As a Jew and a lifelong Zionist (meaning that I believe the Jewish people have a right to a state of their own) I want to present a different viewpoint from that of Hal Cohen. A Jew should know how dangerous it is to paint all members of a group, like the people of Gaza, with the same brush.

I disagree vehemently with the Netanyahu government, both for their attempts to subvert democracy in Israel and for their brutality toward the Palestinians, both in Gaza and the West Bank. Their behavior is contrary to my understanding of Jewish ethics and morality, and the precepts that should guide any decent and moral government. The duty of the Israeli government is to keep Israel safe, and to provide a haven for the Jews of the world. The actions of the Netanyahu government do neither. This war will not make Israel safe. And the rise of antisemitism around the world shows that Jews everywhere are less and less safe.

I come from a Zionist family. My great-grandfather attended the second Zionist congress in Basel in 1898. He moved to Palestine after World War II, and when the state of Israel was created, he voted for the first time in his life. He was in his eighties, but after living in Austria-Hungary, Belgium, and Cuba, it was the first time he was allowed to be a citizen with a vote.

Both my grandfathers were lifelong Zionists, active in the movement in Antwerp, Belgium, Havana, and New York. My parents were members from childhood of Bnei Akiva and Tikvatenu, religious Zionist youth movements in Antwerp. In Cuba, where they lived during WWII after escaping from Hitler’s Europe and being denied entry to the United States, they were members of a united Zionist youth movement. When I was 14, I joined Hashomer Hatzair, a Socialist Zionist youth movement, and spent two summers, at fifteen and at eighteen, working on kibbutzim in Israel.

Why were we all Zionists? The experiences of centuries of life in Europe have taught Jews that without a country of their own they would always be guests, sometimes welcome, sometimes not, in someone else’s land. My great-grandfathers were born in Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary, where their families had lived for many generations. But they were not citizens of those countries. Three of them moved to Belgium, where they did well economically, but were not allowed citizenship. My grandfather was born in Belgium but because his father was born in Austria-Hungary (Slovakia) he was not a citizen. My father, his son, was also born in Belgium, but the German invasion of World War II prevented his “naturalization.”  

Both my parents and their families left Belgium in 1940 because of that invasion. They managed eventually to get to Cuba by 1942. They were lucky — only my mother’s brother was caught by the Nazis. He died in Auschwitz at the age of 26.

The state of Israel is the one place in the world where Jews are not guests, liable to be evicted at the slightest shifting of the political winds. Over history we have been oppressed, and evicted from Poland, Russia, and Germany, where we had a long and rich history. The Jews of Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Yemen, Libya, and other countries, with if anything, an even longer history, were all exiled from them.

That’s why I am a Zionist. I believe that the Palestinians should have a state; we need a two-state solution. It was wrong of the Israeli government to continue to occupy the land taken during the Six Day War; the West Bank should have been unoccupied long ago, and Jewish settlements not allowed.

Both Jews and Palestinians need and deserve a homeland where they can be safe and free to live and raise their children. The hatred and anger in the world have to stop somewhere.

Michele Lowy

Middlebury