Too late
After the drama clogging our comments section {which I hope continues} I found this article highly timely.
I confess I rather conflated moderate Zionist and its more extreme, land-thieving, forms in my comments, which was rather an error given that in it’s peaceful form Zionism effectively consists of everything I would have encouraged had I lived in the appropriate era: settlement which accommodates and exists around the inhabitants already there. Unfortunately the ethnic cleansers won out, Ben-Gurion amongst them; rending the positive light he is depicted in in that article rather curious but rather understandable given that he seems to have been a family friend.
The saddest irony of this is that it undermines Barenboim’s argument for the necessity of Israel: the Jew he imagines may well go their own way back to Israel, but it seems that they will oft be little safer there. The mainstream, violent form of Zionism demanded theft of other’s territory instead of merely settlement in the deserts they would later claim that all of Palestine had consisted of before their arrival. Consequentially the pragmatic two or three state solution that Barenboim covets seems an impossibility. Even a return to the 1967 boundaries would be a return to lands filled with Jews only courtesy of all others being cleansed and thus would be unlikely to end the matter. A ceasefire would save lives but not return land stolen.
As strong as I found this article it does little to dismiss my view that it is far too late.
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