Talkbacks and the fear of peace

Whenever the suggestion appears in print of an opportunity for Israel to explore possible peace with the Arabs, be they Saudis, Palestinians or Syrians, the majority of talkbacks, particularly from the Diaspora, dismiss the idea outright and brand the author as a Leftist, a luftmensch. As if Israel must always survive in a state of war, a permanent garrison state.

In a recent JPost article, David Kimche described meeting Prince Turki al-Faisal, intelligence chief of Saudi Arabia. In that meeting the prince again raised the Saudi peace initiative. Kimche observed in his article that not only the Saudi prince, but such prior Israeli intelligence chiefs as Avraham Achituv, Carmi Gillon, Ya'acov Peri and Amos Manor, each considered representing right-wingers while serving at their posts, eventually came to represent positions favoring peace with the Arabs. If today's critics found them acceptable in the past, should this at least suggest caution in dismissing them today because they appear to have changed their understanding of Israel's long-term needs?

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Hands off the Law of return, Part II: Jewish Denial

In a previous submission, Hands off the Law of Return , respondents covered the spectrum of issues related, it seemed to me, to the title, but few spoke of the issues raised in the article itself. For instance, why was the Law and its Grandparent Clause among the first Basic Laws enacted by the new State of Israel, why was this law considered a priority? Why, if it was to be the gatekeeper regarding persons to be granted instant refuge and citizenship did it not defer to Halacha, Jewish traditional law, defining a Jew as born of a Jewish mother? Why instead was the Law written to include the child of a single Jewish grandparent, regardless of the grandchild's present religion, as gateway to Jewish identity for purposes of refuge? All of these questions relate back to the foundations of Zionism, to the very need and quest for a state of the Jews.
 
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Religious Jews had, as far back as the fall of Jerusalem and the Roman dispersion, returned to Zion in small numbers to fulfill the Halachic injunction to physically live on the land. With the Enlightenment, Europe broke the bonds of Christian theocracy and emancipated the Jews. For the first time in the Diaspora, Jews were accepted as equals and citizens in the lands of their residence. But with "European enlightenment" came a new theory of Jewish difference. No longer seen through the lens of religion, Jews were now designated biologically different, a race separate from their neighbors. And the secular version of anti-Judaism, racial antisemitism was born. Faced with this new and even more virulent discrimination and persecution, Jews came to realize that ,even as they were now granted civil citizenship in their countries of residence they were still, and would always remain the 'Other', foreign in the eyes of their hosts and neighbors.