Protesting for Peace and Calling for War

Among Ahad Ha’am’s earliest devotees was a group of intellectuals in Palestine who established Brit Shalom (the Covenant of Peace), an organization that sought to promote peace between Jews and Arabs, primarily by advocating that the Jews give up their quest for statehood. Brit Shalom members were convinced that since a Jewish state would forever b

had to step over supine protesters with signs saying “Dead Gazan.” Once again I had to snap out of it in order to defend Israel in public.

Even if turning down the Peel proposal resulted in no state for the Palestinians, that was preferable to allowing even a tiny, noncontiguous state for the Jews. When the British convened a meeting between the parties, “the Arabs would not sit in the same room as the Jews.”