The American Conservative: My Dinner With Pamela Gross-Finkelstein

"At a sugar magnate’s posh dinner party in New York City last week, the lady on my right had just called Ariel Sharon a war criminal and a terrorist. I looked at her place card: Pamela Gross-Finkelstein. “You’re not German, by any chance?” I asked her. “No, I’m New York Jewish—and not a self-loathing one either,” came the answer. Pamela and I hit it off after that, as I did with the rest of the table—most of them very rich and Jewish—who happened to agree. Now I don’t usually report on private dinner conversations, but this was a breakthrough. It’s not everyday that someone, Jewish or otherwise, can criticize Likud and stay standing. . . .
Therein lies the difference. One party kills with impunity in the name of self- defense; the others are all terrorists. Sharon and his fellow Likudniks, Begin and Shamir—terrorists too, it should be said—have been playing this card since the birth of Israel. Accidents do happen during civil unrest, but no army shoots unarmed demonstrators. During the German occupation of Greece, when the hunger marches would take place, children and wounded soldiers in wheelchairs were in the front of the demonstrations. No German trooper ever fired. In Gaza, the Israelis even managed to kill some 70 animals, including a parrot, a couple of jaguars, and a few ostriches. ’Twas a famous victory against a zoo. . . .
In his poignant review of Richard Ben Cramer’s wonderful book How Israel Lost in these pages two issues ago, Scott McConnell explained how Israel went from a noble experiment to an oppressor of three million mostly innocent Palestinians. The state of Israel was established by an act of international brigandage with America and Europe assuaging their guilt by forcing their will upon an innocent Palestinian people. Instead of Israel now pulling back and compensating the Palestinians for their suffering and for their loss of dignity and humanity, the settlers and their right-wing extremists want more. Time to pull the plug, Uncle Sam."