The Quest for a 'Land for Peace'
Gilad Halpern explores Israel's continued exploitation of the Holocaust for political ends. This rhetoric keeps Israel focused on the past, he writes, and prevents the achievement of Zionism's original intent: to create a Jewish state living in peace with its neighbors. Focusing on Iran and away from domestic issues will not serve Israel's future as a democracy.
It was 1969. Israel had just come jaw-droppingly victorious out of the Six Day War, where it had dealt a swift and fatal blow to three Arab armies and occupied territories that were three times its size. The United Nations Security Council had subsequently passed Resolution 242, which would pave the way to a settlement of the Israeli-Arab conflict, coining the famous phrase "land for peace." Israel was about to see one of the underlying principles of Zionism realized: a Jewish state living in peace with its neighbors.
