On Tuesday, July 7, 2020 at 2:35:02 PM UTC-4, thinbl...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 7, 2014 at 2:13:42 PM UTC-4, thinbluemime2 wrote:
> > The Rock of Israel, The God of the Jews
> >
> >
> > ...every year I mourn for Judaism that has become increasingly identified
> > with a blind loyalty to the State of Israel and its policies, and the
> > willingness of Jewish religious leaders to call it "the Jewish state" and
> > see it as a religious duty to support its current government policies
> > toward Palestinians. Those policies are in complete opposition to the
> > Torah's most frequently repeated injunction, namely one version or another
> > of the following command: "When you come into your land, do not oppress
> > the stranger (the other, ha'ger), remember that you were strangers (the
> > Other) in the land of Egypt."
> >
> > Israel today presents the Jews as one of the more arrogant nations on the
> > planet. Over and over again, Israel has double standards for Israelis and
> > Palestinians, violating the Torah injunction "One law shall be for you and
> > the stranger that dwells in your midst." Israeli Human Rights
> > organizations like B'tselem continue to document Israeli human rights
> > violations and violations of international law. It's enough to make a
> > Jewish soul cry in despair.
> >
> > What's worst is that the central motif of Judaism has been perverted by
> > what has become the defacto idolatry for Israel worship. Go into any
> > synagogue or Jewish community center and say that you don't believe in
> > God, don't think highly of Torah, and certainly don't follow Jewish law,
> > and you are likely to be greeted and welcomed in with a smile and a shrug.
> > But say you don't support Israel and immediately you will be shunned and
> > told you are likely a self-hating Jew. Israel has become defacto the God
> > of the Jews.
> Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine
> July 7, 2020 Posted byPeter Beinart
> https://jewishcurrents.org/yavne-a-jewish-case-for-equality-in-israel-palestine/
>
>
>
> WHAT MAKES SOMEONE A JEW—not just a Jew in name, but a Jew in good standing—today? In Haredi circles, being a real Jew means adhering to religious law. In leftist Jewish spaces, it means championing progressive causes. But these environments are the exceptions. In the broad center of Jewish life—where power and respectability lie—being a Jew means, above all, supporting the existence of a Jewish state. In most Jewish communities on earth, rejecting Israel is a greater heresy than rejecting God.
>
> The reason is rarely spelled out, mostly because it’s considered obvious: Opposing a Jewish state means risking a second Holocaust. It puts the Jewish people in existential danger. In previous eras, excommunicated Jews were called apikorsim, unbelievers. Today, they are called kapos, Nazi collaborators. Through a historical sleight of hand that turns Palestinians into Nazis, fear of annihilation has come to define what it means to be an authentic Jew.
>
> I grew up with these assumptions, and they still surround me. They pervade the communities in which I pray, send my children to school, and find many of my closest friends. Over the years, I’ve learned how to live in these spaces while publicly questioning Israel’s actions. But questioning Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is a different order of offense—akin to spitting in the face of people I love and betraying institutions that give my life meaning and joy. Besides, Jewish statehood has long been precious to me, too. So I’ve respected certain red lines.
>
> Unfortunately, reality has not. With each passing year, it has become clearer that Jewish statehood includes permanent Israeli control of the West Bank. With each new election, irrespective of which parties enter the government, Israel has continued subsidizing Jewish settlement in a territory in which Palestinians lack citizenship, due process, free movement, and the right to vote for the government that dominates their lives. Israel has built highways for those Jewish settlers so they can travel easily across the Green Line—which rarely appears on Israeli maps—while their Palestinian neighbors languish at checkpoints. The West Bank is home to one of Israel’s most powerful politicians, two of its supreme court justices, and its newest medical school.
>
> Now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to annex parts of the land that Israel has brutally and undemocratically controlled for decades. And watching all this unfold, I have begun to wonder, for the first time in my life, whether the price of a state that favors Jews over Palestinians is too high. After all, it is human beings—all human beings—and not states that are created b’tselem Elohim, in the image of God.
>
> The painful truth is that the project to which liberal Zionists like myself have devoted ourselves for decades—a state for Palestinians separated from a state for Jews—has failed. The traditional two-state solution no longer offers a compelling alternative to Israel’s current path. It risks becoming, instead, a way of camouflaging and enabling that path. It is time for liberal Zionists to abandon the goal of Jewish–Palestinian separation and embrace the goal of Jewish–Palestinian equality.
>
> CONT:
>
> https://jewishcurrents.org/yavne-a-jewish-case-for-equality-in-israel-palestine/
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> "Israel doesn't want a just peace, Israel just wants Palestinian land" - mime with the crystal balls
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