A few questions.

And what a world we live in where a reality television star is President of the United States, a surfboard shaper is the most powerful political force in Australia and an anti-depressive surf website is the place where people come to calmly solve the long-ish simmering feud between Arab and Jew as it relates to the beautiful country of Israel.

Absolutely fantastic.

Those who spend time here, often, will know that principal Derek Rielly is completely pro-Zionist, having been won over on a trip to Tel Aviv with professional surfer Ozzie Wright. I, also a principal, am decidedly pro-Arab having studied in Egypt and spending much of the last two decades traipsing through Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine, etc. (Buy here).

We are, the two of us, an international version of Mary Matalin and James Carville. Happily married with extremely opposing views.

Now, yesterday, a wonderful podcast listener (anyone who listens to us ramble is a saint) who happens to live in Israel and also describes himself as Zionist-leaning wrote a thoughtful response to a comment I made referencing apartheid in a conversation about the Holy Land.

It’s very worth an entire read (here) but the bulk of the argument rested on a genetic tie Jewish people have to the land and criticism that I was “trying to force western concepts on this situation” that was “historically inaccurate and not very constructive.”

I would like to ask a few questions.

First, what allowed for the conquest of Israel in 1948? Was it that genetic tie or the same guns, gold, banking and technological advantage that had propelled all European colonial powers to conquest and displacement of local rulers for the previous three centuries?

Second, is it really so wise to stake a claim on land that belonged to someone else, forcibly evicted on your very behalf less than 75-years ago, on a genetic continuity between Polish Jews and Yemeni Jews?

Does my Germanic heritage and connection to that land allow me to go kick some Turks out of Berlin and reclaim my birthright?

An extremely slippery slope.

I am not anti-Israel, not at all, and have thoroughly enjoyed my time in the bravest little nation on earth, even once partaking in a Shabbat dinner with settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank, but genetic arguments as it relates to the conflict is a decidedly western concept.

Can it not be called what it is? An exclusive club with membership and participation ruthlessly and brutally enforced?

Also have you watched Lawrence of Arabia?

It is the greatest movie ever made.