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Adir Yolkut's avatar

Really appreciate this piece. Thanks for bringing her voice. It brought some helpful clarification and nuance to my own (sometimes) reductive understanding of things.

Chag Sameach, Joe!

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Levi Solomyak's avatar

very powerful. thanks for sharing (and as someone nodding in agreement to the points raised here) I am looking forward to reading (if there is) your thoughts in response.

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Joe Schwartz's avatar

There will be!

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Stacey L.'s avatar

She makes a compelling (and beautifully written) case for the settlements. I have two Israeli friends here, one whose family lives on a West Bank settlement and the other who opposes the settlements. I hope this exchange continues as my thinking about the war and Israel evolves as I read about and listen to more perspectives. I've had some alarming exchanges with people I thought were my friends and who I now see as anti-Zionist (with knowing anything about Zionism) and anti-Semitic. For the first time, as my husband and I were watching the news, I said "I'm afraid for Israel," and he said he was as well.

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HAZEL STEIN's avatar

Thank you Sarah, what a beautiful eloquent piece with which I mostly agree.

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Jay Palmer's avatar

An articulate and sincere piece for sure and I rejoice in her and her family's connection to haAretz. It doesn't, however, address the ultimate political arrangement to be wished for or achieved with respect to Yehudah v'Shomron. Is her and/or her community's objective the incorporation of all of YeSha into the State and, if so, what is to be the status of the Arab population of the region? I'm no liberal and I agree with Sarah's worldview (that the existence of enlightened individuals doesn't alter the fact that much of the world still operates on a level that we would characterize as medieval) but ask because the only reason the settlers are deemed as problematic (by those who deem them as such) is specifically because the land is contested. Had YeSha been devoid of people in 1967 there'd be no conflict as that land never legally belonged to the Jordanians who'd occupied it since 1948 anyways. So if the crux of the problem is the Arabs of YeSha, I think it important to ask for clarification on this issue.

I, too, look forward to your response to Sarah.

Yishar kochakha v'Hag Sameah!

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Hutch's avatar

Reality since Oct 7th has proven Sarah right.

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Herb Abrams's avatar

This makes me think back to this poem, published many decades ago:

For My Two Sons, Max and David

The wandering Jew: the suffering Jew

The despoiled Jew: the beaten Jew

The Jew to burn: the Jew to gas

The Jew to humiliate

The cultured Jew: the sensitized exile gentiles with literary ambitions aspire to be

The alienated Jew cultivating his alienation like a rare flower: no gentile garden is

complete without one of these bleeding hibisci

The Jew who sends Christian and Moslem theologians back to their seminaries and

mosques for new arguments on the nature of the Divine Mercy

The Jew, old and sagacious, whom all speak well of: when not lusting for his

passionate, dark-eyed daughters

The Jew whose helplessness stirs the heart and conscience of the Christian like the

beggars outside his churches

The Jew who can be justifiably murdered because he is rich

The Jew who can be justifiably murdered because he is poor

The Jew whose plight engenders profound self-searchings in certain philosophical

gentlemen who cherish him to the degree he inspires their shattering aperçus

into the quality of modern civilization, their noble and eloquent thoughts on

scapegoatism and unmerited agony

The Jew who agitates the educated gentile, making him pace back and forth in his

spacious well-aired library

The Jew who fills the authentic Christian with loathing for himself and his fellow Christians

The Jew no one can live with: he has seen too many conquerors come and vanish, the

destruction of too many empires

The Jew in whose eyes can be read the doom of nations even when he averts his eyes

in disgust

The Jew every Christian hates, having shattered his self-esteem and planted the seeds

of doubt in his soul

The Jew everyone seeks to destroy, having instilled self-derision in the heathen

Be none of these, my sons

My sons, be none of these

Be gunners in the Israeli Air Force

Irving Layton, The Shattered Plinths. Toronto, Montreal, McClelland and Stewart [c1968]

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