‘Confessions of a Liberal-Zionist’

Some of you will remember Aaron Sharif who I introduced to you as my “chanich,” which means that when I was the head of Habonim (the Labor Zionist youth movement) in Washington, D.C., he was a younger member.  I recommend reading his blog; it will give you a glimpse into how a “liberal Zionist” Israeli feels now: Aaron Sharif’s Israeli Chatterbox

Aaron Sharif

…. For a number of years I joined other dedicated Israelis in chaperoning West Bank Palestinian farmers to their fields and groves as protection against the harassment and violence of our Jewish settlers. As this became physically more difficult for me, I found and joined a group of other Israelis dedicated to driving ailing Palestinian children and their parents from the West Bank to hospitals in Israel. I’ve “toured” the Palestinian West Bank from the cave dwellers of the southern Hevron
thru the villages of East Jerusalem and Northward to the villages near Shchem and into the city of Jenin. In Belien I was enveloped by the horrible smoke of tear-gas grenades. In Sheich-Jerach I sat with families evicted from their homes. I’ve spent some days in the Beduin areas east of Beer Sheva, and was enveloped in more gas grenades while demonstrating in Um-el-Fachem against the physical provocations of extreme right-wing Jewish Israelis. …

Read on at: ……. “Confessions of a Liberal-Zionist“