A Jew among 25,000 Muslims

[bemildred]

Even as a young girl in Wimbledon Susan Nathan knew
she would one day move to Israel. But why did she
choose to settle in the Arab town of Tamra? She explains
to Jonathan Cook

---

She makes an incongruous figure, waiting in front of the central
mosque in the northern Israeli town of Tamra. There is no danger I
will miss her. She has short blonde hair, in contrast to the rest of
the women who cover their dark hair with scarves, and is wearing
a loose-fitting floral kaftan, better suited to the streets of
Wimbledon, her former home, than here in the Middle East.

The difference runs much deeper than mere looks: Susan Nathan
is the only Jew among 25,000 Muslims in Tamra, one of the
country's dozens of Arab communities whose council is run by
Islamic fundamentalists. She is one of only two Israeli Jews known
to have crossed the ethnic divide: the other is the controversial
academic Uri Davis, who lives in nearby Sakhnin.

Nathan, a 54-year-old teacher and former Aids counsellor with
the London Lighthouse Project, arrived in Israel four years ago,
after the break-up of her marriage. For the first few months she
shared a tiny room in an absorption centre near Tel Aviv. "I was
breastfed Zionism. My parents were prominent members of the
liberal Jewish community in London and were firm friends of Abba
Eban," she says, referring to the Israeli foreign minister during the
epoch-changing period of the 1967 six-day war, when Israel
captured the West Bank and Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. "At the
age of 10 or 11 I remember telling my parents that one day I would
live in Israel."

Guardian

[Darranar]

1. Interesting article...

I still think that a one-state solution is impossible, however. there are too many extremists and there is too much hatred on both sides. Maybe after a two-state solution for a generation or so, especially if there is actually peace then.

[bemildred]

3. I don't have an axe to grind WRT one or two states.

I am not all that much into states, but if it floats
your boat, that is all right with me.

Either way, being friends beats the shit out of
what you have now, and what she is up to cannot hurt.

She has more balls than any of them.

[Darranar]

4. Agreed...

What she is up to most certainly cannot hurt.

[vierundzwanzig]

5. One state solution is not unthinkable

It is the only equitable solution I can see.

But as you say, this is not the prevailing opinion.

[Darranar]

6. In a perfect world...

there'd be a complete one-state solution. Ther would only be one country, a dispenser of global justice through every corner of teh world.

That isn't the way the world is, however; it is far from perfect. I would much rather accept a slightly unjust solution (the two-state) if it would bring peace, if the one-state is impossible.

[newyorican]

2. good read

:thumbsup: