(excerpt of Globe Mail article by Gabor Maté)

"From its beginnings, political Zionism faced opposition within the Jewish world. The Zionist identification of a people with a state is incompatible with the real position of most Jews as freely chosen citizens of other countries. Long before Roman times, Jews formed widely dispersed religious, cultural and ethnic groups whose commonality was not based on geography or politics. Only their spiritual practices were centred on Palestine.

"Some Jews saw in political Zionism a vulgarization of Jewish Messianic tradition that would debase Jewish moral life. The Russian-Jewish writer and "spiritual Zionist" Ahad Ha'am, who emigrated to Palestine, was one of the first to recognize the ethical costs of a project to establish a Jewish state at the expense of the indigenous Arabs. "If this be the Messiah coming," he wrote in the first years of the last century, "then I don't want to see him arrive."

"Zionist theory denied the legitimate presence of an emerging, indigenous nation in Palestine. Zionist practice ensured its dispossession and exile. "We may be a people without a home," said a disillusioned German Zionist in 1925, "but alas, there is not a country without a people. . . . Palestine has an existing population of 700,000, a people who have lived there for centuries and rightfully consider the country as their fatherland and homeland."

--end excerpt

Read the entire piece, Zionism doesn't define Jews - it divides us in this article from the Globe and Mail (UK).

Also, for those who may have missed it, myrecent post outlines some of the "mischief" associated with the Irgun, Stern Gang, and Haganah in the early days of the fledgling state of Israel, such as the bombing of the Patria, the bombing of the King David Hotel, and the Lavon Affair.

No one is automatically innocent - just as no one is automatically guilty - by virtue of their race, color, or creed.

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