Earlier this week, on Aug. 27, I wrote in Al-Monitor that Israel must be a part of the coalition being formed against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. I claimed that it had a right to be a part of that group of nations that will eventually set out to punish an insane leader who is using chemical weapons to slaughter his people. I argued that vetoing Israel’s participation is the equivalent of isolating the country internationally. Given the barrage of comments I received, either directly or on Al-Monitor’s Facebook page, I discovered that very few readers agree with me. Most of the people who responded to my article seemed to think that I had lost my mind, and that’s putting it nicely.
“This column causes me to question your grip on reality,” one wrote, while another stated that there is no need for Israel to put its soldiers and civilians at risk just to appear humane before the rest of the world. One writer, who identified as a Muslim, complained about the duplicitous morality he saw not only in the article, but also in the worldview of Israelis in general. He wondered how we suddenly became so sensitive and so humane, when the Palestinian people continue to live under occupation.
