The sample text is entitled "My Journey: From Israel to the Nakba."

Marcy protests her great original love for Israel, but she tells of her "citizen of the world" parents and she writes:

I have no idea what it means to "have hava nagila." Perhaps American Jews have invented a new sort of Bar Mitzvah ritual. Let it be. We must be tolerant of all religious beliefs. But if Marcy ever shows up in a synagogue on Yom Kippur, she will have a lot of atoning to do. "Thou shalt not bear false witness" is a sin - a biggie too. Being a traitor isn't nice either, but you don't have to atone for that on Yom Kippur.

Of course, Marcy also tells of the Nakba in which the poor Arabs of Palestine were driven out of their homes. She also complains that Israel wants the Golan because it contains Israel's watershed. These and many other sins apparently warrant the genocide of the Jews of Israel and denial of our right to self determination in Marcy's view. This Winograd report is going to make the other one pale in comparison.

Here is my contribution to Marcy's volume - I hope she accepts it. You may all be inspired to write yours. I am sure that Marcy Winograd, who so favors people who are not afraid to speak out, will accept our contributions with great joy.

My journey to enlightenment: I am not afraid to speak out

It is no secret that I am what is usually called a "leftist." I cofounded a dialogue group of Jews and Arabs and I am director of an NGO that promotes peace education and dialogue. I am committed to rights for the Arabs of Palestine, as I am committed to rights for the Jews of Israel and the Arabs of Israel.

I am a leftist from a family of leftists. My great uncle Noteh (Nathan) was a Bolshevik. He fled Russia in 1905 for the safety of Poland. I am told that he was known as "The angel of the Warsaw Ghetto." Being a citizen of the world, he was killed along with all the other Jewish citizens of the world, who happened to be in the way of the Nazis, and discovered that "the world" would not grant passports to anybody. Had he stayed in Russia and survived, there is no doubt that along with many other "citizens of the world" of the Yevsektsia, the Jewish Communists, he would have found himself in Lyubjanka prison or Siberia. That's what the progressive forces did to Jews who were not afraid to speak out. My great uncle was not afraid to speak out, you see.

I noticed that there were several segments of public opinion that were actively working against peace and dialogue, and in favor of genocide and denial of the right of self determination to one side or another in the conflict. There are the extremists of the Kahana Hai movement, who call themselves Zionists, and there are also extremists on the other side. There are those who blacken and distort Islam and Arabs, and there are those who blacken and distort Judaism and Zionism.

Understandably, there are groups like Stormfront who have no use for "Zionists" because they are Nazis. We all know what Nazis are, don't we? We all know that not long ago, American fascist white supremacist racists coined the acronym ZOG - Zionist Occupied government for example. The typical fascist argument features the Jew as a sly, greedy and evil creature out to control the world through the International Jewish Conspiracy. Until recently, this was the property of a tiny, benighted, reactionary minority, spurned by all decent folks.

But about three or four years ago, I became painfully aware of a new phenomenon. The racist arguments of the fascists against Jews were now being used against "Zionists" and the "Israel Lobby" and were indistinguishable from the old fascist claims. Searching the Web, I found hundreds of sites telling the world about Zionist plots, all about Zionism and its pernicious influence, explaining that the Zionists started World War II, the Zionists started World War I, and even that the "Zionists" were responsible for the French revolution. The Zionists are also responsible, according to them, for the Holocaust Myth, created for the financial and political benefit of Israel. And on Yom Kippur, the "Zionists" do not ask forgiveness for the French Revolution. Indeed, as Ziopedia notes, the "Zionists" say the Kol Nidre prayer on Yom Kippur. According to the progressive and peace-loving citizens of the world edit Ziopedia, Kol Nidre is the sneaky "Zionist" way of getting out of their obligations to non-Jews.

More bizarrely, it seems that a great number of Jews have joined in this campaign. Many of them call themselves "Jews for Peace" and similar names. They do not realize apparently, that when people say that "the Jews" are responsible for the war in Iraq, the accusers mean them, not some other Jews. When Stormfront, or Azatlan or supporters of Ron Paul talk about "Zionazis" they are referring to Jews just like those "Jews for peace." The "Jews for Peace" and the "Jews for Justice" are ostensibly for "human rights. However, they have no interest in pursuing the human rights records of China, or Sudan or Iran or Turkey. The fate of the Tibetans, the Darfurians, the Bahai in Iran or women in Iran is of no concern to them. The Christians who are murdered by Arab Palestinians, and the girls who are murdered in honor killings, are not their problem. The Kurds of Turkey who are denied the right to learn their own language are forgotten. Millions dead, tens of millions of refugees around the world are of no importance to these citizens of the world.

However, for the real and imagined crimes of the "Zionists" there is only one remedy according to these friends of "peace and justice:" Israel must be dismantled, and the Jewish people must be denied the right to self determination. Germany, which was responsible for two world wars and genocide, is not to be dismantled. The German state is not to be flooded with Poles and Czechs and Frenchman. Japan, which committed committed unspeakable horrors in China, was not dismantled and settled with Chinese, and the Japanese are allowed their own language and customs, like the Germans. America, which committed genocide against the native Americans, and is the home of many of these ostensible lovers of peace and justice, will not pay for its sins. Russia, which terrorized all of Eastern Europe and the Baltic, and continues to deny the rights of the Chechnyans and others, is exempt from criticism.

But the Jews are not to share the same justice as Germany, Japan, USA and Russia. Israel must be turned into a "secular democratic" single state of Jews and Arabs according to the peace lovers. This is precisely the "peace" solution offered by his excellency, Hajj Amin Al Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the escaped Nazi war criminal, in 1948. And so, in the name of "peace and justice," the opponents of "Zionism," including Jews like Marcy Winograd, propagate the racist doctrine that only the Jews are not worthy of self-determination, and that alone among the states of the world, the Jewish state has no right to exist, solely because it is Jewish.

The continuation of this "peace" plan is known. The Mufti told the British that the "solution" he planned for the Palestinians, that is, the Jews of Palestine, was precisely the one adopted for the Jews of Europe by his mentor and friend, Adolf Hitler. The Mufti planned to build an extermination camp near Nablus. But the Jews of Palestine were not "citizens of the world" and did not allow this "peace solution" to be implemented. That was the cause of the "Nakba" of the Arabs of Palestine. And the same obstinate and evil Zionists will not, frustratingly enough for people like Marcy Winograd, allow the final solution to be implemented now.

I knew there were anti-Zionist Jews. I thought, naively enough, that most of these "citizens of the world" had perished in the Holocaust or had since understood the error of their ways. I should have realized that given the social and economic position of the Jews, the same tragedy of self-abasement and irrational denial that occurred in continental Europe would continue to flourish in the United States and among the remnants of European Jewry.

All these different Web sites, anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist, are linked to each other. The anti-Zionist ones all claim that they are not "anti-Semites" - they are just making "legitimate criticisms" of Israel and Israeli policy. And they all insist that people are afraid to speak out against the Jew-Zionist conspiracy. Thousands of Web pages, dozens of books and television interviews all say the same thing - you can read it everywhere: the evil Zionists, AKA Israel Lobby, are preventing them from speaking. That is why we never heard of Jimmy Carter and Israeli Apartheid, never heard of Norman Finkelstein and his "Holocaust Industry" myth, and never heard of Walt and Mearsheimer either. Likewise, we never saw the "Jews for peace" who traveled to Tehran and kissed Mr. Ahmedinejad to honor him for his Holocaust denial conference, nor the Presbyterians for peace who traveled to Beirut to praise the progressive and peace loving Hezbollah. All this was suppressed, because the Zionists are so powerful, that they don't let the innocent and righteous friends of peace speak out, correct?

Many of these Jewish racist genocidal warmongers in the guise of "peace" lovers tell the same tale: they were pro-Israel, they grew up in a Zionist home, they visited Israel and then they learned THE TRUTH. However, their narratives generally reveal that they are ignorant of Zionism and blessedly ignorant of Israeli history and reality. For example, as noted, they think that the Arabs of Palestine were simply expelled by the Jews for no reason. They don't know about the Mufti, the threats to drive the Jews into the sea or the Arab invasion. They don't know that many Arabs fled simply because they refused to live in a Jewish state. On April 22, 1948 when the last of the Arab Higher Committee fled Haifa despite the pleadings of Zionists, their leader told Zionist officials, "We do not recognize you, and we shall return when you are no longer here." For them, it was obvious that if Jews could not live in an Arab state, Arabs could not live in a Jewish state. Not a single Jew was allowed to remain in the areas of "Palestine" that were under Arab rule after 1948, and hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to flee Arab countries. It was not the Zionists who decided on "Apartheid" and "Ethnic Cleansing."

Like Marcy, they may tell us that the Golan heights are coveted by the evil Zionists because they are the watershed of Israel. What they don't tell us is that the waters of the Jordan river and its tributaries, according to international law, should be shared among the neighboring states. An American plan allotted a share of the water to each country. When Israel tried to take its share, the Syrians tried to divert the headwaters of the Jordan to prevent Israel from getting water. Perhaps Marcy didn't know that either.

All these Jews and others who can be gulled into supporting genocide in the name of peace, and all the garden variety anti-Semites, have become valuable tools or allies of the forces of reactionary repression and racism who have been working to spread race hate in the Middle East and to prevent peace. I understood that these people had to be stopped if there is ever to be peace. This is how it came about that I was no longer afraid to speak out. I could not be silent about these people, who are actively working to foment genocide in the name of peace, and to throw me out of my home in the name of "justice." That is why, in addition to my activity for peace, I began to work for fair play for Zionism and Israel, and to expose the cynical lies behind the "peace with justice" movement.

Palestinian Arabs have a quaint and picaresque way of dealing with traitors: they hang them upside down from electric pylons, with their anatomies rearranged in interesting, if not original ways.
In a multipluralistic and tolerant world, we should not be too censorious of the customs of others. Nonetheless, I do not recommend that we evil Zionists adopt that custom. However, metaphorically, demented and degenerate Jews who betray their own people arouse the same warm sentiments of brotherhood in my little brain.

It is commendable that every Jew should speak out and not be silent, following the example of Theodor Herzl, and so I have spoken out. I am sure that this will be a welcome contribution to a volume of Jews who dared to speak out.

Ami Isseroff