I grew up with Jews as fellow refugees and my mentors were survivors of a double Holocaust, Hitler’s and Stalin’s. They taught me that violence in words and deeds only begets violence that is overwhelming. Better, they argued, to engage in meaningful dialogue. To my amazement, at UC Berkeley in 1964, it was NYC Communist American Jews who fomented a FREE SPEECH student revolution, supported by the Conservatives, and when they won they did not call for a Red Revolution but for MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE. The then college age neocons were hiding under their beds. Bettina Aptheker can be slandered by you for a lot of things but as a good Jew more than a good Communist she brought meaningful dialogue to the 60s, not Communism or anti-Semitism. To this day, neocons make a living abusing on campuses the right she fought and obtained for them. They used it to slander as you now use the internet. But remember, those who would push forward the minute hand on the American Krystanacht clock, thus abusing their internet freedoms, only invite a flood of anti-Semitic reactions on the very same internet that point to your slander. Israel is an over 60 years old fetus of a state living off of an engorged American $ placenta. America is broke and no matter what Congress does to give $10 billions a year to Israel, those who scream at the bailout of banks will just as loudly scream for cutting off Israel. Then you will regret having lost all the J Streeters who care for Israel as much as you. The very Christian Zionists of today will show their anti-Semitic side as they did yesterday. History has proven that for exaltation types it’s very easy to switch from “Chosen people” to “killers of Christ” once their need for cheap oil or other interests are at play. So if the placenta dries up and the anti-Semitic fires you fuel become a conflagration, where will you go? Where will all these Israeli right-wingers– who today feel “safe” because they have dual passports– go? Wouldn’t it be better to engage your fellow Jews in meaningful dialogue and learn how to debate the facts rather than slander? After all, if Israel were so sure of itself Ambassador Oren would not have dual citizenship.

I was raised to believe that when you put six Jews in a room you get interminable debate over seven opinions. I bring that up when people confront me (and incredibly more now than ever do) with the notion of world Jewish conspiracy. It is you who seek to debase my argument by demanding uniformity where none is possible. Neocons thought themselves so smart following their former Leninist dictum: POLARIZE TO MOBILIZE. Finally you have polarized Jews. But what have you got? Wouldn’t it be better to seek common ground by debate instead of slander?

Keep Jews together through meaningful dialogue!

As long as we as a nation blindly support Israel’s every foreign policy blunder or, yes, war crime, they will continue unhindered. As an added plus, we engender the animosity of the Muslim world when we prop up criminal regimes. We’re doing it in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Through our explicit denial of any possible wrongdoing on the part of the Israeli government in any situation, we ensure that peace will never come to the region.

Israel is a great country, a democratic and moral one, no matter how much the haters try to distort reality and lie about the facts of her appropriate acts of self-defense in Gaza.

Apart from the cupidity of the arms merchants, Israel enjoys overwhelming support among the American people because, emerging from the grim shadow of the Holocaust, Israel has largely tried to set an example as a moral, democratic state, and because Americans like an underdog. To assume that this support will survive intransigence in the peace process *might* be a mistake, however, particularly if Americans decide they are tired of their national security being held hostage to the squabbling of two tiny groups of people over a desiccated piece of land about the size of New Jersey. America has done too much to ensure the survival and prosperity of Israel to put up with disrespect from the AIPAC crowd.