This is inherently contradictory. If they were immigrants, they weren’t a foreign body, just the same way that immigrants in America aren’t ‘foreign’, but rather, simply Americans.

“”Palestinians WERE living in peace with Jews until Zionists decided that wasn’t good enough and took over all of Palestine.”"

Uh… no?

No we can’t agree. Palestinians WERE living in peace with Jews until Zionists decided that wasn’t good enough and took over all of Palestine. Of course Palestinians weren’t keen on dividing up their land with a handful of Jews who were a minority and a foreign body as immigrants from Europe.

Tell me you’d willingly share the best part of your house with a stranger on the grounds that he lived there thousands of years ago and I’ll agree with you, but until then, get real.

First off: Can we agree that had the tables been turned, the Palestinians weren’t exactly keen on the Jews living with them, either? That essentially, either group would have treated the other poorly had they won, and the Israelis were the ones who happened to win, so here we are?

Not excusing anything bad that’s happened, just trying to put it in context, to calculate our balance of love versus hate.

Can’t you love Israel for *how* the Israelis live, when it’s not about Israel/Palestine?

Because long after the I/P issue gets solved, that will still be the issue — how the government in Israel lets people live, versus how governments like Egypt let people live.

In Israel, your right to demonstrate, your right to commit blasphemy, your right to unashamedly sleep with who you want to, when you want to, your right to speak out against the government, your right to hold a gay pride parade if you want to, your ability to fight back if you’re sexually harassed… all of these things are far more protected than in, say, Egypt.

Doesn’t that earn a pretty big hunk of love?

Isn’t part of the reason we feel for the Palestinians is that they’re not able to share in that lifestyle, suffering as they are?

Love for the way of life Israel allows for its own, sadness that so many more aren’t able to partake of it?

We are not you Joe. We will never see things as you do. You seem to want to project your ridiculousness on others and then seek confirmation that they agree. They don’t. We don’t.

Apartheid.