On Israel's Assisted Suicide

A reader writes:

I am an American Jew who has served as soldier in the Israeli Defence Forces IDF.  I love Israel and am therefore deeply troubled how the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has launched Israel on a path of self destruction. One day the West Bank Palestinians will stop asking for a state and start asking for the right to vote. And that will be the beginning of the end of the Jewish State

So please know that there are many Jews who know and understand that our real friends, the ones rooted in reality and not biblical fantasies, are going to resist the settler movement and occupation of the West Bank - simply because it is in the best interests of Israel to do so. 

In Israel this perspective is fairly conventional and represents nearly half the electorate.  But when one expresses this opinion in the United States it's labeled as an anti-semitic attack.  The only reason I have not been labeled as an anti-semite, or at least as a self-hating Jew by my peers here in NY, is that I can trump any accusation by the fact that I actually served in the IDF. (This detail tends to drive some people a little loopy; the cognitive dissonance is simply too much for them to bear.)