ILAN PRICE

Ilan Price from Johannesburg writes:

Alas, Rootshtain’s critique

largely missed the point​​​

His critique largely misses my point, but for the sake of economy I’ll use the limited space to take issue with some of his key claims, which are either false or misleading.

Rootshtain is correct that the Palestinians rejected the 1947 partition plan and that the Khartoum Resolution of 1967 pledged against peace and compromise. But the PLO made what they consider a monumental compromise in 1988 when they endorsed the idea of a two-state solution, and since then has been talking about a state on 22 per cent of what they call “historic Palestine”.

According to the Barnea Report, in the most recent negotiations Mahmoud Abbas agreed to a demilitarised Palestinian state, to a border which allowed Israel to keep 80 per cent of its settler population under Israeli sovereignty, plus most of the Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem.

He also accepted that the return of Palestinians refugees would depend on Israeli willingness.

Remember too that in 2002, the Likud Central Committee voted against a Palestinian state and that many ministers in today’s Israeli government maintain that position. Clearly Rootshtain paints a very unbalanced picture of the drive for two states and peace on both sides over the last few decades.

Rootshtain also implies that I ignore the high Jewish death toll and “the Arab pastime of killing Jews”. A potentially racist undertone aside, the fact that I didn’t mention the Holocaust, or the IDF death toll, doesn’t mean I disregard Jewish suffering.

I also didn’t talk about Deir Yassin, nor did I mention that between December 1987 and September 2000, 1 376 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces, or that during that same period 271 Israeli civilians and 150 Israeli security forces personnel were killed by Palestinians.

I didn’t mention these facts and more, not because I (or Habonim) don’t care about them, but rather because they were not relevant to the particular article. Our campaign loudly and clearly condemned terrorism in the strongest terms, and we prioritised Israeli security from the start.

Lastly, Rootshtain claims that Habonim should be “talking to the Palestinians instead”. If what he means is “you’re preaching to the converted, everyone in our community already agrees with you”, then of course that would make me very happy.

However it’s unlikely that he means this, given his issues with my article and the divided opinion on these issues within our community

He might alternatively mean that our responsibility is always to criticise the other side, not “our own side”. This ignores that Zionism was always about taking responsibility for the Jewish people and our future – Zionism requires a focus on “our own side” too.

HDSA is a Zionist community organisation and we start discussions within our sphere of influence. Criticism thereof motivates precisely its importance.