I didn’t draft I-97 & it isn’t “my initiative” as you erroneously claim. But don’t let me spoil yr ignorance.

Your approach is not surprising, considering the way you drafted I-97. If you were trying to get to a fair peace, you would not try to punish only one side in a war that both sides have prolonged. I don’t know and don’t much care what your motives are; what matters is that initiatives like yours on a large scale will force Israel to make unilateral concessions. I don’t like Israel’s settlement policy either, but I will not cripple only my own side in a war to satisfy your self-righteousness.

People like keith plea for “even-handedness” in dealing with the israelis and Palestinians. On this point, i’m in total agreement. We should supply both sides equally with military hardware, including nukes to achieve a just balance of power, or we should deny these weapons to both sides in the conflict, insisting on a nuclear-free zone in the Mid East (as El Baradie and other sane people recommend) and ceasing all weapons sales to israel.

Further, we should respond to Israel’s refusal to renounce violence the same way we have dealt with the people of Gaza. Israel should be subjected to severe sanctions that cause society-wide disease,starvation, terror and death.

That would be even-handed.

The rest is just platitudes.

I had hoped this might be a place for reasoned dialogue, but I see that isn’t the case

You argued against I-97 and I rebutted yr arguments. I can only think that “reasoned dialogue” for you means finding a place where everyone, or almost everyone agrees w. you.

There is too much violence & bloodshed in the Middle East for me to have a lot of patience for muddled thinking. People are dying every day because of the Occupation while you seem to be reading tea leaves to decide how to make things better. Desperate times require bold thinking and action–not timidity & vacillation. Assigning blame to the Palestinians for the conflict does nothing to advance a solution. That’s all I’m interested in. Not blame.

The only hostility I see here is toward anyone who disagrees with your views. I had hoped this might be a place for reasoned dialogue, but I see that isn’t the case. I won’t bother posting here again just to give you a target to shoot at.

The solution is simple.

1) President Obama needs to present the Israelis with a peace agreement based on the international consensus: a Palestinian state in the whole of the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capitol.

2) He has to show the Israelis the blank space where their signature goes and explain that they have 72 hours to sign it, after which, the US will impose a naval blockade on Israel and starve them into submission, while transferring all resources currently earmarked for Israel to the Palestinians, including jets, helicopters and d9 bulldozers.

That’ll bring em around in a hurry.
Believe me.

I-97 chooses to lump the US occupation in Iraq together with that of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The two aren’t related

Excuse me? Maybe they’re not related in yr mind & the mind of Stand With Us. But yr mind isn’t the mind of all the rest of us.

As a progressive voter and liberal Jew

You’re only the 100th commenter who’s argued a pro-Israel hasbara position trying to bolster their bona fides by making this claim. I’m sorry but you shall be known by yr views & by not how you self-describe yr political views. So far, your views are neither progressive nor liberal when it comes to the issue of Israel, the Occupation or divestment.

[Israel's] military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and Golan were warranted militarily at the time.

How precisely is this position “progressive” or “liberal?” Israel’s occupation was illegal then & its illegal now. It provided no benefit to Israel then & provides none now.

I also believe that the continued occupation has been disastrous for both Israel and the Palestinians, and it should be ended in a peace deal so that the Palestinian Arabs can obtain the autonomous state they deserve, and that Jews and Arabs can live in peace in the region.

Yes, yes, that’s all well & good. I believe in motherhood & apple pie too. But how do we get there–that’s the problem. And you provide no answer & that’s precisely the problem w. the wishy washy views of so-called liberals like you. You want a good outcome but you don’t know how to get there. In fact, you’re not prepared to do any heavy lifting to get there, nor do you think Israel needs to do any. Which leaves you in a deep sand dune somewhere in the Sinai w/o a compass.

I certainly don’t claim that the Israeli response was perfect or without fault

Gee d’ya think? Here again is the problem of the so-called liberal. They know Israel behaved badly, but can never acknowledge how badly. And Israeli certainly doesn’t share anywhere near half the blame for the mayhem.

To make matters worse, the Palestinians voted the terrorist group Hamas into power in the last elections.

Ah yes but once again the “liberal” Jew has a problem. For a Palestinian group to be “legitimate” it must look like the Democratic, Republican or Labor party. Anything else is illegitimate. The only problem is that you’ll have to make peace with Palestinians & not with Republicans. And Palestinians see Hamas as a legitimate political entity no matter what you think of them. Besides, if we rendered treif every ex-terrorist group then Likud would be considered “terrorist” since many of its founding fathers were such.

If they give up control of the occupied territories without a peace deal, their national security will certainly be put at great risk.

More sophistry that puts the cart before the horse. Israel can have a peace deal any time it wants one. But it must do precisely what you’re acknowledging Israel currently doesn’t want to do–”give up control of the Territories” to get one.

the American progressive movement’s continued hostility toward Israel

Did I hear you right when you claimed you were a progressive? Yet the only words you’ve said about progressives have been critical. And not just critical, but blatantly false. Progressives (at least the ones I know & respect) are not hostile to Israel (another error often made by pro-Israeli nationalists of which you certainly can’t be one–right?), rather they are hostile to ISRAELI POLICY. You seem not to understand this critical distinction.

As a progressive voter and liberal Jew, I am very concerned with the tendency of many seemingly mainstream progressives to label Israel as an oppressor and paint the Palestinians as the victims in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While I certainly don’t support all Israeli policies and actions, I do believe Israel has the right to exist, supported by the 1947 UN mandate that established side-by-side Israeli and Arab states in the British Mandate of Palestine. I also believe that Israel had cause defend itself in the many wars in which they were attacked by or from within neighboring Arab states, and that their military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and Golan were warranted militarily at the time. I also believe that the continued occupation has been disastrous for both Israel and the Palestinians, and it should be ended in a peace deal so that the Palestinian Arabs can obtain the autonomous state they deserve, and that Jews and Arabs can live in peace in the region.

But portraying this as a one-sided problem with Israel being the evil oppressor and the Palestinians being the helpless victims is simply not accurate. Although the Israeli public has been deeply divided, Israel has made many steps toward peace. As part of the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, dismantling Israeli settlements there and in some cases forcibly removing the Israeli settlers. In 1993, Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords which called for the creation of the Palestinian Authority and for the eventual Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza. In 1994, Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan. At the 2000 Camp David Summit, Israel offered the Palestinians statehood that met many but not all of the Palestinian demands (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_David_2000_Summit). The talks broke down and were almost immediately followed by the 2nd Palestinian Intifada (uprising) which continues to the present day. This uprising has included a very large number of suicide bomber and rocket attacks focusing heavily on Israeli civilian targets and has resulted in years of ongoing conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Aqsa_Intifada for details). I certainly don’t claim that the Israeli response was perfect or without fault, but I certainly would not absolve the Palestinians of substantial blame for the ongoing conflict and their own resulting casualties as well as economic and political woes. To make matters worse, the Palestinians voted the terrorist group Hamas into power in the last elections. Hamas is an organization whose charter calls from the destruction of the state of Israel (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas). How is Israel to respond? If they give up control of the occupied territories without a peace deal, their national security will certainly be put at great risk.

While the specifics of I-97 may or may not put direct economic pressure on Israel, I would argue that they certainly put political pressure on Israel, mainly by way of the American political process. Most American Jews support Israel’s right to exist, and I am fearful that the American progressive movement’s continued hostility toward Israel and sympathy toward Palestinians will drive more and more progressive or centrist American Jews to vote Republican in order to support Israel.

Instead of attempting to divest from Israel, we should pursue a more even-handed approach to the two-sided Israeli-Palestinian conflict and we should attempt to elect a president (like Barak Obama) who would take an active role in brokering a meaningful peace agreement.

However, I can’t say the same for the group you work for. Nor can I say the same for the rhetoric your chapter and the anti-97 campaign has adopted. I said it was full of lies & I still maintain this. I would like to be able to say at some future point yr opposition to the Inititiave is based on its substance & I urge you to clean up SWU’s act in this regard.

I wanted to make clear that I do not believe that you are a liar nor should anything written above be construed that way.

That being said, I hope that you will restrain anyone from your organization from using any terms to characterize my views about I-97 that claim they are anti-Israel. I regard such claims as a calumny.