THE GREAT ZIONIST MIDDLE

It's become more and more common parlance among the left to assert that anyone who defends Israel's retaliation against Palestinian terror must be a hard-line opponent of a compromise peace. This ignorance (willful or not) obscures the more nuanced views of the great Zionist middle who embraced the Oslo process, but now understand it as a debacle, brought down by both its inherent weaknesses and short-sighted implementation. Professor Shlomo Avineri's latest op-ed speaks from our persective.

So that there should be no mistake: I am against Jewish settlements in the territories; I strongly feel that setting them up was a major mistake; and I am ready for dismantling settlements as part of a real peace package. But anyone who compares settlement activities to suicide bombings targeting civilians is a moral cripple.

Rather than throwing out "Likud" as a pejorative (I'd like to see Alterman write a coherent paragraph that cites Jabotinksy) and impugning the Zionist's center's clear commitment to a negotiated peace, the Left should take some time to reflect on why their morality is so crippled when it comes to Israel.