Last week at the Brit Tzedek event at the Village Temple, the Israeli veteran said that if the West Bank settlements were uprooted tomorrow, most of the settlers would quietly take compensation and move to Israel. But the religious crazies might leave the country. Many of the Gaza settlers had moved back to the U.S., he said. "To New Jersey," someone in the audience called out, knowledgeably. "To Brooklyn," another man cried.

I dream about a day when national borders will vanish and we'll all sing Kumbaya. That hasn't happened yet; in the meantime, the U.S. and Israel need to clear some of these issues up. The problem came up on Democracy Now yesterday in a forum on the (disgusting) fact that "the Israeli government has effectively frozen visitation and re-entry of foreign nationals of Palestinian origin to the West Bank and Gaza."

I wanted also to mention one very important point. We get information that there are... a half-million Israelis who live in the United States and have dual nationalities. Those, and most of the Israelis, have a second passport and third passport and third nationality, just to kind of -- to be on the safe side. I think that there should be a demand for mutuality. The same [rights should be afforded by] Jewish Israelis toward our American citizens, as we, the Americans have to your Israeli citizens. Because Israelis can come and go with the re-entry permit... into the United States, and at the same time, there is no mutuality, and [Arab] Americans are not allowed in here.

Exactly. There's a revolving door between Israel and the U.S., for Jews. Neocon Max Singer moves to Israel and continues to work for a Washington thinktank, pushing us to go to war in Iraq. Nutbag settlers move from here to the West Bank with religious visions. This freedom (and absence of freedom) is distorting our politics. Yes I dream of a day when there will be no borders. But not just for Jews.

I read your comments related to my phone interview with you, and your conversation with Max Singer. It is, as we discussed, perfectly legal at the present time to vote in two countries. The implicit subtext of your comments is that Max as a "neo-con," (horrors, hide the children) should somehow be chastized. Why? Because after serious thought he changed his mind and arrived at a new understanding on the basis of principle? On the contrary, Max should be commended for his principled decision to vote only in the country in which he is most politically active. Many dual citizens have not been as principled.

—There are 530 checkpoints in the West Bank. Only 30 are on the Green Line between the West Bank and Israel. Yes; some of those have stopped suicide bombers. The purpose of the other 500 has nothing to do with security. "The strategy there is to destroy Palestinian society, to prevent any joint organized struggle [against the occupation]," said the Israeli.

—The Palestinian, his brother, and his father have spent 25 years in Israeli jails, much of that time without due process, for such offenses as graffiti and other statements opposing the occupation. The man's family has lost many acres of its land to Jewish settlers, in a village outside Bethlehem.

The situation these men describe is worse than apartheid. "Three and a half million people live without any rights," said the Israeli, whose own sister was killed by a suicide bomber. "You want to stop these people [suicide bombers], you should give them a reason to live."

The Brit Tzedek tour by these two former combatants in the Occupied Territories continues across our country over the next month. It is aimed at one thing: to open Jews' eyes and ears. Let us pray.

"I want to give Palestinian people a human face," Doi said by way of introduction. "You see that Palestinians are human beings like you. They have a family. They love each other. Each person has a name. That is my message."

The film is utterly desolating. You see a large family having to live almost its entire life within a few square meters. Many times there are a dozen people in a small room, eating or talking, paying cards, watching television. The family's income is meager, their opportunities almost nil. The oldest son was arrested for his participation in a demonstration and spent two years in an Israeli prison, and now cannot get employment. "I feel like I am slowly wasting away, day by day." The second son has lately lost his job as a butcher in Israel because he cannot renew papers that were arbitrarily seized at a crowded checkpoint, and the process of renewing the papers involves days of waiting outside, and arbitrary refusals. The third son dreamed of being a doctor. "I wanted to make a contribution to society." There was no way for him to become a doctor, he became a teacher, and he is unemployed.  read more »

This is in the end the power of Rachel Corrie's words. I know people in the theater world, and so I have heard the rap against the play in the last few months. That it is a piece of polemics, not theater, and that as theater qua theater it is not that effective, too spare and one-note.  read more »