(1) Your statement that "90% of Jewish Americans" are "turning the tide", which I assume by that you mean that they are beginning to think like you. That is totally false. The fact that a slim majority may favor the "2-state solution" has nothing in common with your and Phil Weiss's position, and I don't believe anything like a majority support dividing (and thus destroying) Jerusalem.

(2) Your statement that "all the soldiers and pioneers who built the state were Leftists" is an outrageous falsehood. THE JEWISH PEOPLE BUILT THE STATE OF ISRAEL, and not one political party or another. True, the Leftist Kibbutzim made a major contribution, but so did the urban workers, most of whom were Sefardic and traditionalist if not religious. It was these people who built Israel's infrastructure and industry, not the kibbutzim. True, Ben-Gurion and his MAPAI (Labor Party) mafia appointed only political loyalists to high positions in the army, but there were many officers who were not Leftists and the rank-and-file soldiers included many right-wing people, including former ETZEL and LEHI underground fighters.
What you, MJ, consider the "Left" never was a majority in Israel. However, even most non-Leftists accepted Ben-Gurion's leadership and the parties that represented them, like the General Zionists, Agudat Israel, National Religious Party went along with him, even though they vociferously opposed many aspects of his policies and the pervasive corruption of his MAPAI machine.
It should be pointed out that Efraim Sneh's father was not simply a "Leftist", he was a Marxist-Leninst Communist and supporter of Stalin even after MAPAM started showind discomfort at Stalin's plan to carry out another Holocaust in the USSR as signalled by the "Doctor's Plot"...so you see, diseased political thinking in Israel is nothing new...the father had his perverted political icon (Stalin) and the son his (Arafat and Oslo). In fairness, it should be pointed out that Moshe Sneh did "teshuva" (repentence) on his deathbed and requested a traditional, Orthodox Jewish funeral and he stated his respect for Jewish tradition at that time, so there is hope that others will see the light as well.

I am talking about the vast majority (90% or so) of Jewish Americans

You know meaningful numbers of American Jews against a two state solution?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Thanks for responding by telling us what happened to 1 guy 16 years ago in contrast to the thousands of Palestinians (and 800 kids) killed over the few years including six this week.
But the Brooklyn story gives you the chance to move neatly from race baiting Arabs to your African American neighbors in NYC.

nrglaw,

MJ has been accused of spewing Jew hatred more times than the Nazis.

Accusing MJ of Jew hatred is no different than accusing those of us who disagree with the Bush gang of being America haters, anti-American, unpatriotic, traitors, blah, blah, blah.

We lived in the Philly suburbs, and we lived in one particular house we purchased 40 years ago and paid off 15 years ago.

Last year some Philly people came here and forced me and my wife and 3 children out of our house and off our 3 acre lot. We now live in a cramped small apartment with what belongings we were able to take with us when we left our home.

We drive by our old house now and then and see the Philly people's kids playing on the swing sets we put up. We see them picinicking on the lot and enjoying the fruit trees.

Our children, seeing this and remembering the good times there, ask why we moved away.

I'm curious, bar, if your post means you deny that there is any violence by the settlers. No uprooted olive groves? No efforts to force Palestinians to abandon their property? No incidents of violence by settlers at all? No demolished homes and villages?

And since you brought up the issue of "state land," perhaps you'd like to explain why, in a supposedly democratic state, only Jewish Israelis are allowed by law to purchase land from the state. Do you have no problem with that? And that law applies within Israel proper, which is bad enough. Any land that is in the occupied territories is not legally Israeli state land according to international law, no matter what illegal definitions may be applied to it, either by the Israeli government or by yourself.

b'tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, has a very good article on the subject:

Taking control of the land in the West Bank

Israel has used a complex legal and bureaucratic mechanism to take control of more than fifty percent of the land in the West Bank. This land was used mainly to establish settlements and to create reserves of land for the future expansion of the settlements.

The principal tool used to take control of land is to declare it "state land." This process began in 1979 and is based on a manipulative implementation of the Ottoman Lands Law of 1858, which applied in the area at the time of occupation. Other methods employed by Israel to take control of land include seizure for military needs, declaration of land as "abandoned assets," and the expropriation of land for public needs. Each of these is based on a different legal foundation. In addition, Israel has assisted private citizens purchasing land on the "free market."

The process employed in taking control of land breaches the basic principles of due procedure and natural justice. In many cases, Palestinian residents were unaware that their land was registered in the name of the state, and by the time they discovered this fact, it was too late to appeal. The burden of proof always rests with the Palestinian claiming ownership of the land. Even if he meets this burden, the land may still be registered in the name of the state on the grounds that it was transferred to the settlement "in good faith."

Despite the diverse methods used to take control of land, all the parties involved - the Israeli government, the settlers, and the Palestinians - have always perceived these methods as part of a mechanism intended to serve a single purpose: the establishment of civilian settlements in the territories. Accordingly, the precise method used to transfer the control of land from Palestinians to Israel is of secondary importance. Moreover, since this purpose is prohibited under international law, the methods used to secure it are also unlawful.

Israel uses the seized lands to benefit the settlements while prohibiting the Palestinian public from using them in any way. This use is forbidden and illegal in itself, even if the process by which the lands were taken was fair and in accordance with international and Jordanian law. As the occupier in the Occupied Territories, Israel is not permitted to ignore the needs of an entire population and to use land intended for public needs solely to benefit the settlers.

The High Court of Justice has generally sanctioned the mechanism used to take control of land. In so doing, the Court has contributed to imbuing these procedures with a mask of legality. The Court initially accepted the state's argument that the settlements met urgent military needs and allowed the state to seize private land for this purpose. When the state began to declare land "state land," the Court refused to intervene to prevent this process.

“The healthy man does not torture others — generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.” ~~ C. G. Jung