In addition to fomenting and inciting violence against Jews, the anti-Israel agitators and demonstrators who demonize Israel as a state, Israelis, and supporters of Israel collectively with calls for “Death to Israel,” “Death to the IDF,” and “Death to Zionists” willfully ignore all those Israelis and Zionists who have spoken out against and are condemning the policies and actions of the Netanyahu government.

A case in point is the open letter recently addressed to President Trump by Israeli Major General (Ret.) Matan Vilnai as chair of Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS) in advance of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s recent trip to Washington, DC.

CIS is a movement made up of “over 550 retired IDF colonels and generals as well as Mossad, Shin Bet (Internal Security), Police, NSC and Diplomatic corps equivalents” who are “committed to securing Israel’s future as the strong democratic home of the Jewish people.” According to its mission statement, “CIS views separation from the Palestinians, leading to an eventual two-state solution, as a most essential condition for a secure future and is convinced that the continued slide toward a one-state reality jeopardizes that vision and must be reversed.”

This alone puts CIS and its members on the other side of the Israeli political divide from the Netanyahu government and that has consistently sought to undermine Israel’s democracy and that categorically rejects any consideration, let alone recognition, of Palestinian rights and Palestinian self-determination in any shape or form.

Vilnai’s letter, couched as a “Red Alert,” calls President Trump’s attention to the looming “calamity” of “escalating violence” by, to use Vilnai’s term, “Jewish terrorists” – that is, radical Israeli settlers – against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. “It is no secret,” Vilnai wrote, “that certain members of our current government orchestrate much of........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)