Carol, is it your hope or expectation that the Zionists, and/or the Israeli nationalists, and/or the Hasidim, Lubavitchers, kibbutzniks, and all the other stripes of Jewish immigrants to Israel will collectively apologize and willingly go back into a worldwide diaspora? Several generations of Jews have now been born in Israel, and it is the only home they know or ever want to know. Let us say that I, as the non-Jewish relative of several Israeli Jews, say, "Yes, the settlement of Israel was done by desperate people using desperate measures, and done with little regard for what damage was done". Would that heal anything? Jews fleeing Europe in the 30s and 40s found no safe harbor in the world, in one disgraceful case not even in the US. (There was a ship full of Jewish refugees who was refused entry here as well as everywhere else they applied -- I don't remember the name of the ship but perhaps someone else will.) Given their history, particularly the European history of the 30s and 40s, they had nothing more to lose, and were a lot more desperate than the Puritans or any other colonists in history that I can think off off hand. Why would the Dutch have been desperate to settle in South Africa, or the French to settle Algeria, or the Portugese in Brazil, compared to what the european Jews must have been feeling in 1948? Understand, the number of Jews worldwide is even NOW, after more than fifty years, smaller than it was in 1939. Even knowing as many Jews as I do as well as I do, I can't imagine what they felt then.

When Israel was founded, Jewish ghettos and synagogues all over the Arab world were annihilated and their homes flattened or taken. The National Geographic did a piece a few years ago about the remains of the synagogues from north Africa to, I don't know, northern Iraq or so, where the Jewish populations are now below 1% where there are any at all. Those Jews went to Israel. Should their original homes be restored to them? They don't want them anymore.

I admit that I have a strong bias in this; I can't really help that. I believe that representative government, reward for personal industry, education, individual freedoms, open and accountable government, all the western values which Israel has tried to plant and instill, however imperfectly, in that corner of the world where they seem to have no other support, deserve to win. I am impressed that throughout the centuries of Europe's "dark ages", since before the Roman empire fell, there has never been a generation of Jewish boys who could not read and write, when my ancestors were worhipping trees.

I am chastised by people who tell me how much we owe to the Arab influence -- the concept of zero, the saving of classical western literature, the poetry of the Rubayat, etc. But I am western-centric. I've been reprimanded for valuing some people over others, and I don't want or mean to do that--but if I had to make a life-or-death choice between someone who believed that women should not drive, should not be seen in public, couldn't possibly think of voting, that theft is punishable by public mutilation and adultery by stoning to death -- between that person and ANY orthodox rabbi (and I've known quite a few) I'd pick the rabbi. For the most part, based on my experience, I trust and admire rabbis individually (I don't much trust any organized religion). I'm not God. I can't help thinking that my daughter and grandson, and their nearest and dearest, are a treasure in this world and must not be wasted. Of course Palestinian mothers and grandmothers must feel the same way -- which means that there has to be a compromise.

As I said before, I think the west bank has to be emptied of settlements, and a viable state of Palestine has to be brought into existence. I don't think that Ariel Sharon can do it, and I certainly don't think that Yasser Arafat has enough political shelf life left to be a meaningful part of it. But I hope that both sides will throw some other heros up the pop chart, to paraphrase Paul Simon. (I don't even think Bush can contribute much to this -- the 3 of them, Bush & Sharon & Arrafat, remind me of the 3 stooges--poking each other in the eyes, whacking each other over the head, pushing each other over, and then cackling gleefully.)

I hope it is clear that I am aware that I have biases, and I struggle with them. I don't know if it's possible to live in this world without bias, and I probably in the end have chosen the ones that fit me, and part of my struggle is to check that choice against the realities that present themselves to me on a daily, and sometimes hourly basis.