I am afraid that some of my Zionist comrades will have been upset by a New York Times article (that I read in the International Herald Tribune) by Steven Erlanger about a meeting held in Jerusalem that featured an Israeli reservist, who had been a first lieutenant in the legendary Golani infantry brigade in the West Bank. He had moral qualms about what he had done in the territories. Frankly, as a life-long Zionist (I'd spoken about Israel's Declaration of Independence in my fourth grade class with Mrs. Hayman), I am very proud that there is room--a great deal of room--in Israeli society for airing the qualms about what is done and not done in an atmosphere of ongoing war. Would that there were such discussions as Erlanger describes in Palestinian society where there is no public argument about even the routine brutality of its liberation warriors. In any case, there is no shortage of open discussion and dispute about anything that happens between Israeli authorities and the Palestinians. Haaretz, in many ways Israel's most important newspaper, is and has been for years the voice of the country's opposition to government policy vis-a-vis the Arabs. One of the audience at Lieutenant Mikhael Manekin's talk--I'd bet that left-leaning Mikhael comes from the right-leaning Russian migration--was Uriel Simon, a professor emeritus of bible studies at the excellent (and religious) Bar-Ilan University, whose father was Ernst Simon, a co-founder with Martin Buber (yes, the one of the "I-thou" theology") of Brit Shalom. Erlanger defines the group, not exactly correctly, as "an early peace movement." In fact, it was a movement for a bi-national state. Here, in America, even my mother had bi-nationalist sympathies, although she was actually a member of linke poalei tsion, a left labor Zionist. The problem was that in Palestine there were many Jewish bi-nationalists and basically no Arabs. This certainly put a crimp in the movement. Buber was a truly idealistic and wise philosopher, and Professor Simon cites his "demarcation line" as "what is necessary is allowed, but what is not necessary is forbidden." That is what the tactical and even strategic arguments in Israel are about. Read Erlanger's piece. It will be enlightening, whatever your own views on these matters.