmert a day before the announcement of the first new authorization of a new settlement area in 10 years).

The alchoholic analogy is a good one, but a better one is the alchoholic family than the alchoholic person. Criticizing the alchoholic person "Its your fault that our marriage sucks", rather than the relationship itself (of which all parties are a part, weaknesses and all), continues the dysfunction.

The suggestion by Saif of a single-state still requires the reconciliation of the parties, still requires the healing of the relationship as troubling as it is.

And, the next question is "do you recognize that you are part of the addictive process, and then are you interested in healing?"

If so, then the first recognition is "we and they are not going away".

If not interested in healing the relationship, then it will likely repeat. The distrust of the other is PART of it, even if real and justified.

The healing of a trauma is usually more painful than the denial of it. In denial, the analogy is of being in a moving car that only sees forward, and presumes that there is no exhaust, no projectile, no roadkill, no global warming, no noise, no inpenetrable boundary.

Then when someone begins riding a bicycle slowly, consciously in busy city streets, or on super-highways even, its scary, unpleasant, enlightening of one's former ignorance and the people like me that have been run over or excluded, enlightening at other's denied (but experienced) pain.

What lessens the waves of subsequent trauma?

When Hitler decided to suppress communists, homosexuals, Jews, Gypsies, in response to his perception that the Versailles armistice harmed Germans, he escalated aggression rather than healed.

WW1 and Versailles were definitely a wave, a difficulty for Germany. (Of course largely self-created). But, he made a relatively small and shared wake (global depression, not small, but not "caused" by Versailles) into a tsunami.

I contest the formula "Zionism is racism", because I know that Abraham was right. "If there are 10 righteous in the town will you spare it", with the analogy that the nut of Zionism is the assertion of NEVER AGAIN will we be persecuted, with the added phrase NEVER AGAIN will we unnecessarily persecute.

(How often is persecution "necessary"? VERY rarely.)

Those are the "10" (more than 10 in the case of Israel). The 10 that won't passively be persecuted, and won't actively persecute.

But, most of the the "10" still want to be Israel, not Palestine, currently.

"WE ARE WILLING TO LIVE WITH ISRAELIS/JEWS AS PEERS".

Assertive – "PEERS" (not subordinated). Not suppressive – "PEERS" (not subordinating).

In the last poll I saw in Haaretz, several months ago, more than 70% of Jewish Israelis said they would be unwilling to live in the same building with an Arab family.

Why do liberal U.S. Jews, who I'm sure would not vandalize the homes of minorities living in their neighborhood, uncritically support a country where segregation and exclusion is majority opinion, backed up by the law?

Blaming the victims just doesn't work the way it used to. In case you didn't notice, the 'moral free pass' has expired. Sorry.

What helped push F. W. deKlerk and Nelson Mandela to a nonviolent political solution was world opinion. Being boycotted from sports events hurt the soccer-mad South Africans. Being shunned from academic exchanges increased their feeling of isolation in the antipodes.

But more than anything, the condemnation of apartheid as a 'heresy' by the Dutch Reformed Church was exquisitely embarassing for the Bible-thumping Afrikaners, if not for their English and Jewish Nat-party brethren.

And this is the missing element in ending the Israeli apartheid state: organized Judaism not merely fails to condemn it, but actively glorifies supporting and visiting it. Christ, even George Wallace didn't make Aliyah to South Africa to worship the comprehensive and perfected apartheid state.

Let's be frank: the nub of the problem is the brutal, tribal, land-grab mentality which pervades the Torah. (Yes, i AM a Torah scholar, just as so many Israelis present themsevles as U.S. constitutional and presidential experts. Turnabout is fair play.) Judaism is going to have to advance past these limiting, obsolete, violent, chauvinist texts — or face the completely unnecessary risk that Judaism itself goes down along with its bastard stepchild, zionist apartheid.

There is still time to take a different road. And it starts with at least one major branch of Judaism — Orthodox, Conservative, or Reformed — denouncing zionism as an evil, secular, inhuamn heresy. Taking this step is of paramount importance to avert a true catastrophe.

"Contrary to common perception, Jewish anti-Zionism is not restricted exclusively to the well know Jewish anti-Zionist movements such as Satmar and Neturei Karta.

"There are in fact many Jewish movements, groups and organizations whose ideology regarding Zionism and the so-called "State of Israel" is that of the unadulterated Torah position that any form of Zionism is heresy and that the existence of the so-called "State of Israel" is illegitimate.

"No one has had to create any antagonism between our Torah and Zionism because such antagonism exists by virtue of the essence of Judaism itself, which can never tolerate the heresy of Zionism.

"Zionism is wrong from the Torah viewpoint, not because many of its adherents are lax in practice or even anti-religious, but because its fundamental principle conflicts with the Torah.

"Unfortunately, due to many undesirable factors, the view of Torah-true Jewry has been concealed from the general public."

TEN QUESTIONS TO THE ZIONISTS
by Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl

IS IT TRUE that in 1941 and again in 1942, the German Gestapo offered all European Jews transit to Spain, if they would relinquish all their property in Germany and Occupied France; on condition that:
a) none of the deportees travel from Spain to Palestine; and
b) all the deportees be transported from Spain to the USA or British colonies, and there to remain; with entry visas to be arranged by the Jews living there; and
c) $1000.00 ransom for each family to be furnished by the Agency, payable upon the arrival of the family at the Spanish border at the rate of 1000 families daily.

IS IT TRUE that the Zionist leaders in Switzerland and Turkey received this offer with the clear understanding that the exclusion of Palestine as a destination for the deportees was based on an agreement between the Gestapo and the Mufti.

IS IT TRUE that the answer of the Zionist leaders was negative, with the following comments:
a) ONLY Palestine would be considered as a destination for the deportees.
b) The European Jews must accede to suffering and death greater in measure than the other nations, in order that the victorious allies agree to a "Jewish State" at the end of the war.
c) No ransom will be paid

IS IT TRUE that this response to the Gestapo's offer was made with the full knowledge that the alternative to this offer was the gas chamber.

IS IT TRUE that in 1944, at the time of the Hungarian deportations, a similar offer was made, whereby all Hungarian Jewry could be saved.

IS IT TRUE that the same Zionist hierarchy again refused this offer (after the gas chambers had already taken a toll of millions).

IS IT TRUE that during the height of the killings in the war, 270 Members of the British Parliament proposed to evacuate 500,000 Jews from Europe, and resettle them in British colonies, as a part of diplomatic negotiations with Germany.

IS IT TRUE that this offer was rejected by the Zionist leaders with the observation "Only to Palestine!"

IS IT TRUE that the British government granted visas to 300 rabbis and their families to the Colony of Mauritius, with passage for the evacuees through Turkey. The "Jewish Agency" leaders sabotaged this plan with the observation that the plan was disloyal to Palestine, and the 300 rabbis and their families should be gassed.

IS IT TRUE that during the course of the negotiations mentioned above, Chaim Weitzman, the first "Jewish statesman" stated: "The most valuable part of the Jewish nation is already in Palestine, and those Jews living outside Palestine are not too important". Weitzman's cohort, Greenbaum, amplified this statement with the observation "One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Europe".

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21031

Students today do not need to be reminded of the genocide of the Jews, the historical consequences of anti-Semitism, or the problem of evil. They know all about these—in ways their parents never did. And that is as it should be. But I have been struck lately by the frequency with which new questions are surfacing: "Why do we focus so on the Holocaust?" "Why is it illegal [in certain countries] to deny the Holocaust but not other genocides?" "Is the threat of anti-Semitism not exaggerated?" And, increasingly, "Doesn't Israel use the Holocaust as an excuse?" I do not recall hearing those questions in the past.

…

If there is a threat that should concern Jews—and everyone else—it comes from a different direction. We have attached the memory of the Holocaust so firmly to the defense of a single country—Israel—that we are in danger of provincializing its moral significance

"The next logical step" for the Israeli government "will have to be a decision whether to target the top political leadership" of Hamas. So said an Israeli official quoted in The Jerusalem Post. Tzahi Hanegbi, a senior member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party and chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, echoed the call, arguing that "There's no difference between those who wear a suicide suit and a diplomat's suit."

Ali Abunimah, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006) recently stated:

Following a cabinet meeting on 10 February, Israel's Interior Minister Shimon Sheetrit specifically called for the execution of Ismail Haniyeh, the democratically-elected Hamas prime minister, and added that for good measure "We must take a neighborhood in Gaza and wipe it off the map."

Last September, Yossi Alpher, the co-founder of the European Union-funded publication Bitterlemons, wrote an article advocating "decapitating the Hamas leadership, both military and 'civilian.'" Alpher, a former special adviser to Israel's defense minister Ehud Barak when the latter was prime minister, worried that Israel would "pay a price in terms of international condemnation," for "targeting legally elected Hamas officials who won a fair election," but that overall it would be well worth it.

Executing democratically-elected leaders may require more chutzpah than even Israel has shown, but the possibility and its disastrous consequences have to be taken seriously given Israel's track record. Israel executed Hamas' elderly, quadriplegic and wheelchair-bound co-founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in 2004, followed shortly afterwards by the execution his successor as the movement's leader, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi.

Aside from the United States, Israel is the only country where the
murder of foreign leaders is openly debated as a policy option.

_______________

The first order of the day, both for Israel and for American Jewry, is serious reexamination of strategies. Step one is to listen to the facts, Not ignore them or do one's best to muzzle them. An alcoholic doesn't need an enabler, what's needed is real intervention. Too bad for both the USA, Israel, and the Palestinians we won't get it from the next USA President (whether Obama, Hillay, or McCain)-congress combo, whether Obama, Hillary, or McCain. When Bill Clinton took part in the peace process there was a gentleman's agreement he would offer nothing to Arafat that had not been first vetted by the Israeli side. The converse he did not do. Interventionist or enabler? Not to worry, Obama would do no better, be no more serious about reaching a real peace agreement; Hillary, McCain and Congress? LOL, no?