As I write these words, I am sitting at home in Tel Aviv, trying to figure out how to protect my family in a house with no shelter or safe room, following with growing panic the reports and rumors of horrible events taking place in the Israeli towns near Gaza which are under attack. I see people, some of them my friends, calling on social media to attack Gaza more fiercely than ever before. Some Israelis are saying that now is the time to eradicate Gaza entirely — essentially calling for genocide. Through all the explosions, the dread and the bloodshed, speaking about peaceful solutions seems like madness to them.
Yet I remember that everything that I am feeling now, which every Israeli must be sharing, has been the life experience of millions of Palestinians for far too long. The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality for all of us. It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.
Israel is the only party with the power to end this.
Quite the contrary.
They offered the most generous peace deal in history, and Palestinians turned them down.
Palestinians want the right of return, which would allow Palestinians to claim Israeli citizens in such numbers that they would be able to vote to turn Israel into an anti-Jewish theocracy. It would be the end of democracy in the region, and the end of all the Jews in short order.
That’s been the Palestinian sticking-point.
Israel can’t end that.
If I came in to your house and started claiming rooms, and kept saying I’ll stop if you agree that we split the house, I have a feeling you wouldn’t want to agree or say it’s a generous deal.
Bullshit
Oh well, if one guy disagrees, the historical record must be wrong!