Excerpt from article by Uri Avnery (Uri Avnery is a peace activist, journalist, and writer. He was a founding
member of Gush Shalom (peace bloc), an independent peace movement, a
former publisher and editor-in-chief of Haolam Hazeh news
magazine. Avnery is also a former member of the Knesset and a founding
member of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace.) :
"When our Zionist fathers decided to set up a safe haven in Palestine, they had the choice between two options:
They could appear in West Asia as European conquerors, who see
themselves as a bridgehead of the "white" man and as masters of the
"natives", like the Spanish conquistadores and the Anglo-Saxon
colonialists in America. That is what the crusaders did in their time.
The second way was to see themselves as an Asian people returning to
their homeland, the heirs to the political and cultural traditions of
the Semitic world, ready to take part, with the other peoples of the
region, in the war of liberation from European exploitation."
I wrote these words 64 years ago, in a brochure that appeared just two months before the outbreak of the 1948 war.
I stand by these words today.
These days I have a growing feeling that we are once again standing at a
historic crossroads. The direction we choose in the coming days will
determine the destiny of the State of Israel for years to come, perhaps
irreversibly. If we choose the wrong road, we will have "weeping for
generations", as the Hebrew saying goes.
And perhaps the greatest danger is that we make no choice at all, that
we are not even aware of the need to make a decision, that we just
continue on the road that has brought us to where we are today. That we
are occupied with trivialities — the battle between the Minister of
Defense and the departing Chief of Staff, the struggle between Netanyahu
and Lieberman about the appointment of an ambassador, the non-events of
"Big Brother" and similar TV inanities — that we do not even notice
that history is passing us by, leaving us behind.
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