The last few months have been a bit of a difficult journey. During Israel's attack on Gaza, and the action that I took in joining my university's occupation, I felt really angry with Israel, and got drawn into the popular view on the left that it's all Israel's fault and Israel is a racist state. Even then, though, it was rather unusual for me, someone who was so aware of the situation from an Israeli perspective, to be involved in the outcry against Israel, and it made me feel isolated from my left-wing friends as well as the Israeli and Jewish community.
Then 'Seven Jewish Children' was produced in Cambridge and the Alliance for Workers' Liberty brought an Israeli refusenik to Cambridge and, in discussion that followed as I reconnected with some left-wing Zionists I know, I realised something. I used to think Israel was completely in the right, or at least tell myself that. Then I decided it/we/they/she (?!) was completely in the wrong. And you know what? Neither view was overly helpful.
The other night, the Socialist Worker Party held an open meeting to advocate their calls for a one-state solution, support of Hamas, and total condemantion of Zionism, and I made sure there were several Zionists there to engage with them (although I'm not sure that was the point). The talk was very much based around a particular version of the history of Israel and the conflict, but it was something someone said to me afterwards that really got me: the usual thing about how wrong it is to suggest Israelis might have suffered too.
I've decided something. I've decided that blame and condemnation aren't going to solve this conflict. I've decided that solidarity and resistance are pretty meaningless as abstract concepts, and I'm not willing to wait for the revolution to establish peace. And I've decided that suffering and death aren't quantifiable.
The trouble, in the present, is that so-called 'peace-talks' always amount to 'stop terrorising us'; 'stop oppressing us'; 'you first'; 'no you first'.
The solution is that, Israel's never going to be totally secure, no matter how suspicious it is of all Palestinians, no matter how many times it attacks them, no matter how high the walls it builds are. Whilst I understand the need to protect your own, I think our best bet is to be as conciliatory as possible, and hope that that will make us more secure. End the blockade; tear down the wall; withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza; treat Palestinian citizens of Israel as equals; make sure Palestine is a contiguous, autonomous state. Then it might become less easy for us to be the object of everyone's anger and blame, and we might be able to live in peace with our neighbours. But dissolve the state of Israel? Try to undo sixty-one years of history? Accept that Jews and Palestinians are the two underdogs who don't get the right to self-determination? Be self-righteous and unempathetic and preach hatred and blame?
I think I'm a bit too left-wing for that.
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