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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Two weeks ago today, I wrote a piece called "Israel's Worst Best Friends," in which I argued that Israel's morally unsavory actions against Palestinians in the occupied territories create an intellectual crisis for a certain group of American Jews.
Zealots are loathe to admit that they would support Israel even if it weren't a democracy, so they invent excuses when Israel strays from the liberal democratic path. Sometimes they deny, sometimes they rationalize, and sometimes they impute the motives of Israel's critics.
In the letters to the editors that followed my piece, I saw case studies in each of these reactions, (although I wouldn't claim that all of the authors were Zealots by my definition.)
But none of that automatically justifies human rights violations. Such abuses must be condemned unequivocally--even when they occur in the Jewish state.
Perhaps most disturbing to me were the letters that attributed sinister motives to my criticism of Israel. One reader informed me that he could not brook criticism from anyone "whose political purpose goes beyond that of Palestinian nationalism and human rights."