The Guilt trip is out in the open. Being discussed at a level that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

I for one, don't feel guilty about WW II or the Holocaust. I was not born. I used to feel pity, and had admiration for Israel (My Father, in Palestine in WW II, had none, and regarded the Zionists in WW II as terrorists).

The pity & admiration has run out. More so in Europe than in the US, but the US is getting there.

aka: What have you done for us lately? Got us into a few expensive wars...

It's naive and unproductive, and frankly a little on the offensive side, to refer to "the Jews" as though we were some monolithic cultural entity who could just collectively stand up and make a spontaneous, unanimous decision to "get over" the Holocaust and quit punishing the Palestinians (and the Germans). Although it is little reported in this country, there is a lively opposition in Israel, as well as several American Jewish organizations that stand against the occupation. I am disgusted and outraged by the crimes of the Israeli government, settlers, and complicit citizens, facilitated by the American government, crimes which are so brutal and would be so screamingly WRONG even if they were in the interests of the Israeli citizenry, which I believe they are not. When I go to protests or write letters to newspapers or legislators in opposition to Israeli military action and American complicity, I make sure to identify myself as an American Jew.

I do feel that as a Jew I have a particular responsibility to speak out about this, and I do get angry that so many other Jewish people are too blinded by their loyalties and fears to oppose the brutalities committed in the name of Israeli security. Nonetheless, I don't think it serves anyone's interests to just blame "the Jews" for not doing anything about it, when many of us are trying to do something about it. And I think telling the Jews to just get over the Holocaust is about as useless as telling black people to just get over slavery. History has to be worked through, not just banished.

If you want to have a role in changing the opinions of the many different Jewish mainstreams, then support one of the American or Israeli Jewish groups that oppose the occupation, rather than pretending that those groups don't exist.

I can't believe you post such clearly biased disgusting drivel here and pretend to be somewhat enlightened in your view points.

... this is not helpful and very poorly reflected. Stereotyping the "Jews" in such manner is extremely unfair especially to American Jews who by a large margin have a very balanced and much more enlightened political awareness than their fellow citizens. This drivel also equates Jews with Israel - something every Likudnik will love - but that doesn't make it any more true.

And how exactly is it news that you can find hate-mongering at the fringes of any religion?

As a German I also feel that the whole concept of forgiveness is overrated. Who is asking for forgiveness and who is supposed to grant it? There are not many actual Nazi perps or victims around for that matter. I think the idea of forgiveness beyond the individual realm is totally nonsensical. On a national level responsibility to not forget and learn form ones history is the only practical consequence that counts. For that reason I also think Germany should take a more decisive lead in trying to tackle this problem - but that is beyond the scope of this comment.

at least in part, with intentionally generated confusion, deliberately fanned by people who have exploited the overlapping nature of several disparate entities to the hilt.

There are at least four distinct and separate "circles" of identity in play here and a serious attempt has been made to blur the distinctions between them to make them appear to be synonymous:

1) Judaism as religion
2) genetic descent from the original Israelite populations
3) Israel as nation
4) the right wing of Israeli politics

There may be stronger or weaker interrelationships between the concepts but there is not one pairing there that acts as synonyms. There are cleave planes between each - I know folks of Jewish descent who are actually Evangelical Christians - I know people who have explored conversion to Judaism despite having no Jewish blood - the largest population of the planet's Jews is not in Israel, it is in *America* - and pretty much everybody I know who is Jewish *detests* the Israeli hard right with a passion. Only a bit over a third of the planet's Jews live in Israel. A quarter of Israel's population is not Jewish. The Israeli right is *not* synonymous with Israel, and is controversial even within it. You can practice Judaism as a religion without being of Jewish descent and you can be Jewish by descent without practicing Judaism.

But what do we *expect* but confusion between the concepts, for people to say "The Jews" when they mean "the Israeli right" or "Israeli policy"? There are folks that have made it pretty much their entire life's work to try to maximize the overlap of these separate concepts in the name of political expediency. What does anyone expect when AIPAC, a tool of the hard right, is permitted to define itself as the voice of Israeli interests in America? When funds for the nation of Israel are collected in synagogues?

There are people who will tell you straight to your face that turning Israel from a Jewish state into a cosmopolitan, secular, modern state is directly equivalent to destroying Israel which is directly equivalent to perpetuating a second Holocaust. When I hear that crap I seriously wonder what century I've fallen into.

That fuzziness can hardly be laid entirely at the feet of non-Jews, and it's every bit as much the responsibility of Jews to work to defeat that confusion - to clarify, to distance themselves, to declare their opposition - as it is the job of Gentiles to speak precisely. Many are doing so - throwing support behind alternate lobbying groups, starting boycotts to cut their power, saying "not in my name" or "not one more dime", getting a better and louder megaphone - and many more need to do so still.

Polymander quite rightly points out the injustice of indiscriminate targeting here. Yes, to allow ourselves to be manipulated into imprecision is not good for dialogue; it's not correct; it's not right or just. And by themselves those should be sufficient reason.

But on a pragmatic note - it is not strategically wise to accept those terms as synonyms by implication; that is falling into a well-prepared semantic trap. It's accepting the framing of an argument.

We need to tell groups like AIPAC or the Likud "you don't speak for the Jews, and we're pretty sure you don't even speak for Israel". And we all need to work together on that, from all sides of the equation.

In as much as Israel is a Jewish state and accepts all Jewish people as potential citizens, I agree that it is incumbent upon Jews as well as all people to speak their conscience. As a non-Jew, however, I have to acknowledge that Jews take on far more risk than non-Jews in speaking out publicly against Israeli policies, often unleashing storms of unrelenting harassment and, in some cases, even death threats as "self-hating" Jews. Even short of this, it's obvious to anyone which comments to Sean-Paul's post present evidence and which simply harangue. These considerations don't change personal accountability, they just raise the bar.

More broadly, I think that many Jewish people, who have an understandable sense of kinship with Israel and are among the larger population in the US who may not have the time to spend on Internet research, rely for their information instead on mainstream media sources, all of which present pretty much the same story line whether they're liberal or conservative. These people may be upset by Palestinian suffering but, without being exposed to alternative evidence, will still have reason to believe in the "official" Israel interpretation of the invasion.

As for the unsung dissenters, I commend polymander for listing the number of sources he did and can tell you from my own research that there are plenty more where those came from. As the taboos start to unravel (witness Joe Klein's outspoken response to his detractors), I feel confident that in time the non-AIPAC Jewish community will make its voice heard along with everyone else.

Re forgiveness: from Plato through Christ through Ghandi, forgiveness is always to be encouraged, but I think it's enough to acknowledge that descendants of perpetrators don't automatically share the same culpability and move on constructively from there.