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I certainly agree that nothing here is black or white and I would welcome a debate that went further into the details. But what I clearly said in my piece is that we are talking about principles. While histories differ, principles do not change from one country to another, they are universal. And while it may not be possible to expect our principles to be applied where we have no direct involvement, in the places where the United States does have direct involvement, where indeed we are the main facilitator of the Israeli state's actions, we should expect and demand that our most basic principles be adhered to.

We also have to reckon with the gap that exists between principles and actions. Even as Thomas Jefferson wrote the words "all men are created equal" we were a country that would hold black people in slavery for another 80 years and keep them oppressed to different degrees right up to this day. But our failure to match our actions to our word does not nullify the principle that has been articulated. It remains a stable measurement of what is not right. We had an apartheid system in this country called Jim Crow that was accepted for decades, but through the struggle to apply principle to our actions it has largely been dismantled. During the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, where we were a prime economic and diplomatic supporter of the white South African government, people demanded that principles of basic human rights had to be applied. When we removed that support through a popular boycott movement, that system was abandoned. (No genocide ensued by the way.)

I think your historical references to the creation of the state of Israel are myths that have been implanted through endless repetition, but are in fact largely false. Zionism was a movement organized in Europe with the specific aim of taking land and driving out the natives by force. To say that Israel legitimately won that territory by conquest is bizarre in modern context. Might makes right, while oft practiced, is not a principle universally esteemed. It means the strong get what they want and the weak suffer, a pretty fair description of what is happening in Palestine right now. Also to say the PLO were offered 95% of what they wanted but turned it down is a terrible misrepresentation of what actually happened. Those offers made to Palestinians were poison pills that would have denied them fundamental rights that they would have had to accept into perpetuity.

If I seem to depict Israelis as bad guys and Palestinians as good guys it is because history is bringing the contradictions inherent in the Zionist project to an explosive culmination. We all should be looking clearly at the horror that is now taking place and working together to find an alternative, more hopeful future. The idea that one can establish a racially and religiously exclusive state on territory occupied by a native population, and to then endeavor to wipe out all resistance from that population, can lead to only one outcome, genocide. As I stated in the my essay, genocide is a crime that far surpasses terrorism in moral significance. So to claim, we are forced to commit genocide in order to stop terrorism, shows a complete corruption of rational discourse. By pursuing this course, it is the Israelis themselves who are putting their future in peril. History shows that occupiers can win the battle militarily while at the same moment destroying themselves politically, which is what is currently taking place. It's only by putting our faith in principles of justice that innocent lives on both sides can be protected going forward.