David Shulman on Sheikh Jarrah, Gaza and in the Israeli Peace Movement in the NYRB
Writing in the New York Review of Books Blog:
The legal situation in Sheikh Jarrah is ambiguous: Israeli courts have recently ruled that Jewish claims to ownership of land and houses in the neighborhood, from long before 1948, are valid and constitute a basis for evicting the Palestinian residents, all of whom received these lands from the Jordanian government in the 1950s in exchange for their UNRWA cards (thus relinquishing their status as refugees). But the issue is not really a legal one. The government, the municipality, and the settlers want to take over yet another Palestinian neighborhood—another 26 homes are scheduled for eviction, in addition to the three that have already been evacuated—and, of course, to prevent any future compromise in Jerusalem.
As a result, hundreds of Israelis, many of them young people joining the struggle for the first time, take off Friday afternoons to march through town and then demonstrate, courting arrest and harassment, in Sheikh Jarrah; the clumsy attempts by the Jerusalem police to suppress the protest violently have only added to our numbers. The demonstrations have a festive character, with drummers, acrobats, and clowns (the police arrested the clowns). Rumors about the demise of the Israeli peace movement are, it seems, premature.
Taken from
Desertpeace 
Don Robertson said,
March 14, 2010 at 01:12
Sometimes, quite regularly, I get really angry reading Desert Peace. This is one of those occasions.
“Settlers” and “settlements” are absolutely the wrong words.
The Israelis who are physically present in the West Bank for ANY REASON are occupiers, a vigilante arm of the invading army, armed and murderous land-thieves, -and ABOVE ALL lunatics on an insane and murderous binge.
Any time I read “settlers” referring to Israelis who are in the West Bank, I say to myself, this guy, the writer, is simply a shill for the continuation of the many-decades-long Israeli aggression and war mongering in the Middle East, which is the sole tactic of the Israeli colonialist invasion of the area that began in what is now referred to as “Israel” -by some.
I anonymously wrote the following post for another board the other day.
While I did not write it to apply to the Israeli situation in the Middle East, it is worthy enough to post it again here.
Anonymous said…
If Christians can comprehend that logic and reason are aberrations; that pragmatism is an immoral choice -to do something- when the result cannot be known beforehand; and that the only truth -worth pursuing- is Categorical Truth based on a search for moral reason, -then- clearly Christian thought far exceeds the value of any and even all science combined.
Science is reportedly -morally neutral-.
Science falsely proclaims itself amoral, and out of the reach of any guilt for its consistently immoral results.
Religions too can yield immoral results, but there is no escaping the guilt for it.
Nothing in science is ever going to be proved categorically true. Nothing even in mathematics is categorically true.
Religion is more than those who are alive today -defending it- could ever imagine. Religion is much more encompassing than those who attack religion -could ever bear to comprehend.
Religion is as old as man. Man is religious in every thing he does. We all -hope- so.
And while religion may seem static to those enthralled by constantly changing science with its repeated scientific revolutions, overturned theories, and new theories being created all the time -religion is far less than static to the philosopher for whom change comes but once or twice a millennium.
A millennium is a thousand years.
The next thousand years will be spent pursuing Categorical Knowledge.
Science is dead. Science violates the moral imperative of life.
The moral imperative of life is to live a life that detracts not at all from the lives available to those who will follow us into this world.
-That- moral statement is the basis for Categorical Knowledge.
If Christianity has merit, and like all religions, I believe it does have merit, its merit, like the merit of all religions, is derived from the portrait Christianity individually paints of the world we would like to bequeath to the future.
Above all -it is a moral world, we are all referring to here.
It is necessary to sail away from these contentious shores.
The Jewish religion is proudly purported to embody a roundly moral ethic.
I am not Jewish. No one calls me, “Rabbi”.
And yet, -I am the most important moral philosopher alive today.
Don Robertson
Limestone, Maine