The Question of Zion and the Future of Israel/Palestine by Warren R. Bardsley
At the end of November 2008, I returned from Jerusalem, where I lived for three months as a human rights observer with the World Council of Churches’Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Israel/Palestine. I was a member of a group of 24 internationals from 14 countries, serving in 6 ‘placements’ on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where the Israeli Occupation of these territories (including Gaza), impinges on every aspect of the individual and communal life of the Palestinian people. It was a life-changing experience. Although I have read in the various histories and background studies of the 60–year old conflict, I felt I needed to re-visit these sources and try to understand how the children and grand-children of victims of the European Holocaust have become perpetrators of policies which effectively condemn millions of Arab Palestinians to an existence as prisoners in their own land. The basic rationale of this essay is that a proper appreciation of the present state of Israel demands a serious attempt to understand the reality of Zionism; why it appeared when it did; how it developed in the fifty-year period from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of World War Two and the events which followed the founding of the state of Israel in May 1948. We will examine the psychology at work behind the Zionist project, and drawing on my recent experience attempt to show its practical consequences in the ongoing conflict and what hope exists for a different future.
https://www.methodist.org.uk/media/2594/epworth-review-warren-bardsley-0111.pdf
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