In my opinion, your assessment is wrong.

Just the other night I was listening to Norman Finkelstein present a talk at
http://normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&am… 2061

"The Israel-Palestine Conflict: What we can learn from Gandhi"

I have a high level of respect for Norman, with whom I am sure you would hold many of the same beliefs.

Sad to say that I also found myself disagreeing with the thoughts Norman expressed in this video; which concluded with a two state solution and a normalisation of relations between Palestinians and israelis and the continued existence of the zionist movement.

The stumbling block I see; and which I am very sure many Palestinians will feel; is that peace can only be built on a foundation of justice.

If we look at what zionism is; and I am not talking about how israeli propaganda defines zionism but how zionism defines itself through its actions; from Ben-Gurions days to present; it is zionism that must bear the price of the deliverance of justice. In essence, this would be holding its leaders responsible for war crimes and delivering a judgment of capital punishment.

It was the zionist movement that was responsible for the creation of Jewish terrorist groups and the genocide of Palestinian people. It was their battle hardened army that swept through Palestine killing unarmed and untrained farmers and their families; stealing their land, their homes and their future.

You may have heard of the term: scales of justice. It indicates the bleeding obvious; that your punishment should be weighed against your misdeed. If you commit a minor trafic infringement, you punishment should also be minor. If you torture someone and then bludgeon them to death with a steel bar, then your punishment should be sufficient as to be balanced against the crime.

The zionist movement is a criminal organisation that has over the last 60 years committed the most heinous crimes. Justice – and I am not talking about the law system now; but humanity – dictates that the strongest possible action be taken against zionism.

If a thief breaks into your home and steals the contents of your safe; taking the proceeds to buy a car; that thief if caught will not be allowed to continue ownership of the car.

I can't see a possibility of a successful two state solution; nor an iota of a chance for the continuation of the zionist movement: and further, I can foretell israel's existence to be limited to a history book. These are not threats but come from an understanding of the dynamics of the situation. Peace will not be achieved until these things come to pass.

Also, we should question the very legitimacy of a twenty-first century sectarian state. When virtually every other advanced country is learning to become secular and multi-racial, silly little Israel clings to the anachronistic idea of being a single religious / racial state.

Olmert's idea for Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders is a totally inadequate compromise. The state of Israel should be dissolved. What the international community gave, it should now take away.

Even allowing the Zionists to stay on the land is more than they deserve.

It’s interesting to speculate on how much trouble could have been avoided if the Palestinian people were given the respect they were due as the original inhabitants of the land. Would Islamic terrorism even have emerged? Just as the Israelis learned of genocide from the Nazis and apartheid from the white South Africans, the Palestinians learned of terrorism from the Stern Gang.

We are talking here about some fundamental and important values:

- freedom of creed, and of religious belief
- separation of church and state
- non-discrimination on the basis of creed or religion

These are hard-won and essential freedoms we should fight to protect. Zionists and Jewish people generally have really lost their way if they think we should return to some sort of pre-Enlightenment semi-theocratic state.

That type of thing and the injustice and discrimination against minorities is what led to the Ghetto and Zionism in the first place!

Please, let’s draw a line against this, and against colonialism, settlers and the racism and injustice against indigenous people inherent in these projects.

Zionism is a kind of “10th (and last) Crusade” – the invasion and colonisation of the “third world” by the rising White power in Europe. The First and Tenth crusades thus effectively bookend 1000 years of White power.

The Jewish crusade will likely suffer the same fate as the earlier crusader states and with the relative decline of Europe and North America it is certainly the last and in some ways the most tragic of the White European colonies.

Its an important initiative for Jewish people themselves to repudiate the backward, racist ideology of Zionism. This 19th Century concoction of high imperialism and European white supremacist racism is an embarrassment and a disgrace both for the Enlightened west and also the progressive Jewish community.

Zionism is a kind of internalised anti-semitism. It goes something like this: “We Jews, we’re a different race (no your not), we cant live with other people (yes you can), we have to live in some ghetto (no you dont) or maybe best a Jewish State (that’s the worst idea of all!).

Meantime the so-called “Christian Zionists” and other “supporters” of Israel have a naked agenda of getting rid of their Jews into a kind of giant ghetto (Israel) where they might be conveniently wiped out by “God”.

How ugly and absurd does it all have to get before its repudiated?

Personally I still favour the two-state solution. If the US and Israel back it, it could happen overnight and more or less resolve the main conflict.

If Israel and the US continue to reject the Palestinian state, then the “Jewish State” of Israel is probably doomed, after many years of further chaos and suffering.

The West had better stand ready to receive a number of Jewish refugees when it finally collapses.

And whilst I understand that Israel has been blocking essential entry into Gaza and leaving thousands of people without basic support such as food and medical aid, I do not believe that “support(ing) the cultural and economic boycott of Israel” is an appropriate response, particularly in regards to culturally.

Feeling impassioned as I’m sure the Committee for the Dismantling of Zionism is also, I could go on but I won’t. I simply feel it important for people to see that it is extremism that has put Israel and Palestine in this position, and I don’t believe extremism is the solution of getting them out of it, although it is certainly up to the rest of the world to take objective control of the situation for a just solution.