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Liberals Believe in Coexistence

(Times of Israel) Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch - I am just a simple Jew. I have an uncomplicated, unsophisticated approach that has guided me throughout my life: If a theory is antisemitic, it can't be moral. If a theory leads to antisemitism, it can't be moral. If a theory denies Israel's right to exist and seeks to dismantle the world's only Jewish state, it is immoral. I agree that the Palestinians deserve dignity and freedom, and I have spent much of my career supporting these aims. But the editors of the Harvard Crimson are utterly wrong to write that "the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement [is] a means to achieving that goal." The BDS movement seeks not coexistence with Israel but Israel's destruction; not a two-state solution but one Palestinian state. And BDS considers armed struggle against Israel a legitimate means to achieve this end. In practice, what's the point of being anti-Zionist today? Are we supposed to ignore Jewish national aspirations - and the will of Israeli citizens themselves - and create yet another (the 22nd) Muslim-majority country in the Middle East, none of which are democracies - at the expense of the world's one Jewish and democratic state? Why? Because some American students and professors tell us that Palestinian dignity categorically requires, not coexistence, but Israel's elimination? That, as BDS has said, "a Jewish state in any shape or form [contravenes] the basic rights of the...Palestinian population"? I am always amazed that people who do not live in the Middle East, might never have been to Israel, perhaps can't find it on a map, do not speak Hebrew, do not understand Israeli or Palestinian society in-depth, can be so certain about how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - and end up supporting those who seek Israel's destruction. As a lifelong liberal, I recoil from the illiberalism of BDS. Liberals believe in coexistence. Liberals respect facts. We value truth. Liberals do not think in all-or-nothing categories. Liberal elite students should be the first to recognize the illiberalism of anti-Zionism, no matter the veneer of virtue. When they say, "Palestine Free from the River to the Sea," they mean the ethnic cleansing of the Jews. The writer, senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City, served as executive director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America.
2022-10-06 00:00:00
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