This is further evidence that Zionists across the board are seriously out of touch with reality. In Haaretz, Chaim Gans invokes humanism and morality in condemning the post 67 settlements but accepts as just the far greater crimes that were committed in 1948, which he doesn’t deny. Gans is forced to make the argument because he states that the one-state position has been given impetus not just by the left, but by right-wing settlers who are endangering the entire enterprise:
the wrongs committed after 1967 threaten the justice of Zionism in its entirety, while pre-’67 wrongs were wrongs of particular moves in the realization of Zionism.
The source of this distinction is of course the well-known distinction between the jus ad bellum and jus in bello. There is no contradiction between the claim that Britain’s bombing of Dresden during World War II was a criminal act and the claim that this criminality represented a step taken in a just war – even a sublimely just war, the war against Nazism.
We must acknowledge the great injustices committed by Zionism up to 1967. We have to take responsibility for them (via reparations ) – mainly for the expulsion of refugees. We must also acknowledge the high price the Palestinians paid for the realization of Zionism, even when Zionism did not commit injustices against them. But none of these admissions undermines the justice of Zionism in the least.
Thus, his embrace of Jewish superiority, in the end, makes him no different than those he criticizes. Comparing the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians with the allied bombing of Dresden, as if the Palestinians had initiated a massive war against the Jews and deserved no more consideration than did the Nazis, is mind boggling from someone who is attempting to present himself as a reasonable man. Are there, one may well ask, any reasonable Zionists?
