The Lebanon War and "Off Our Backs" in summer 1982

While engaging in the egotistical practice of looking myself up on Google, I found a link to a letter I wrote in 1982 to the radical feminist journal Off Our Backs, on the perennial subject of Israel and the Palestinians, written after the beginning of the Lebanon War in the summer of 1982. I am pleased to discover that my political opinions have not changed at all.

I wrote then, and still believe:

"To say it as shortly as possible, I believe that both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism are legitimate movements, and for either to think they can eliminate the other is unrealistic."

To the left of my letter is one written by Sarah Schulman, who is now a strong supporter of the BDS movement. This letter, written when she was 24 (I was 25 at the time) shows the roots of her anti-Zionism. She does, however, argues that we should not "fall into ahistorical rhetoric ranging from 'Zionism is racism'' to 'Anti-Zionism is Anti-semitism.'"