From: "Lia Young" <Lia@cleughbrae.go-plus.net> To: <webmaster@gush-shalom.org> Subject: Fwd: an outsider views Judaism Date: Friday, August 09, 2002 1:16 AM >Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2002 00:00:33 +0100 >To: editor@haaretz.co.il >From: Lia Young <Lia@cleughbrae.go-plus.net> >Subject: an outsider views Judaism > >I am an English non Jew, who has always appreciated and respected Jewish >people, even identified with them in certain ways: respect for the >intellect, the search for righteousness in the face of worldly >incomprehension, etc. I recently took a short course in Judaism with the >Open University, during which I was very much moved by the integrity of >vision, and the purity, and universality, of the moral quest I found >there. I was prepared to accept Judaism as the cradle of Western civilized >values. >So, I have taken an interest in Israel, and in the way she exemplifies >those values... >It has been a steep, and devastating, learning curve. May it suffice to >say that the one point of relief and hope has been the few groups, among >them Gush Shalom, who are willing to protest the ghastly inhumanity of >your state's pursuit of another people's territory, not to say humanity. >Your spokespeople on our radios stake their claim on the land of Palestine >on a two thousand year old covenant with God. Whether or not one can >accept the literal truth of that statement, surely God is nothing if not a >moral concept? By jettisoning every conceivable standard of >morality-humanity-in your approach to the security of your citizens, >haven't you by now relinquished at least that justification of your >existence as a nation among others? >Please keep publishing letters that point out the obvious truth that anti- >Zionism is not anti -Semitism. >Lia Young