Echoes of history are all around us. The Zionist project in Palestine has been a horrifying failure. In this current war beginning on October 7, 2023, Israel begun by Hamas has succeeded in one respect.
It makes everyone around the world who knows about this issue have strong feelings either for or against the Jewish State. Their feelings are reflected in the rise again of anti-Semitism. There is no place for fence-sitting here.
While Israeli Zionists may continue to enjoy their state as a fait accompli, to most Palestinians, the gradual encroachment of Zionist settlements and disappearance of Palestinian lands now called the nakba in Arabic appear as nothing less than a genocide in slow motion.
I never consider either Israelis or Zionists as Jewish as history reveals we Jewish people were never killers. Had they not read in our most authoritative biblical text the Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not Kill? Here is how the brainwashing leading to propaganda wars and outright war began and continues to flourish.
At age six I had learnt, even memorised these Commandments in Sunday School at Temple Concord in Syracuse, New York. Our teacher was named Mrs Isaacs. She presented us kids (my red-headed sister Laurie two years younger than me) with a map of the Jewish State of Israel and told us to colour it in with crayons.
At age eight, the two of us went to Shawnee Day camp, a Jewish camp where we sang Jewish songs and hopped around like Indians with feathers in our hair now called Native Americans. I took note of Loretta Gibson, a full-blooded Native American—called the cleaning lady.
At age 13 we were sent for two weeks to a Jewish camp called Bradley Brook Camp where my father had been a counsellor. We also had never been so far from home before. The family of four visited Israel and planted a tree.
As we grew up we never thought then that we supported settler colonisers grabbing anyone else’s land. Now 16 and in high school, Laurie and I experienced anti-Semitism but had no idea that such a concept even existed. We thought the problem was our looks. When Loretta wasn't looking we took out the ironing board and ironed our hair.
Recently Israel’s government under the direction of Benjamin Netanyahu green-lit by American President Joseph Biden’s enthusiastic support, authorised the building of 6,000 Jewish-only homes to be built for colonising settlers.
Quid pro quo replacement homes numbering 600 are to be erected for Palestinians as 100 Palestinian homes considered too close to Israel’s separation wall that defines Greater Israel as opposed to Palestine’s West Bank are destroyed.
Today in this apartheid state, only a paltry 26 percent of historic Palestine remains in Palestinian hands. Despite decades of thinking as well as reams of writing on the continuing conflict in that beleaguered land continues to baffle even the most astute of the world’s most prominent political players, I learned what I knew.
Preferring endless war, a whole new generation of Israeli youths swear they prefer bloodshed rather than be drawn into a negotiated peace settlement with their next-door neighbours.
Hiding in plain sight…Stuck in misconceptions about the past. No historic homeland for the Jewish state, a settler-occupied colonial state.