Michael Lerner has called on Obama to recognize a Palestinian state and to affirm that Israel is a Jewish state. Here he explains why he’s a Zionist:
Israel was the first affirmative action state, recognized by the United Nations primarily out of a global recognition that the Jewish people had faced extraordinary persecution through much of the past two thousand years, culminating in the Holocaust. Its policy of giving a special right of return and special rights to immigrant housing is a legitimate response to the vulnerability the Jewish people continue to face in light of continuing hatred of Jews based on prejudicial views of who Jews are and what we stand for.
Thanks, rabbi, this is helpful. It is the reason many Jews support Israel as a Jewish state, they really think they’ll need it. Even liberal Jews. I don’t feel that way. Do you, young Jews?
