We at the Bethlehem blog receive many comments from Israeli readers. From these comments two things become clear;
1) That there are many people in Israel that have no idea, whatsoever, what life is like in a Palestinian city.
2) That many people feel threatened by what we write. We are regarded as an enemy because we speak from a Palestinian city. Therefore we are on the 'other side' and clearly hate Jews. Why else would we side with this murderous race of terrorists?

In response to these comments I would like to make several things clear about my own reasons for writing about this city and criticising Israeli policy.

Firstly, I am well aware of what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust. As a result of wide spread anti-Semitism in Europe (NOT just from the Nazis) hatred and fear were allowed to spiral out of control. Jewish people were dehumanised to the extent that no one resisted when the Nazis dragged away their Jewish neighbours. People knew what was happening on some level, but they turned a blind eye whilst over six million Jewish human beings were butchered like cattle. It was a massive crime against humanity and its enormity still lies deep within the Jewish collective mind today. Everyone in Israel has a relative (or perhaps many) who lost their lives. For the survivors the only question left in life was 'how do we guarantee that this will never happen again?'

For many Jewish people the answer was Israel. The task was to build a state just for Jewish people. A place where being Jewish was a merit not a curse. A place governed by Jewish people, with Jewish courts and a Jewish military. Never again would someone come in the middle of the night to take your children, not when the police and the people with the guns were all Jewish. For a people who had lost so much, I can see how perfect this dream must have seemed.

One thing stood between the Jewish people and the realisation of their dream. The British (occupied) Colony of Palestine, which was chosen because of ancient historical ties with the Jewish religion, was already populated by Arabic people. Roughly 70% were Muslims, 20% were Christians and 10% were Arab Jews. This is not the case today and there is only one possible way that the population could have gone from 10% being Jewish to an overall Jewish majority.

Driven by the fear which the Holocaust created the Jewish people fought another war which they believed was for their survival. Israel could not simply be founded as a settler state. It had to be founded as a military state because the settlers needed protecting from the native population who were being displaced. The refugee camps throughout the Middle East, and the vast world Diaspora which calls itself Palestinian, is testimony to the fact that a second genocide happened. Through fear and a desperate urge for self protection, David became Goliath.

Instead of bringing peace and security for the Jewish nation, what have these actions earned? More death, more killing and a state in almost constant war for the last 60 years. Every time a bomb explodes in Tel Aviv, do you really feel you have found the peaceful Jewish paradise which you were looking for? Violence has spawned more violence.

I write for the Bethlehem blog because I want peace. I want the constant violence to end as I recognise that peace for the Palestinians alone is a contradiction. The only peace which can exist will come from both sides feeling secure. In bringing peace to the Palestinians you will finally find the peace you have been looking for since 1942. In order for this to happen some hard truths must be faced. You must admit that your country is not only a coloniser, it is also a colony. That the white skin many of you bare comes from the cooler climate of northern Europe, where you ancestors lived before the Holocaust.

When you call the Palestinians terrorists, do you not recognise that every Jewish city in Israel was built on the ruins of an Arabic city which stood before it? Your ancestors may have lived here Two Thousand years ago, but many of the individuals who were expelled in 1948 are still alive and living in refugee camps today, with the keys to their original homes sting hanging on their walls. The population of this country may have changed many times over the millennia, but do you really think that ancient history justifies 'wringing' the native population out of the land in the Twentieth century? Have you never seen the poverty stricken Arabic minorities living in the old cities of Haifa, Acre and Jaffa? Have you ever wondered why some towns like Nazareth are entirely inhabited by Arabs even though they are inside Israel? The Jewish state you have created came at the price of destroying the people who lived there before you. If peace is ever to be achieved you must admit to your own history, you must recognise the level of injustice which has to be reached in order to make people desperate enough to become 'terrorists'.

Today the colonisation continues. Even in the West Bank (a place with a large Arabic majority) your own country's extremists are building new colonies inside densely populate Arabic areas.

Do I blame the people of Israel for what they have done to Palestine? No. Do I hate Jewish people for dismantling this small nation? No. The hatred and the fear which the Nazis created during the holocaust has simply been passed on.

I do not blame you, as I do not blame the Palestinian bomber who was born in a refugee camp, saw the soldiers come for his father in the night and saw his own brother shot in the street for throwing stones. When you label the Palestinians terrorists you are dehumanising them as much as the Nazi dehumanised you.

The nation of Israel deserves to have peace. A fight that started against the Nazi in 1933 has yet to reach conclusion. If you want peace, recognise what you have done to your neighbours, the brutal actions that were taken through fear. Visit the outskirts of a Palestinian city and see the old men and women being harassed and interrogated in front of an 8 meter high concrete ghetto wall. Look at the young frightened Israeli soldier who is holding the gun instead of being at home like the other youths in the world, and ask yourself 'will this bring Israel the peace it has been seeking?'

The writers at the Bethlehem blog do not mean to be hostile to the people of Israel. We wish to bring to you a simple message.

What we see in this city will not bring peace, only more violence. If you want peace, admit to your past and stop colonising what remains of the Palestinian territory. Every time a Palestinian dies in a house demolition, or an Israeli dies in a Tel Aviv café, and the suffering of both sides increases, the only person laughing is the Nazi - like an echo through decades past.