Ken Burch
2 min readJan 22, 2023

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Actually, the fourth nobody was immigrants and members of political minorities anywhere, it was not about Jews and Israel- although I would say that another "nobody" should not have to debate the premise that their national identity was never real, that they have no valid grievances against the state that had its army put them under perpetual military occupation, subjected them to collective punishment for the acts of the armed factions, and kept confiscating the land and the olive and lemon groves on the land that they had tended for centuries, or accept the argument that the only possible reason for their resistance against the state in question was bigotry against the collection of people the state purportedly exists to protect.

I would say that an additional nobody could be added to that list "nobody should have to accept pressure from anyone else in their ethnicit(ies)/faith traditions/ ethical traditions or linguistic groups to accept that any state is synonymous with their identity, or that they should FEEL obligated to defend whatever that state does, or for that matter, that they or anyone else should have to accept the idea that any dissent against the actions of that state is bigotry against their identity and anyone should have to give unquestioning support to the actions of that state just to prove they aren't either a bigot or "self-loathing"- that there is no difference between protesting the actions of any one state and protesting those of any other.

The world's Jewish communities actually have several languages- not just Hebrew, but Yiddish, Magrebi, Ladino and the languages of the countries the majority of the world's Jewish communities who are not Israeli live in.

Netanyahu has no right to claim to speak for "the Jews", btw- he is simply the leader of a government of one country, leading a party that took 23% of the vote in the last Israeli election, whose views on the treatment of Palestinians and the question of what is and is not necessary for the "self-defense" of Israel, as well as the question of what territories can fairly be claimed by the state he currently leads-while under continuing criminal investigation for numerous corruption charges- are all under vigorous debate within the Jewish population of the planet.

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Ken Burch
Ken Burch

Written by Ken Burch

Retired Alaska ferryboat steward, grandparent, sometime poet. Radical yet independent of dogma. Likes nice days, playing banjo and not as yet dying of Covid.

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