Dr. Rosalind Feldman’s letter to the editor (April 2, “Whose side is she on?”) asks whose side I am on:
As a Zionist and a Jew, as a rabbi called to be a kli kodesh, as part of Americans for Peace Now, and as an American, I am on the side of peace and security for Israel. And I am not alone.
I am on the side of numerous military and security experts — including all six of the living former heads of the Shin Bet who made their views clear in the film The Gatekeepers. They recognize that achieving a two-state agreement will improve Israel’s security, and that continuation of the status quo is a recipe for greater violence and political disaster for Israel.
I am on the side of American interests, and of American leaders — politicians and security officials, including successive presidents from both parties, who have long recognized that Israeli-Palestinian peace is vital to U.S. national security.
I am on the side of the majority of Israelis, who are shown in poll after poll to favor the two-state solution (and by the way, polls of Palestinians offer similar results, with a majority favoring peace and a two state solution).
And I am with the courageous, Zionist Israeli peace movement led by my friends and colleagues in Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), an organization founded by IDF soldiers, whose staff serves in the IDF and who live with vandalism and death threats from the kind of Israeli extremists who favor continued settlement expansion and a scuttling of the peace process — the same extremists who attack Palestinians on their own property, steal their land and vandalize their homes and mosques.
I am on the side of peace between Israel and her neighbors, a state for Israelis and a state for the Palestinians, which are the only things that will permit a future for Israel in which Israel is both democratic and Jewish.
RABBI ALANA SUSKIN
Director of strategic communications,
Americans for Peace Now
Bravo! There are many of us in the Zionist and the greater pro-Israel community who share your views.
Interesting view. Fair enough. But why does Rabbi Suskin manufacture Israeli “extremists who attack Palestinians on their own property, steal their land and vandalize their homes and mosques?” Sure maybe there have been a few occurrences this way but almost all have been the other way. Suskin’s attack shows her true views. She is mad at Israel, Judaism, or perhaps herself. Not a great way to try to analyze a situation. Suskin believes that an agreement and peace are the same thing. I wish she would have explained why the new chief sticking point of the Palestinians – that they refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state – is preventing them from a homeland that they supposedly want so badly.