In that spirit, I had the luck to spend my last week in Cairo with a woman who was spending a year traveling around the Middle East researching Jewish communities in Arab countries. (A hot topic, judging by the number of classes Yale has taught on it the past few years). She was fascinating: I rarely meet people who seem so engaged in their culture and roots, and yet able to understand them intellectually. I was impressed by what she was doing.
She just wrote about Gaza. She's being exposed to a whole different perspective in the Cairo, and seeing the pain and suffering from an Arab point of view is changing how she sees the conflict. But,
...is it possible that the amount of sadness I have felt is solely the result of my new perspective on how the Arabs react to this violence? While this new point of view is a factor, I believe the true source of my discontent is my personal realization that this war represents Israel’s final break from the moral, Judaic, and peace-loving principles that characterized its founding.
Let me be clear: I am a Zionist and I love Israel as much as, if not more than, my own home country of America. However, I am fed up with those people who label anyone that is even remotely critical of Israeli policy “anti-Semitic” and therefore, politically incorrect. This manipulation of Holocaust lessons is not only appalling, but detrimental to the future of Israel, as we are currently witnessing. As Jews and as Zionists it is our communal duty, not to mention both the Jewish and democratic tradition, to think critically about the actions of our government, and hold it accountable to the morals and values that characterize our nation.
Arrgh, I can't get it to stop formatting as quotes... but go read her whole post. It's heartfelt.
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