By REBECCA CHAMBERLIN
Los Alamos

I wish to respond to the July 22 Op/Ed from Kelly Myers and Emma Abata (link).

The situation is all the more tragic because so much of the Palestinians’ pain has been perpetuated by their own leadership, and maintained and fostered for decades by the UN agency that should have provided resolution to their displacement.

I lament that Hamas’ premeditated brutality and hostage-taking on Oct. 7, 2023, has led to nearly two years of urban warfare by Israel, against a military that – contra international law – consistently uses the civilian population of Gaza as human shields. I lament that Palestinian and Arab leaders have refused or violated so many opportunities to establish a peaceful two-state solution for their people in the past. 

Saying all these things does not release from culpability those Israeli extremists who have, collectively and individually, inflicted harm on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Both are true. We must handle complexity and nuance if we are serious about gathering our community to discuss the conflicts between Palestine and Israel. But the heightened rhetoric in the letter, and the casual dismissal of Rabbi Schlacter’s gently worded concerns, suggest a refusal to do that. By invoking a laundry list of moral reversals against Israel (e.g., apartheid, genocide, Holocaust, white supremacy, colonialism), and by framing the struggle between Israel and Islamic supremacy in terms of an “oppressor-vs-oppressed” false dichotomy, Ms Myers and Ms Abata seem to signal that they want to terminate meaningful dialogue, not foster it. I hope I am mistaken.

If Zionism was a “white supremacist political ideology”, Ms Myers and Ms Abata would be correct to reject it. Fortunately, it is no such thing. Zionism is the idea that the Jews – who are a people as well as a religious group – have the right to national self-determination, preferably in their ancestral homeland. Zionism is not an answer to “Who does the land belong to?” but an affirmation that “This people-group belongs to the land”. In a world that has 50+ Muslim-majority countries (not to mention a diversity of Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant countries), there is goodness and beauty in the existence of the one Jewish-majority country and its equitable inclusion in the international community.

To say that the Jews belong to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea does not negate that other people-groups also feel rooted to that place. But it does repudiate the wicked ideology of Islamic supremacist states and terrorist groups who have spent three-quarters of a century trying to exterminate Israel. It is difficult to elevate peace in the region until this zero-sum radical Islamist mentality is traded in for the possibility of coexistence and mutual prosperity. If Ms Myers and Ms Abata think that Israel is the main barrier to that transformation, I invite them to remember that the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco have already committed to seeking such a path, through the Abraham Accords.

Israel is a necessary, and complex, and imperfect, and inspiring nation. For those who cannot see that yet, I pray that someday you will.