A Transmission on an Alternative Frequency

A transmission on an alternative frequency… Not all my words, but definitely my #Zionism…

“Brothers. Sisters. Neighbors.

I speak to you not with empty words, not with the polished tongue of a diplomat, but with fire in my blood and God on my lips. I come before you not as a conqueror, not as an apologist, not as a stranger – but as a fellow child of this ancient land, aching for a way forward.

I am a Jew.

A Zionist.

Yes, a Zionist.

Not the Zionism of wire fences and checkpoints. Not the Zionism of erasures and demolitions. I am a Zionist of prophets and shepherds, of Abraham and his children, of the dream that this land will shine again with justice, wisdom, and peace.

I do not deny your pain.
I do not deny your history.
I do not ask you to forget, or to surrender.

I know what was taken from you.
I know the olive trees that were uprooted.
The keys that hang in your grandparents’ homes.
The names of villages that exist now only in memory and in your blood.

You are not invisible. You are not forgotten. You are not my enemy.

We were torn apart by empires that ruled us both.
We were separated by exile, by wars, by fears that multiplied like shadows.
But you are our cousins. Many of you are our brothers and sisters.
You are the children of the land that raised our prophets.
Your blood, your soil, your stories – all breathe with the memory of Israel, not the modern state, but the people, the calling, the covenant.

Zionism, as it truly is and must be for both of us, is not supremacy.
It is not exile for you so we can return.
It is not walls and flags and borders.
It is the return of a people – all the people of this land – to a sacred mission.

Zionism is not finished.
It is not perfect.
It is not whole until you – yes, you in Hebron and Rahat and Nablus and Umm al Fahm and Nazareth – have a place in it.
Not as guests. Not as tolerated outsiders.
But as partners. As neighbors. As builders of the same future.

We do not come to erase your Islam. We respect it.
Your dedicated prayers echo the ancient cry for unity and justice.
Your poetry sings of the land like psalms.
Your devotion, your generosity, your hospitality – they are holy.

And we know you seek more than material dignity.
Like us, you seek meaning. You seek to belong to something greater.
You seek to end the curse of wandering, of suspicion, of rejection.

So let us truly share our society.

Let us tell the truth about the past. All of it.
Let us name the wounds. Yours. Ours.
Let us mourn the dead together and bury our weapons in the ground.
Let us teach our children the names of our prophets.
Let us make room in our hearts for each other’s dreams.

I do not have all the answers to the problems that we need to solve.
But I know this:

This land is big enough for all of our memories.
This story is rich enough for all of our verses.
This covenant is strong and deep enough for all of our trials and our faith.

You do not have to become me.
And I do not have to become you.
But together we can become something that neither of us can be alone.

A society of conscience.
A kingdom of heaven.
A civilization that makes monuments to peace as a sacred act, not just a pause in the endless war.

I will always believe in Zion.
Not as a fortress – but as a home.
Not as revenge – but as return.
Not for one group – but for all people rooted in this soil and drawn to this light.

I believe we will build that Zion together.

And I invite you – not to fight. Nor to surrender. But to return.
To return to a promise far older than our flags.
To rejoin a story that is far from finished.
To rewrite our future beyond “us and them,”
but in which we instead say “we.”

We, the people of the land.
We, the chasers of peace and justice.
We, the children of something ancient rising again.

For better and for worse, the world is always watching us, waiting to see what we’ll do next.

Let them see a miracle.”

An Invitation to Zohran Mamdani

On behalf of Zion, I would like to extend a warm invitation to Zohran Mamdani to come visit this beautiful Land that such diverse people all call home.

We can tour the historical and political sites of the country with Jewish and Islamic tour guides, meet with Israeli and Palestinian communal leaders, and discuss hard questions together over Shabbath meals.

Mr Mamdani, come see the complex reality of our situation with your own eyes. Come hear with your own ears our stories of war and our dreams of Zion, coming to life beyond the colonizers’ framing

Learn what it means for us to put down the gun and share society, and learn how you can help make that vision real.

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Social media makes the world small: If you know someone who knows someone…. Let’s make it happen.

Believe in Shared Society

Never stop believing in the possibility of a shared society.

So many people are caught in emotional echo chambers and have rationalized their disillusionment with the possibility of a shared society with different kinds of poorly thought-out dogmas.

Don’t fall for it.

The possibility is always there for us to realize.

What Two States Solve

Thinking pragmatically about the future of the Land…

Can an additional state, without any state institutions or assets or economy or territorial continuity or independence, really make it?

And what purpose would it serve, if it did actually work and function, that wouldn’t be realized in an inclusive Israeli/Palestinian society?

A New Deal for the Land of Peace

A New Deal for the Land of Peace
ישראל – فلسطين
– one unified state
– law and order instead of militant and criminal violence
– citizenship for all
– healthcare for all
– gan-uni education for all
– infrastructure and building permits for all
– military service for all
– new anthem

We deserve it. We can do it. We will make it.

יחד ננצח

Shabbath Shalom

Lawless Zone

The West Bank has become a lawless zone.

We so clearly need law and order in this country, and instead we’re being pitched on expanding the same lawlessness that results in a mother being shot on the way to give birth.

May her blood be avenged in the voting booth.

One State, Equal Citizenship

Fear and suspicion aside, I think it’s safe to say:
– the status quo is untenable
– two states are unimplementable
– an apartheid state is unlikely

Now some have mistakenly claimed I’m an idealist 🙂 but if I’m not mistaken, that leaves us with one state, equal citizenship.

Of course we’ll have to:
– ban fascist parties like Hamas, unequivocally and aggressively
– try and punish their remaining leaders and members who have participated in any crimes and plots
– replace UNRWA, their curricula, their teachers their textbooks
– and take other drastic but pragmatic steps to ensure social safety and security.

But when the smoke clears and the dust settles…. It’s one state, equal citizenship.

The Limits of Self-Determination

The thing about self-determination is that it requires that one not lose or abdicate the responsibility to determine one’s self.

This means participating in a robustly democratic civil society, not being subject – or subjecting one’s self – to an authoritarian, let alone fascist, party or government.

This means that yes, you can recognize a people’s right to self-determination without accepting all outcomes of that process. Not all outcomes reflect actual self-determination.

We must build a shared society that facilitates our actual self-determination, as individual people and as groups.

(This will require a new story.)

Hamas Is Not the Resistance

Hamas is a fascist organization working with and for fascist states, that ruled Gazans with an iron fist for 17 years and has exploited them as human shields in their insane war against the (problematic, compromised, backsliding but nevertheless) democratic state of Israel.

There’s a reason many of their supporters around the world proudly sieg heil and wave swastika flags in their demonstrations – they’re inspired (!) not just by the Nazis’ antisemitism but by their totalitarian ideology.

“Resistance” my @$$.

Hamas is the enemy of Palestinians, Israelis, and everyone who wants to live a free life from the river to the sea.

They’re not the resistance against colonialism, they’re part of the fascist problem.

Imagine a Native Nation

Imagine a timeline where one of the native nations of Turtle Island developed a survival strategy that allowed them to retain their society and identity intact despite destruction, disenfranchisement, and dispersal among the other colonized nations.

Imagine this nation never lost memory of their land and hope of returning to it, and bided their time and amassed their resources until they could begin buying back rights to resettle their homeland from the colonizers, and slowly build a nucleus of native society in their ancient land.

Until – imagine this – one day native diplomacy achieves a major goal and some of the colonizers decide to withdraw from the land and turn it back over to the native nation. At least, that’s what it would say on paper: imagine if the rest of the colonized countries around the land didn’t accept the new decision and decided to attack the returning native nation on its land?

And imagine what would happen if there were many descendants of families of the native nation who had never left the land in the first place? Natives who endured century after century of colonization, being forced to adopt the colonizers’ language and religion – what would they do? I’d imagine that some of them would join with their returning brethren, but whose side do you imagine the rest of these colonized natives would take?

Now imagine that the returnees of the native nation, reestablishing themselves in the land, did not recognize their colonized brethren – mistook the contemporary trappings of colonized culture for identity and history – and viewed them with suspicion of loyalty to the colonizing countries who attacked them; only slowly and partially integrating them into the renewed native society, even placing some of them under military administration.

And imagine that some of the colonized natives – some identifying so strongly with the colonizer that they adopted their values and agenda, some so broken by the war and its after-effects that they were consumed with vengeance – did in fact resort to acts of violence against their returning brethren, feeding the fears and suspicions of those who could not recognize their kinship.

In such an imaginative scenario, what would be your hope?

What is your dream for the descendants of the native nation?

For the world?

[If any of the above resonates with you, or maybe introduces a little cognitive dissonance into your psychic space, explore those thoughts. History is complicated and the struggle is real. The stories we tell ourselves can change the world. Stay Frosty Friends]