{"id":386,"date":"2012-04-26T14:06:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-26T14:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2012\/04\/youre-64-and-i-still-love-you.html"},"modified":"2012-04-26T14:06:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T14:06:00","slug":"youre-64-and-i-still-love-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2012\/04\/youre-64-and-i-still-love-you.html","title":{"rendered":"You’re 64 And I Still Love You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Chag Sameach \u2013 Happy Holiday!<\/p>\n

Today is Yom Haatzmaut, Israel\u2019s Independence Day.\u00a0 It\u2019s been sixty-four years of war and conflict and sixty-four years of growth and innovation.<\/p>\n

I take a lot of crap about my unrepentant Zionism.\u00a0 Yesterday I sent a fairly bland email out to my own Humanistic congregation in which I celebrated Israel\u2019s accomplishments.\u00a0 Last night our entire congregation received responses about how humanists should not be \u201cflag-waving\u201d for Israel and all about the many, many \u201cabuses\u201d of the \u201coccupation.\u201d\u00a0 As if humanists were all required to be lock-step radical leftists.\u00a0 Or to deny reality.<\/p>\n

In fact, I believe that being a humanist means approaching every situation with radical honesty.<\/p>\n

I am fully prepared to criticize the actions of Israeli governments and groups.\u00a0 I\u2019ve written dozens of posts about the harm caused by the Israeli extreme right.\u00a0 What I am not interested in pursuing is a tendentious condemnation Israel\u2019s defense policies.<\/p>\n

Part of approaching a subject with radical honesty is putting situations in their appropriate context.\u00a0 So here is just one of the many examples of this context.<\/p>\n

On June 19, 1967 \u2013 just two weeks after the Six-Day Way \u2013 Israel\u2019s unity government, which included Menachem Begin, voted to return all of the captured territories in exchange for peace and recognition.\u00a0 Remember the three \u201cno\u2019s\u201d?\u00a0 This is from the Khartoum Agreement<\/a>, passed by the Arab League on September 1, 1967:<\/p>\n

The Arab Heads of State have agreed to unite their political efforts at the international and diplomatic level to eliminate the effects of the aggression and to ensure the withdrawal of the aggressive Israeli forces from the Arab lands which have been occupied since the aggression of June 5. This will be done within the framework of the main principles by which the Arab States abide, namely, no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it<\/i><\/b>, [emphasis mine] and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And by the way, the \u201cinsistence on the rights of the Palestinian people\u201d was not a reference to the newly acquired territory, but to pre-1967 Israel.<\/p>\n

From there, things just went further downhill.\u00a0 The same Arab world that demonstrated less than no interest in creating a Palestinian state in those same territories during the period of 1948-1967 now turned them into the centerpiece of their continued demonization of Israel.<\/p>\n

There was a time when, teary eyed, I applauded the signing of the Oslo Accords, believing that the Palestinians wanted the same thing that the majority of Israelis do.\u00a0 Even after the horrors of the Second Intifada \u2013 a blast of merciless violence that erupted in response to an Israeli offer to return most of those territories \u2013 I was among the supporters of the evacuation from Gaza.\u00a0 I believed that, given a chance at real self-determination, the Palestinians could create something wonderful.\u00a0 And once again, they did not.<\/p>\n

I know that Israel isn\u2019t perfect and I\u2019m not engaging in apologetics.\u00a0 But Israel is an overwhelming success, built in the context of hateful hostility from within and without.<\/p>\n

On Yom Haatzmaut I celebrate that success.<\/p>\n

Next week I\u2019ll be there and I\u2019ll try to post a bit of what I see.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chag Sameach \u2013 Happy Holiday! Today is Yom Haatzmaut, Israel\u2019s Independence Day.\u00a0 It\u2019s been sixty-four years of war and conflict and sixty-four years of growth and innovation. I take a lot of crap about my unrepentant Zionism.\u00a0 Yesterday I sent a fairly bland email out to my own Humanistic congregation in which I celebrated Israel\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-israel"],"yoast_head":"\nYou're 64 And I Still Love You<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Chag Sameach - Happy Holiday! 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