I’ve never before taken the occasion to atone on Yom Kippur. But because I feel complicit in the hideousness that’s now engulfed the Middle East,it’s time I took the plunge and apologized.
On June 11, 1967, the day after the Six-Day War ended, I watched Israeli bulldozers knock down Palestinian buildings in just-captured East Jerusalem. They were preparing the way for Israeli apartments. I was astounded and remember telling my family that they couldn’t do that because they’d have to give the territory back to the Palestinians someday. Silly me.
Since then, I’ve thought and talked about the regime Israel was starting to install, a regime that, 57 years later, has become a full-blown apartheid occupation/subjugation.
I’ve grumbled a lot over the past half-century, spoken about the injustices experienced by West Bank Palestinians at the hands of Israeli settlers. But beyond talking about those injustices, I never acted, never wrote a letter (until this one), never organized any kind of a boycott/divestment/sanctions protest (an idea whose time has come), never suggested to any Jewish congressperson (and for years I’ve kept a full list of them) that grave injustices were being perpetrated by Israelis in the West Bank — injustices that the UN, from the very get-go, labeled war crimes.
Through my inaction, I accepted the status quo in the West Bank and allowed the occupation there to become a fait accompli.
I regret that my intellectual understanding of the situation never translated into any kind of a serious, active effort to organize, to try and fix things. I was lazy. And I take partial responsibility for Israel becoming what it has become — a pariah state.
— Richie Goldstein
Former IDF paratrooper
Anchorage
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