Here's a piece from Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank (based on Nahum Barnea in Yedioth Ahronoth) hinting at the cold Realist pact that is emerging in Israel/Palestine between Fatah and the Israeli center/left against Hamas and the Jihadi Jews, the radical settlers. It describes a meeting between PA leaders and Israeli leaders in which the Fatah guys say there's going to be a war between Hamas and Fatah. (And hints of We need help to suppress these radical settlers!)
Maybe I'm grasping at straws, but: They say that a certain number of bodies have to pile up before people see the true lines. Tragic. Or that a certain number of bodies are going to pile up before there's peace in the Middle East. Don't want to rationalize that, but what is the true interest here and how long will it take Americans to understand? The true interest is the shidduch (marriage in Yiddish) between me and Nabil Al-Khowaiter, the Arab who sent this to me. Between secular Jews and secular Arabs. We are in the van, man. (As Glenn Condell once wrote.) WE share so much more than blood kinship, or religious kinship. We share ideas, we are actual liberals who believe that all men are created equal. We need one another. The sooner an alliance is forged outside Israel/Palestine between all the smart young Arabs in the U.S. and all the progressives in the U.S., between Herbert Sandler and Saif Ammous, between moral realists John Mearsheimer and Fareed Zakaria and David Remnick--an open alliance, trumpeted, in the age of Obama, based on the principle of HUMAN & CIVIL RIGHTS & DIGNITY for MINORITIES including even #*PALESTINIANs*#, can I say that loudly enough--the sooner that takes place, the less bloodshed in Israel/Palestine. Inshallah.
If you exclude either nationalist Jews (Zionists) and nationalist Palestinians from that meeting (as you infer in your excessive criticism of Meretz), you will fail at that otherwise excellent effort.
The primary sentiment of liberal Zionists is that we are commonly human, and our desire for Jewish self-governance is just a subset of that.
That differs from some sentiments of neo-religious that regard themselves as almost a separate species, whether defined as superior or inferior.
Do you get my distinction?
Witty, how does a liberal Zionist differ from a simple humanist?
The primary sentiment of liberal Zionists is that we are commonly human, and our desire for Jewish self-governance is just a subset of that.
These statements are incongruent.
ARABISM = RACISM!
"These statements are incongruent":
Concise, to the point, and completely lost on Richard Witty.
Liberal Zionists are human, and have desire for Jewish self-governance. Too bad for (sub)humans who also wish for their self-governance. Governance that is race-blind does not form part of Zionist humanity
.
I don't think nationalistic Jews are a problem of the peace process. Expansionistic Jews are a problem. Racist Jews of any persuasion are a problem. It does not matter what are sentiments of Palestinians. They are prisoners, all of them. Pretending that they are partners in this dialog is a private Zionist joke played on the western audience to the private sniggers of media moguls.
This however does not make Palestinian RIGHTS any lesser. And this is responsibility of any decent human being on this planet.
Phil you are being naive again. It is not the oppressors role to pick the leadership for the oppressed. In national liberation struggles in the past such people are called collaborators. (Even, the Stern gang killed Jews who collaborated with the British before 1948).
I am sure you do not accept being called an oppressor, but from the other side, even if you are seen as an opponent of the oppressor's policies, nevertheless you belong to the oppressors tribe. As I do, given that the US has become one with Israeli policies.
We feel deep passion for, we LOVE Israel! Ask any of our leaders. And the people of Dresden loved their leader, tra la, and the twin walls came tumbling down tra la