You go ahead and phrase your comments about justifying your criticisms of Israel I did not criticise Irsel, at least not on this thread.
with the fact of your jewishness (as if that is relevant) Anyone has a moral right to criticise a policy of any state --- as long as it is a genuine thought. The problem with many of Israle's critics is that they single out Israel for criticism, hence hide their prejudice behind it.
Is it always true that a person can criticize Jews and or Israel because they are jewish? See above: one can cricise the STATE (gove't) of the U.S.A., Canada, France, or Israel, whether Jewish or not.
I think that is what I read from you. I have not addressed this question in my posts.
You might want to reread your own words before you come down so hard on me. Forgive me if I came down hard on you: I certainly do not want to offend you. But it is you who charged onto the thread with ONE-LINE remarks that are hardly clear except for the emotions they expressed.
I suspect I know how you feel. It is tiring after a while to fight anti-Semites, whether Jewish or not. But if you want to be effective you should measure your moves and stay cool: you are more effective against enemies, and you do not kill your own by friendly fire.
And this is what you are doing with me: you have IMPUTED to me something I did not say, got offended, and accused me. Israel is not a pillar in your life then you IMO have not truly considered the matter. And here is the best proof of what I just said: I never said that that "Israel is not a pillar in your life." What I said was that Israel is not a pillar of my identity.
It is not that Israel is unimportant: if your reread my post, you will find that I said it was. It is just there are more pillars to my identity. Nor am I alone: ask yourself, did the Jews have identity before the State of Israel was reborn?
Unfortunately, most of us belong nowadays to a Reform movement, which officially declares Israel to be a pillar of identity. This is natural: when you almost entirely remove G-d from the temple and replace it with "social action" and Israeli bond drives, there is indeed nothing else left. But the Jews for millennia have survived on the Covenant and OBLIGATION to those that came before them, who lived and died as Jews. Did you personally lose anyone in the Holocaust? Most of the American Jews that today beat themselves in the chest as supporters of Israel have not. They lived fairly comfortably in the Land of the Free. And when Holocaust survivors did come in the 1950s, they did not want to hear them out. "Hey, Uncle Moishe, you are in America now. Don't think about those bad things." (You appear to be young and might not know that, go ahead inquire.)
It is noteworthy that you did not even pause on the fact that I did lose a large portion of my family. Given that you could do that, I wonder how you would treat a widow and and orphan in your midst (personally, without a food drive by the Sisterhood at the Temple). Shame on you. What moral right do YOU have to question MY Jewish identity? But that is a consistent with the Reform Temple morality: values and personal conduct are not important. You can sware, you can say blasphemous things. You can be thick-skinned to the suffering of a fellow next to you. But as long as you are part of "social action" and "support Israel" --- you are OK.
If there were no Israel, then there is a good chance that there would be no you.
You appear to have a good heart. You also appear to be young. Before it's too late, please heed my advise: rethink these matters. You repeat the words that you often heard, and they are at best misleading. In this particular case, they make you look foolish: I was born before Israel. Forgive me, but "If there were no Israel, then there is a good chance that there would be no you" is what comfortable Reform Rabbis, who grew up in comfortable suburbia without seeing any persecution whatsoever and who are as shallow as the general American public has bocome tell their congregations. This is nonsense. The Jewish people have survived DESPITE such Jews in their midst, not due to them.
I know that you'll become better with age. You'll learn to fight without barging into the room and waving your sward in all directions indiscriminantly. You'll be more pusuasive. You will excell in your chosen profession. But certain things do not come with age automatically. Before it's too late, resolve to surve your people at a deeper level. Study history. Study the lives of Rabbis. Marry a Jewish woman and raise your children Jewish.
If you do, some day you'll look back and be ashamed of the shallowness of the above-quited statements that you have inherited from not-so-Jewish rabbis.
Shana Tova. May G-d inscribe you in the book of life.