Dear Steve, as I am sure you remember, when we began this IsraelSeen enterprise one of the original thoughts was to share with our audience the challenging and interesting differences we had regarding many political issues.
You on one side of the political divide, and me on the other. So, I would like to take this opportunity to rekindle that format. I want to express my deep disagreement over your response to the Israeli parliamentarians who attended and spoke at the recent J Street conference. You can hear their panel presentations and judge for yourself if they presented an honest expression of Israeli politics http://conference.jstreet.org/Knesset_Roundtable_Plenary.
The statement of anger and disappointment you shared with us, Steve, in your “One Response to “Self-proclaimed “pro-Peace” and “pro-Israel” group provides forum for “one-state” incitement”. While I can understand your feelings about J Street and the Knesset members who attended the recent conference I also agree strongly with Member of Knesset and former IDF general Nachamn Shai that there are far too few Jewish people on the planet today for us to alienate each other on the basis of serious and legitimate disagreements that exist in Israel itself.
I believe his sentiment can be understood as a call for us to engage in and invest more energy in attempts at reconciliation among ourselves than in distancing each group one from the other.
While I too disagree strongly with most of the ideas that found great support at the convention, I also believe that those of us with deeply felt Zionist beliefs should support the attempts at understanding and respect rather than spend our energy reading each other out of our diminishing community.
An element of the basic Zionist belief is that we are all components of one people.
We all have a stake in this 3rd Jewish commonwealth, the the state of the Jewish people, Israel.
https://israelseen.com/2011/03/01/i-am-israel-israel-at-its-best/#more-3102
