Still Immoral, Still Stupid: Let's End 50 Years of Israel's Occupation of the West Bank—One Person/One Vote

Family relationships can be very complicated. One can be extremely angry at a parent, a sibling, even one's own child, deeply disapprove of some of their actions, and yet still love them quite deeply. That is the situation facing many Jews in the Israeli Left and increasing numbers of American Jews who are united around the following demands of the government of Israel:

• • End the Occupation and end the daily violence against Palestinians that is an intrinsic part of almost every attempt by one nation to dominate another by force.

• • Acknowledge Israel's role in creating the Palestinian refugee problem (not 100 percent Israel's fault, but definitely a large part Israel's fault).

• • Stop calling Israel a "democracy" when it rules over two million Palestinians and does not give them the right to vote in Israeli elections or otherwise participate in shaping the decisions that impact their lives.

• • Stop the building of illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land and stop the displacement of any more Palestinians. Accept the validity of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which "reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace." As Tikkun's contributing editor Mark LeVine pointed out, this resolution reminds Israel's government and its American apologists that its half-century policy of creating "facts on the ground" as a way to normalize the Occupation and the settlement enterprise it has always been intended to support, has been for nothing, no matter how much Palestinian land Israel claims to have annexed.

• • Stop the legal assaults on the rights of Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli poets, writers, artists, and human rights activists who are doing nothing but speaking out or protesting the Occupation. And along those same lines, apply the same standard of law to both Israelis and Palestinians both in the territories and throughout the rest of the country.

Many Jews feel a special connection to the land of Israel, and we care about Israelis, worry about their survival, and have compassion for them, even while detesting the violent actions of some of them, the arrogance of many of their leaders, the seeming obliviousness of many of them to what they are doing to the Palestinian people and their willingness to tolerate a government that promotes hatred toward Palestinians—a government that slowly but systematically steals Palestinian lands and ignores human rights while simultaneously aligning itself with the most reactionary, sexist, and intolerance-promoting elements of the Jewish religious establishment. That establishment imposes its practices on the secular Israeli majority as the price for its willingness to give a green light to repressive policies of the government—along the way turning many Israelis into intolerant secularists who blame all the country's problems on religious Jews.

Many of us also feel a family tie to our cousins the Palestinian people, both Christian and Muslim Palestinians, spiritual descendents of our ancestors Abraham and Sarah, and have compassion for them, and are outraged at how they are being treated by Israel, even as we consistently critique the violent actions of Hamas and the anti-Semitism that persists in parts of the West Bank and Gaza.

We also are concerned that the policies of the Israeli government, by calling itself "the State of the Jewish people," and the largely blind support it has received from many of the major institutions of the Jewish community, have besmirched the reputation of Jews as a people concerned with ethics and justice.

We see increasing evidence that Israel's policies are turning younger Jews against not only Israel, but against Judaism. One can enter almost any synagogue in America—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, or even the highly spiritual Jewish Renewal movement—and be welcomed even if one doesn't believe in God, doesn't want to follow the Jewish traditions, or even has...