Tangentially related, I thought you’d appreciate this speech by the winner of the 2007 Hannah Arendt Award. Lots of food for thought there.

If it still seems unclear, let me know and I’ll do a rewrite.

My point was that this is not Judaism, and should not be advocated by any Jewish community and is not sanctioned by any authority.

You can call whatever you want “Evil, Horrid” and “Backwards”.

I’ve not looked into the UMC thing – only noting Mom’s version of it. But it was Mom who made it Black or White: that we have to support Israel no matter what she does. This is, generally, the right-wing Dispensationalist Christian version of things. Which, given Mom’s other PsOV, rather surprised me.

I don’t think I made it out to be black or white – simply noting that Jews and others have a right to talk about Israel’s policies and to support them or not, be Israel considered as a religious or secular state.

And, if you hold both to standards of justice, do you cut support off from both? And, if you do, do you stand idly by if Israel is about to be wiped off the face of the map? Or, do you stand idly by while the Gaza strip is starved to death?

It is always tempting to do the Anabaptist thing, which is to withdraw into holy isolation and be unbearably self-righteous about how one does not contribute to the war machine or to evil or to bad politics, etc. It is much more difficult to live in a world unbearable tainted with evil and hammer out a policy that keeps one involved. It is much more difficult to accept that disengagement can, itself, be a cause of even worse evil than engagement.

Both Israel and the Palestinians do evil things. I would still argue that Hezbollah (openly Muslim and proud of it) does significantly more evil things than Israel. Unfortunately, in the Middle East (or Darfur, or Kenya, or Yugoslavia, or . . .) one must often choose the lesser of two evils, as best one can discern.

I can’t blame your mother for her stance. I can understand if it were weapons that were being sold. But the UMC is now getting into the “this could be (and has been) used for evil, therefore the company is evil” line of thinking. I hope that they soon divest themselves of all stock in Ginsu knives and in baseball bat companies since they, too, can be used as weapons. This is Anabaptist style of thinking, with which I disagree.

Does this mean that I support all that Israel does? No! I do support some measures that would try to rein in some of their worst practices. But, Israel would have to become significantly worse, or the Muslim groups (yes, Muslim, they do claim that identity, after all!) get significantly better before I would stand by and say that I would allow Israel to be wiped out.