sympathy for palestinians results from their suppression by israel for over sixty years i paraphrase a statement by rabbi then zion gold scholar and holocaust survivor  traces a personal journey with judaism and israel as centerpieces how painful was it to speak out about israel's misdeeds well this was a gradual process and i think it's important to remember where i was starting from because like many jews who grew up in the fifty's i grew up with a very uncritical view of what was going on in israel and with a total lack of knowledge of the real history of the region so this awakening happened over the process of my becoming a more politically aware person were you raised i was raised in a conservative temple or i went to hebrew school three days a week i had a mitzvah my family made a pilgrimage to israel when i was fourteen we didn't keep kosher but it was very clear that we were jewish family growing up in a small new england town that i was expected to marry a jewish man that i was part of the continuum of jewish history and my mother was a writer about myths i grew up in a cultural context which was the cohesive sort of tribal judaism with some religion thrown in but not fully orthodox none of the contradictions  that we talk about the very no absolutely not absolutely you know i mean you got to remember they called the mayor said you know there were no palestinians this is a land without a people and a people without a land i bought that and there was no reason why i wouldn't buy that because i had no for jews in particular and it was also the zionist movement that had been cooking along since the late one thousand nine hundred there was the christian messianic desire to get the jews into the holy land so that they could be the second coming i mean all these things came together but the holocaust really french people have a right to france i mean there's all sorts of varieties of jewish sensibilities no we come close to we're jewish and we have the jewish sensibilities mean when does the edge hit anti semitism so a lot of people get afraid of criticizing the behavior of the israeli government because then they're accused of anti semitism and i would argue that there's a tremendous difference between being critical of an occupation or the invasion of gaza and being anti semitic anti semitic means that you hate someone because they're jewish its nose were growing or jewish do you have this sense of absolutely i mean jews have always been a minority community we've lived in ghettos you know it's a close sort of stadol environment and that's part of why do survived and so i was brought up with you got to keep that one going because the tribe really works how does and that's what's so ironic about the way israel is has been evolved as a society is that originally people going there for safety for growing up there really wasn't a lot of t if you look at you know back in the seventy's the u s state department said that you know i'm going settlements were against the geneva convention which is an international convention i didn't know that i mean it wasn't part of the public debate and certainly within the jewish community and still you know the narrative route took you years to do yes the way that i began this discovery process was first of all having a political analysis knowing about colonialism imperialism about the forces within the world and then the second thing was that i big that i consciously began meeting with people who were different than me for instance palestinians and when i was an adult it finally dawned on me i had never met someone who spoke arabic well most americans have never met an arab so you know jews have a fear of arabs in terms of israel and the surrounding arab nations i mean you know when you look at the traditional way of looking at things but most americans are fairly racist towards arabs when did you come to grips with the fact that there might be competing or problems don but i really became actively involved in trying to figure it out in like one thousand nine hundred seven was when i started this group that was  terms yes i think that one of the things that is very interesting when you look at history is that one person's terrorist group is another person's freedom fighter and so they are going in the stern gang were blowing up buses with civilians were doing things that terrorists do but since they won they became the founding fathers in the future prime ministers of if you look at textbooks in israel there's there's no discussion of what happened to palestinians with the founding of  this all the founding myths which every country has but just as the united states had to come to terms with slavery with what happened to native americans with our own issues the israelis aren't there yet at  religion as use the torah as a real estate document to say you know this land is given to us by god and we have a right to it and we have a right to destroy anyone who gets in our way and that's a particular branch of the population that is very problematic because those people are not going to be the people you negotiate with and you know i would argue that at this point in history jews and palestinians are destined to share this land and the question is how we're going to do it  lot of israelis are fairly secular and moderately a political but the problem in israel is that the more right wing religiously driven people have a lot of power because of the parliamentary system different groups have to coalition together to have power and so small groups get a disproportionate amount of power the other thing is that the whole settlement movement in the west bank where jews are taking over palestinian land and establishing you use the word settlements but we're talking cities i mean my lead to me has thirty five thousand people and it's one and a half of manhattan i mean it's not a little village these are partly religiously motivated but they're also economically motivated but it's the religious people that are the to create facts on the ground to change what's going on so that whatever the end game is there are more jews in palestinian territories they're economic yes you get housing is about fifty percent of what a house costs in israel you get roads and electricity and tremendous amount of government supports and you know if you live in a settlement in the west bank and you work in israel there are all these super highways you just go through the tunnels and poof here and some major israeli city  affected because it's facilitated by the united states government you know the u s provides something like two point eight billion dollars in foreign aid every year no matter what israel does so why should it not do what it wants to do if there's no punishment move for the president given who our last president was and that he knew who said well maybe we'll stop settlement you know making new settlements but first of all israeli leaders have said this on and off for years and it doesn't have anything to do with  reality and there's this all ridiculous conversation about natural growth and you know letting people you know expand their families in the settlements most of the movement into settlements is people new people coming in and you have to ask what about the palestinian village next door don't they get natural growth i mean this is and this is all illegal anyway so it's kind of a crazy conversation jewish israelis and palestinians are going to be living next door to each other and right now the jews are winning out in land in water in natural resources and funding and all not free of charge when you're talking about what is the price i mean there are several prices one you know is that i'm very blacklisted in the jewish community and i can be doing the book reading and have people get up and start screaming at me and being taken out with by the police i mean it's just and i think it's a combination of once you admit that you've hurt another people then you have to have remorse and regret and recompense and say you're sorry these are really hard things to do i torments water truth is what's going to save us from that you know friends don't let friends drive drunk if you really care about the people in this region then you don't facilitate them doing things that are self destructive the war in gaza last year was not only absolutely horrific for gazans but it was really destructive for israelis to be able to do that to another people is dehumaniz yes and i think that the thing that's really dangerous for israel is is that the people who are in charge feel that no one can criticize them that they're beyond that they have moral authority because of jewish suffering and existential threats and the whole history of the region to do whatever they please and that that's very problematic so for israel to for instance claim that it's the only democracy in the middle east when twenty percent of its population are basically living under jim crow and kind of fly and that's that's the problem there so basically what israel wants to do  well first of all i don't i feel i'm come to when you say israel wants to do the people who are in power in the israeli government and many people who support them want as much land as you can get with this few palestinians as possible whether that  israel democracy or even the power structure well i would argue that israel is an incredibly flawed democracy and claiming the mantle of democracy really is inaccurate when you see what's going on there in terms of the way that twenty percent of the population who are palestinians are treated i mean and it's just like our civil rights movement it's something that is going to reach a tipping point it can't go on this way also people who are living in israel who are palestinian their cousins are living in g involved in this dialogue group we debated a year whether we could use the word palestine in the name of our group because we're afraid no one would allow us to speak if we had the word palestine and now this conversation is happening on the fringes of the dialogue is this more open than it used to be and then and because of the internet because of all the sort of ways that people are connected you can't hide what's going on so more so much as they used to be able to do and it was amazing those that's a group called at selham which is a human rights organization in israel and they gave  palestinians cameras and so video whatever's going on outside your door and it was stunning the things that they that people just walking down the street all the human rights violations the beatings the people being held up at checkpoints and that's like daily life you know and so then it gets put up on so you know our media which tends to highlight palestinian violence against jews can you know ignore is all the violence that going in the other way and but it's you know if you want to know it's out there you can find a me absolutely absolutely this is result from jewish power our media is biased for a lot of different reasons i get very nervous when people talk about well jewish money owns the media because i mean the christian evangelical right nonviolent techniques of boycotts divestments and sanctions that will put pressure on israel the same way that there was pressure on south africa that we were there perfectly well it has to come from countries like the united states but i was going to be done by jewish quarters it has to be done by everybody i mean it's much more sort of rumbling in the united kingdom and in europe than here but everything starts out small are you remember reading somewhere th christian evangelical movement and part of it is that there is in israel lobby in washington that really controls what's allowable and where the limits are and the punishment for instance for a congress person  for speaking out is pretty big like you know get elected how can we conclude from you what can we do well i think the first thing is the people need to be aware of the bias in the media and they need to be better educated so i would encourage people to use the internet to read our ads which is an israeli paper to read jewish piece news to look at all the different websites out there that provide a much more critical view of what's going on and then i think once you're powered up with all this information then it's incumbent to be using this in a politically active way so difficult to do you know we had to do some of this from israel recently  current status quo is not only bad for palestinians it's really bad for israelis there's a women's organization that says you know the occupation has come home so if you look at domestic violence is up in israel this sort of sense of arrogant entitlement that sort of the israeli  twelve objectives more possible it's not impossible if one group isn't privileged over the other group so if this was about actually sharing the land cannot be done i think it can be done but i think it's go lot of trouble putting together the idea of a democracy and a jewish state where jews are privileged over somebody else so this is something the israelis are going to really have to grapple with and all of the sort of two state solution things that you see these days don't have a viable palestinian state because if you look at the jewish settlements there are some five hundred thousand jewish settlers in settlements and in east jerus in an ever expanding jerusalem so what the palestinians are left with a sort of swiss cheese so there may have been a time when a two state solution was really a viable possibility with all of its contradictions and difficulties and everything but and then the other thing is the israelis control the jordan valley so that the palestinians are squashed in the middle and unless given that that's the facts on the ground and it's only getting more so i don't know i'm afraid that the policies of the israeli government have made a two state solution impossible and then viable and right now a one state solution is not viable because no one trusts on the bunny you know you look at south africa where there were truth and reconciliation commissions you look at northern ireland you look at germany and france that fought for one hundred years these were people who hated each other and they got to a different place to start perfect it's not like there's still a long journey ahead but it didn't stay stuck and i don't think this has to be stuck but our country makes it possible for it to be sick and so that's why we have a tremendous responsibility to be politically active on this one and that means writing your congressman going to rallies you know writing to the letters to be editor all the things i think that create a tipping point in political behavior i mean you know i'm old enough to have been involved in the vietnam war activities and at the beginning people thought we were crazy hippies and yet you know building a movement gettin college students out there changing the narrative changing awareness we stopped a war and you know that's pretty empowering and i think people shouldn't underestimate their power  room the debate in israel is much more open and that's not to say that it isn't angry but you get a whole spectrum of opinion being spoken you know in the newspapers and journalists that you know this live in the occupied territories and write from it and just much more it's much more possible to say things you know i write lots of op eds that don't get published because it's too hot in a row and i'm starting to think i should send them to our it's in this world because maybe they'll get published there of exchanged back and forth between the united states and israel a lot and something like fifteen percent of israelis no longer live in israel so that there are years when more jews are leaving israel than coming so this is some you know people are walking with their talking with their feet and if you look at for instance twenty five years ago everybody except the orthodox went into the army men women it was just you absolutely did that and now new profile which is a feminist organization estimates that half of jewish israelis do not serve in the army so again the youth are saying you know i don't know if i want to fight for this one and that's really going to shake the foundations of this country and the scary thing is that if you look at the population growth half of the kids in kindergarten are from orthodox and ultra orthodox families so there's a demographic shift going on where the more progressive open minded people may be leaving are maybe in the minority and the more religiously motivated right wing people are going to be dominant people  israel what should the united states do call one for military force well i would suggest that if you do cut off the money that goes towards the occupation that you would make a huge dent in ending the occupation and if you cut off the money that made it possible to have all these settlements they wouldn't happen and if you didn't create political cover for the behavior of israeli leaders they would have to start behaving differently so i think we've got to do a lot of some very very rare number of rabbis who are willing to be more open minded on this i've talked to a number of rabbis and i've heard this a lot that they're often to the left of their congregation but they don't dare speak out because the lose their appointment  and you know people who had temples and appoint rabbis aren't necessarily the most liberal minded of people on the topic of israel they're great on lots of other social issues but not on israel well dr i almost want to all i want to thank you for coming and speaking your heart and