As I watched, from the sidelines, the Dec. 23 protest on Main Street in Brattleboro, I saw someone holding a small cardboard sign that helped me feel a little better about what I was witnessing. The sign read, "Yes Israel, Yes Palestine."
Yes, that's a message that I would feel good sending out to the world. Yes, I want the fighting to stop; I want all sides to sit together and make peace. Yes, I, too, am horrified by all the violence.
But I will not join protests under banners of anti-Zionism. Why? Because if we take the simple definition of Zionism (for example, from the Oxford Dictionary) as: "A movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel," that would imply that anti-Zionism is against the development and protection of a Jewish nation.
The implications of sending that message out to the world are horrifying to me.