(I found this rant that charged out of my head onto the page a few months back. It is an old message in many ways, but, given trhe way things are now, it bears repetition)

All my life Israel has told me who do not live in Israel
That I am not safe in the country of my birth,
That though I was not born in Israel, have no dealings with Israel,
Speak another language, have learnt to obey other laws,
Have my work here, my friends here, my loved ones here,
Nevertheless I am hated, I am in danger,
Because I am a Jew
And because I am a Jew, I should be in Israel
Where Jews can breath free, breath air unpolluted
By the abuse of those who hate me, because I am a Jew
And threaten their world

Yet I note two things, the first of which is these:
The Jews of Israel are taught that,despite their freedom to be Jews,
They are threatened because they are Jews,
By a people who they believe hates them, who force the Jews of Israel
To be always wary of the kind of bloody attack
That I in my country have never had to face,
Allowing the Jews to teach their children
To fear and and detest their neighbours, to wish for their destruction,
Because these neighbours have themselves
Learnt to fear and detest Jews

So this is the second of the things I note:
Why do the neighbours of the Jews fear and detest them?
Is it because they are Jewish?
No, it is because the Jews of Israel act in a way that
Once, not so long ago, no Jew anywhere would have contemplated,
It is because the Jews of Israel think it good
To treat their neighbours with the same kind of brutal contempt
That they have too often been treated

And now Israel, where I am supposed to seek safety,
Is fighting a war of fear, hatred, blood and death
Because they have finally to face an enemy they have pushed too far,
An enemy whose recourse is to commit their own cruelties,
To murder Jews when they meet them,
Because in their desperation and hatred
They can no longer care for the consequences, for the Jews,
Or for themselves

And Israel’s determination to win that war
Has itself become even more monstrous than it ever was before,
Committing genocide before a world
That sees what is happening but does nothing
And why do they do nothing?

Because they believe what Israel tells them,
That Jews deserve a land which belongs only to them
And should be allowed to do whatever needs to be done to get it
Regardless of the needs of those for whom those lands are
Already home,
So echoing the words and the actions of the single worst enemy
That Jews have ever known,
Which had been enemy, too, to all those nations who now call Israel
Their friend

And while it is true that the Jews of Israel are suffering
As they have never suffered before
At the hands of those who refuse to seperate innocent from guilty
And murder all alike if it serves their cause
It is also true that what is true of Israel’s enemies,
Both in previous generations and in this one
Is true of Israel itself

I have pity and sorrow for those Israelis who have lost so much
In recent days;
But I have pity and sorrow for those generations on whom Israel has
Visited such brutal pain because they are in the way
Of Israel’s dream of a nation where Jews can live without fear

And there is the irony:
I, who have always been safe despite Israel’s claims,
Am now in danger because Israel has taught the world
That it speaks for all Jews
So that inasmuch that Israel has become hated throught the world,
I am now hated,
Even though I have nothing to do with Israel,
Want nothing to do with Israel,
Need nothing from Israel,
And have no lessons to learn from Israel, except these:

That compassion should encompass all, or it becomes hypocrisy,
That committing violence on others and complaining when they
Commit violence in return, is hypocrisy,
That those who steal from one people
To replace what another people stole from them
Are hypocrites

Hamas must answer for its crimes, and the world is bent on
Making sure it does:
But who is responsible for making Israel answer for its own,
Far greater crimes, which Hamas has only mimiced
And because of which Hamas, in their own hypocrisy, can claim justification?

I will see out my life in the country of my birth,
Because this is my homeland, these are the people among whom
I belong
The single greatest lesson that Israel has taught me,
Though it is the opposite of the lesson it wanted to teach,
Is that I can share my world with people who are not Jews,
Respect them all as I want to be respected,
And that is the way a Jew should live.