How a Pro-Palestinian American Reporter Changed His Views on Israel and the Conflict

[Ken Burch]

41. I realize that you think that. There have always been SOME people who have done that.

As there have always been some gentile politicians (such as Arthur Balfour) who have supported the creation of a Jewish state out of anti-Semitic intent(i.e., in the hopes that all Jews would leave the countries these politicians governed or helped govern, or, in the post-World War Two situation, that the surviving Jewish residents of Europe would move to such a state rather than to, say, North America.

However, the vast majority-at least in Europe, North America, the UK, and Australia/New Zealand-don't fit that category. They speaking out of sincere concern for and solidarity with an oppressed community, a community that, in many respects, is having the neighboring community's history of horrific repression, repression carried out far more by European Christians than anyone else, taken out on it.

A lot of them started out backing a two-state solution, but gave up and switched to the single-state option because the Israeli government has gone out of the way to announce it would do all in its power to drag out the creation of a Palestinian states. Support for the single-state option is an expression of despair, not hatred.

And I say all of that as a person who is not an advocate for a single-state solution-It's not workable at this point, and won't be for decades if it's ever workable, due to the fact that both sides have valid reasons to distrust the other.

I'll go back through your posts in the next few days, but I didn't make anything up.