Debra DeLee of Peace Now has a great letter in today's Washington Post telling Obama to keep up the pressure on the settlements:
First, a settlement freeze is absolutely necessary, both to demonstrate
that Israel is approaching negotiations in good faith and to avoid
reaching a point of irreversibility beyond which the creation of a
Palestinian state would simply be impossible. Second, a freeze is
achievable, both politically and legally, and if any Israeli government
could enforce such a measure, it is a broad-based, right-wing coalition
such as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government. Third, the
Palestinians have been taking steps to fulfill their commitments under
the "road map" for a peace agreement.
But the letter ends with this line:
The Obama administration is not "posturing" but rather — at long last
— doing the right thing for the future of Israel as a democratic
Jewish state and for Israel's future relations with its neighbors.
I wonder: is this how progressives want to imagine Israel's identity? Will young people sign on to this vision? If we said that the U.S. was a democratic Christian state, would some see those ideas as contradictory? (Myself I am not opposed to Israel being a Jewish state on the idea that many states discriminate on a religious/ethnic basis. But I don't think that's anything to write home about; and, not in my name.)
