(This is a compilation of some comments to Facebook pages in response to questions about the Israel/Palestine situation in general, and what is my reason for being so concerned, in particular)
Looking back, in clear-eyed hindsight, the premise of imposing a "Jewish state" on top of a non-Jewish-majority region, seems to have been a very bad idea.
(see https://krulick.substack.com/p/what-if-israel-had-been-carved-out)
From a strictly scientific perspective, any objective persons, including any honest Jews, would have to admit the experiment has failed and should be concluded and dismantled.
The only bone I have in this is that, as a Jew, I'm tired of being EXPECTED to justify, apologize for, "stand with," defend, condone, make excuses for, "support," or feel any attachment to, or connection with, this particular plot of land, JUST BECAUSE my parents, and their parents, and their parents going back an unknown number of generations, believed that one could be "born into" a set of religious beliefs the way one was born into an ethnicity or race, and that that lineage gave me some special and divinely ordained "right" to appropriate any real estate in this particular region (the size of New Jersey) even if it meant evicting families who had been living on that plot, in homes their ancestors built generations ago, and whose DNA is 80% compatible with the Hebrews who lived there back in Roman times, having converted (probably by force) to Islam sometime since.
Nobody is saying there was NEVER any such PLACE as Palestine; what is an incontrovertible fact is that there was never a sovereign, independent, self-governing NATION STATE called Palestine. Whether a borderless, vague region in the Roman, Byzantine, or Ottoman empires, or part of an arbitrarily-drawn British Mandate until the UN Plan, there was no Palestine government elected by Palestinian citizens of a recognized Palestinian state. As bad as it must have been to have been a colony under imperial rule, nothing could be as bad and intolerable as the current genocidal onslaught after suffering decades of humiliation, punishment, and theft.
The only solution, since the zionist premise itself was the original sin, and since band-aid fixes have been made impossible (once Israeli settlements turned the West Bank into Swiss cheese rather than a uniform Palestinian demographic), is to start over with a new name and a new identity as a NON-RELIGIOUS-centric state, that is, neither a "Jewish" state nor an "Islamic" state, but a SECULAR state that is open to all persons who wish to live there:
one citizen = one vote, with equal rights to all, and a right of return for the millions displaced since before 1948;
an end to "occupied" zones;
NO military aid;
NO nukes;
access to all so-called "holy sites," to be administered by a secular government, that respects ALL traditions with roots there;
end the universal draft and de-militarize the area;
give back the Golan Heights to Syria;
establish treaties with each neighboring country allowing for free passage and free trade;
declare Jerusalem an open city.
Well, that's a start.
I have been to about 40 countries around the world, including several trips to Israel for business and pleasure. I felt far safer and less paranoid in 98% Muslim Turkey or in Egypt than in Israel. The folks in Turkey and Egypt were far nicer, friendlier, more hospitable, and more tolerant of me, even AS a Jew, than the Israelis, who tended to be the most arrogant, nasty, off-putting people in all my travels. This can't be a coincidence, but is a direct result of the inherent injustice and guilt and chip-on-shoulder defensiveness that the very notion of a Jewish nation state created. The Jews in Israel have turned into the very Notsees they were trying to escape from and I can't identify with them, or their bigotry, or their defensive sense of superiority, or their arrogance.
That there are ignorant and arrogant bigots among Jews (as there are among all ethnic, religious, racial groups), is not being denied, and that they are "shondah to the goyim" gives me no sense of pride in being considered a Jew (certainly the Notsee leaders in Germany would have considered me one) and makes me even more determined to distance myself from the zionist entity squatting on Palestinian land. That is the only moral stand a just person can take.
I'm reminded of the line from the film "Gandhi," where the reporter is calling in his story from where striking workers were mercilessly beaten as they walked calmly and boldly into the line of troops, knowing the outcome:
Vince Walker: Whatever moral ascendancy the West once held was lost here today. India is free, for she has taken all that steel and cruelty can give and she has neither cringed nor retreated.
Israel has crossed the same line as the British in India, the Belgians in the Congo, the Germans regarding the Jews, the Americans regarding the indigenous tribes, the Turks regarding the Armenians, the Soviet-fomented Holodomor in Ukraine, the Hutu militias killing over half a million Tutsis, and other horrific examples of genocide, democide, crimes against humanity.
The complicity of the American government and servile pandering by US politicians must be acknowledged. The blind support by many, but certainly not all, Jews, must be acknowledged. The failure of the United Nations to enforce decades of resolutions calling out Israel for violations of international law must be acknowledged. The corruption and bad decisions by various Palestinian factions and leadership much be acknowledged.
The world is on the brink of world war, if not already in its initial stages. The sparks that could ignite the ultimate conflagration are in the hands of some psychopathic warmongers who think nuclear surgery is winnable. They must be stopped at all costs, and the failed experiment must be shut down, and all parties sent to a neutral corner for an extended time out.
Israel has NO “right to defend itself” against its own folly, lies, corruption, crimes against humanity, hypocrisy, bigotry, apartheid, and, ultimately, genocide. Israel has ceded the right to walk among the nations as a moral equal. Indeed, Israel has ceded the right to exist as a special case, a unique homeland for an oppressed people, by becoming the irredeemable arch-oppressors of our era.
As one whom the world considers a Jew, as a moral person with a conscience, as a student of history, as a believer in justice and mercy, I reject zionism as I would fight an infection, and I reject Israel as I would reject a malignant tumor. Let us learn from history, correct our mistakes, heal the wounds, mourn the dead, return to decency, and promote cooperation among all persons of good will to build and realize a lasting peace in what many have called “the Holy Land.”
Thank you so much for your brave commentary. I will never forget meeting a young Jewish law student in early fall of 1967 when we were both about to start our semester of studies at UBC. He needed digs for the night so I invited him to sleep on his bedroll in my little rented pad. We talked long into the night. He finally told me he had just come back from visiting a friend in Israel, a young vet of the war who told him that the Israeli soldiers, his fellow soldiers, had mass murdered women and children to "terrorize villages". He was shocked. I changed my mind about Israel and I think he had also. Never will forget that. There's nothing like hearing first hand. It just can't go on. Please God!