For more than three generations, the Israeli government has
been holding more than one million Palestinians captive while pretending to be
searching for an acceptable “two state” solution. Ignoring United Nations directives, Israel
has steadily been absorbing, dividing, walling off, and otherwise undermining
the Palestinians. Today, with the
opening of the United States embassy in Jerusalem, the long charade has come to
an end. To celebrate their victory, the
Israeli army has killed three score Palestinians and wounded an additional two
thousand. It is only appropriate that
the celebration should be graced by the President’s son-in-law.
This is not my country.
Dear S. Wallerstein:
ReplyDeleteI am a Jew too, perhaps in ways you can't imagine. The Prophets harangued Israel out of outrage but out of love. There is an easy armchair bourgeois form of radicalism and then there is the in the thick of the battle kind of radicalism. There are activist groups such as Peace Now and the New Israel Fund who try to save Palestinians and Jews at once. with great courage and conviction.
Believe it or not the Israelis are made from the same clay, or if you prefer, chromosomes, as are you and me and the other readers of Professor Wolff's blog.
I do not think it should be a crime to be a Jew or an Israeli, and I am prepared to oppose and resist Israel's oppression of the Palestinians at considerable cost.
But I'm not going to throw Israel off the bus of humanity or under the bus of history.
You tell me why they don't deserve to live as free men or at all, just as you and I do, and as I hope the Palestinians will too?
Dear Dr. Wolff,
ReplyDeleteI am happy to read your blog and to see some reasonable stuff in a time of madness and lack of plain reason which is hovering over this planet. Day after day it is becoming harder and more difficult to lead a reasonable conversation in politics and/or simple morality.
P.s. I am enjoying your lecture on Critique of Pure Reason- a thing that gives me a sweet break from illogical "logic" and crazy discourses.