Israel's military assault in Gaza has led to what can only be called a massacre in which so far more than 700 Gazans have died, while Israel has suffered 10 deaths, several of which have come from "friendly" fire. According to official Israeli sources, during the entire period 2002-2008 prior to the current Israeli invasion, less than 25 Israelis have died from Hamas' rockets and no more than 1 during the six months prior to the end of the ceasefire which was occasioned by a November 4 Israeli raid which killed one Palestinian. B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, has calculated that Israeli raids and aerial attacks have killed 2,700 Palestinians during the same period.

I come from a secular Jewish family that never had a significant Jewish ethnic identity expressed in conversations or responses to the news. My parents emigrated to the United States around 1910 and had no known relatives who died in Nazi concentration camps or were killed in other actions directed against Jews as Jews. I cannot recall a single conversation regarding the state of Israel during the time, prior to 1964, when I lived at home and thereafter. At the same time I did feel good, despite not being a Dodger fan, that Sandy Koufax was considered one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball.

I feel my background frees me from having to cope with powerful emotional sentiments towards Israel when evaluating it as a state.

On the other hand, to some friends and acquaintances, and certainly to many religious or ethnically-identified Jews, it discredits me when I strongly criticize Israel's actions and even question its moral legitimacy---which is not the same thing as its undeniable existence now and in the future. I can understand this argument, but don't accept it because I can't honor emotional reasoning as a way of making sense of the world.

Emotional reasoning  involves believing feelings are facts, i.e., if I feel something strong enough it must be true. To me, feelings can be guides to truth or falsehood. Truth lies in evaluating evidence devoid of how I want the evidence to point.

For many years I had little interest in Israel and that fed my ignorance of its history. I believed the conflict with the Palestinians to be too complicated to resolve and there was right on both sides...two people who had been victimized by others (i.e,Turks, the British, Germans) fighting each other in perpetuity. 

I visited Israel in 1975, spontaneously and without advance preparation. I stayed on a Kibbutz for a short time and visited Tel-  Aviv and Jerusalem. I found the trip fascinating, but found myself getting into endless arguments with Israelis when I took a neutral position on their conflict with the Palestinians. The 1973 war with Egypt had ended fairly recently and the country still had a siege mentality. I also had to explain why Nixon was impeached as Israelis seemed to have a love affair with him despite his anti-Semitism, about which they knew nothing.

When Henry Kissinger arrived for some event a large crowd gathered near the YMCA in Jerusalem where I was staying to protest against what they thought was his one-sided (i.e., anti-Israel) efforts to create regional peace. I was present as well, but only objected to his criminal actions in Vietnam and especially Chile, where my former student, Frank Teruggi, had been one of the two Americans executed two years earlier during the Kissinger-facilitated Pinochet coup d'etat.

My greater knowledge of how the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians developed when I read Benny Morris', The Making of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-49 (1989) twenty years ago and it opened my eyes to the reality that Israel's creation was built upon the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 people who lived on the land Israel coveted. Morris, then a  critic of Israeli policy, but now a supporter of a hard-line, admits his embrace of Israel is simply based on ethnic loyalty. If he were a Palestinian he would be on the other side and this, incidentally, was a view implied by Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurian, when he said:

"Why should the Arabs make peace?...We have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We came from israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago and what is that to them?" 

Morris work changed my attitudes towards the conflict. I have read other books and reviews since then that have said he could have gone further in showing the displacement by violence and the threat of violence was a deliberate political policy and not simply generated by military facts on the ground. He also relied too heavily on available official Israeli government documents and neglected to tap Palestinian sources---eyewitness accounts of the ethnic cleansing or what they call the Nakba (Catastrophe)---a strange omission given the vital role the testimony of survivors of Nazism has played in providing a portrait of the extermination of millions of Jews. For an alternative viewpoint, see Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2007).

After reading Morris I read other works that also changed my beliefs. I discovered that in the post-war WWII period American Jews were strongly divided between Zionists and anti-Zionists and the American Jewish Committee was against the formation of a Jewish state. They favored increasing Jewish immigration from European DP (Displaced Persons) camps to Palestine in a mutli-ethnic federation still under British administration. Zionists in Palestine opposed such a confederation even though it would have led to the immediate liberation of tens of thousands of DPs because they wanted a Jewish state not a piece of the pie controlled by Britain.

I also learned that American Zionists opposed liberalizing immigration quotas to the US to insure that Jews in DP camps prefering to come to the U.S. would have to settle for Palestine. (American opposition to liberalizing immigration laws, whether for Jews or non-Jews in DP camps, was strong in this period). Thus, Zionists placed the need to augment the number of Jews in Palestine above the immediate well-being and desires of some of those who had barely survived the Nazi genocide.

The motives of Jewish anti-Zionists were varied. Some were ardent assimilationists; some may have feared that if there was a Jewish state Amerian Jews, if U.S. politics moved rightward and anti-Semitism grew, might be accused of dual loyalty or pressured to emigrate to Israel. Others might have been aware of the demographics of Palestine and wished to avoid the violent consequences of trying to establish Israel. Many leftist Jews may have been opposed to an ethnically-identified state in principle. Finally, some orthodox Jews had theological reasons for rejecting a homeland. 

Regardless of what motivated anti-Zionists at the time what seems critical is that in the period before Israel was born it seemed one could be Jewish and identify with the religion and/or the ethnicity and  not support a Jewish state and one could support a Jewish state and not be supportive of Jewish self-determination if it interfered with Zionist priorities.

Finally, it seems that before the capture, trial and execution of Adolph Eichmann in 1961 Israeli leaders did not valorize or even focus much attention on survivors and never emphasized the relationship between the Nazi geniocide and the need to have a Jewish state. Zionism, after all, was a nineteenth century ideology that predated Nazism, though Nazism created the preconditions for its evolution from ideology to practice.

The question then arises whether Jews should necessarily have allegiance to the state of Israel? Why was it permissable to debate this in 1946, at a time when the situation of world Jewry was most precarious, but not now?

Perhaps the question should be approached from a more universal standpoint: religious and ethnic identity and loyalty.

Judaism is in part a religious belief system as is Hinduism, Islam and Christianity and Shinto among many others. One can decide to accept its tenets or not. If one does not, clearly there is no reason to support a state founded on religious principles---a theocratic state. Of course, a belief in Judaism is not required to ally with the Israeli state and its policies and Israel isn't a theocratic state. One can even be anti-Semitic, as Christian Zionists are, and support Israel because of religious beliefs which require the state of Israel to exist before the Rapture---after which Jews who don't convert to Christianity will be consigned to Hell.

But even if one is a religious Jew, is it necessary to give support to the actions of a religious state or co-religionists who reside there or elsewhere?

I think not. Besides the fact that within each religion there are schisms and one's particular allegiance might be at variance with those of the state in question (e.g., Shiites living in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule or Sunni living there now under Shiite dominance), a state can engage in behavior that is abhorrent in the name of a shared religion. Shiites around the world shouldn't be obligated to support the rule of Iranian clerics since 1979 and could want to have those rulers overthrown, even if states with non-Shiaa populations played the leading role in such upheaval. They might do this because of greater allegiance to the cause of human rights than upholding their co-religionists. I'm not suggesting this is feasible or even desirable in regard to Iran---I would strongly favor internal change there and elsewhere, hopefully peaceful----but only that Shiia supporting another method shouldn't be accused of being self-hating or infidels.

What about those who identify with Judaism simply as a shared ethnicity? Here as well, we would hardly condemn Italian-American, German-American or Japanese-American who, during WWII, wanted the US to defeat Italy, Germany or Japan as being self-hating or traitors to their ethnic group. On the contrary, we might consider them as American patriots or anti-fascists who supported democracy.

And what about Muslim Arabs who share an ethnicity and religious affiliation with Osama bin laden? Aren't we always wanting them to reject loyalty based on these membership groups and replace it with adherence to a set of values that rejects terrorism as a tactic? 

If we move from ethnicity to race, haven't all-white juries in the deep south who refused to convict whites who lynched  blacks such as Emmet Till rightly earned contempt? Or black jurors who refused to convict OJ? Or Al Sharpton who defended Tawana Brawley even after it was clear she perpetrated a hoax?

Why then must Jews toe the line when it comes to Israel? Why can't they identify themselves as Jews and condemn Israeli policies and even question the moral basis of the foundation of the Israeli state on the grounds that a homeland of one oppressed people should not be created by oppressing others.

Now, all this said, it's true that the options that Jewish DPs faced after WWII were daunting. Their homes were destroyed and they often, especially in Poland, encountered virulent anti-Semitism and violence. Western countries didn't want to admit them as immigrants either. Perhaps justice would have entailed creating a Jewish state in Germany, but that was never considered as far as I know, and other non-Jewish but displaced victims of Nazis might have wanted some turf there as well.

The solution, to create a Jewish state in Palestine and do so by means of ethnic cleansing, could only be defended as realpolitik: the Palestinians had less power to exclude Jews than other countries and most in the DP camps prefered Palestine to other alternatives.

But that choice, while practical in the short term, eventually led to the tragic situation that Israel and the Palestinians face today. When a state has been created on the basis of disposession those who now have control want nothing more than a passive acceptance of the status quo. Those who have been uprooted, if they have the capability, will not accept this, or enough won't so that the victors sleep will be disturbed. The winners seek amnesia; the vanquished want to regain what they have lost. It is ironic that Jews, who justifiably want the world to "never forget" their Holocaust, would prefer the Palestinians to forget their Nakba.

Israel has compounded their "original sin"---ethnic cleansing to found their state--- by the expansion of settlements. Most Jews view this as a phenomenon distinct from the events of the late 1940s, but there are strong parallels since force and intimidation have been at the root of both expansions of Israeli territory.

It is clearly unrealistic to envision a return to 1946. Israel now exists and will continue to do so. The Palestinian tragedy can never be undone. Some political settlement will eventually be required because as much as Israel wishes to maintain the status quo demographics will make it impossible. Either Israel will have to be a non-religious bi-national state with an eventual Palestinian majority or the Palestinians will have to get their own.

As the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians prefer a two-state solution the problem involves choosing political leaders that are willing to achieve it. To date both sides have not done so and while the Israelis cast blame on their enemies for this there is no clear evidence Israelis are willing to make necessary territorial concessions if they can postpone it ad infinitum. Regardless of rhetoric about peace, successive Israeli governments have allowed settlements to increase. Hamas' support grows in proportion to Israel's expansion and aggression. While it might not be the ideal political leadership Palestinians Israel has no moral standing to criticize it, especially since back in the 70s and 80s it funded Islamist groups out of which Hamas developed as a counterweight against Fatah.  Israeli leaders also reasoned that if such groups became powerful they would resist peace negotiations entirely, thus allowing Israel to say it had no "peace partner" and maintain the status quo. (Interestingly, this was an approach the U.S. utilized in funding Jihadists to fight the pro-Soviet Afghan government. In that case, Zbigniew Brzezinki, President Carter's National Security Advisor, hoped these intransigent extremists would force Moscow to intervene to save its allies and get bloodied---payback for Soviet support of North Vietnam. Jihadists were ideal proxies because they would never negotiate a settlement with the Afghani government or Moscow).

Israel's intransigence is bolstered by the United States' willingness to "enable" its policies, chiefly by providing military aid. American Jews, the overwhelming majority of whom support Israel, if not all its policies, play a significant role in making both Democrats and Republicans maintain this stance. That is not to say that, apart from domestic politics, Israel has not served American "interests" abroad. Israel has at times been enlisted to aid allies we couldn't (e.g., advising South African intelligence services during apartheid; aiding counter-insurgency in Guatemala) or play cop to help the U.S. maintain its power in the oil-rich Mid-East. But, if American Jewry could distance itself from Israel as much as it is hoped other religious and ethnic groups can transcend tribal loyalties, it would strongly contribute to an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.