A few of my old friends from childhood have moved frighteningly to the right over the years and nowhere is this more clear than when it comes to the politics of Israel.

Today, when President Obama suggested that an Israeli return to the 1967 borders would be a good starting point for a resolution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, they all freaked out.

Seriously, the right projects this myth that the current right wing hard line Israeli government is how it always has been and always will be. There is no opposition view possible other than those offered by terrorists.

They seem to forget the assassination of Yitzak Rabin. The former hard-liner saw the logic of the opposition and realizing that it was either a state of permanent war or an active pursuit of peace, became an advocate for change. He was killed after speaking and singing at a fucking peace rally for gods sake. Those that benefited from his murder are now running Israel.

It's nice to see Obama show some leadership, initiative and backbone for once.

My grandfather, before he left Lithuania in the 1920s was a zionist; he had a pass to get on a boat to Palestine -- he never made it there, he grew impatient. He grew tired of the anti-jewish violence of eastern Europe and made his way across the Atlantic.

I once asked him why, being an orthodox jew and a zionist who almost moved to Israel instead of Canada and then the US, he had never visited Israel.

From his perspective, the state of Israel was a giant mistake. His group of zionists, which I later learned was sometimes referred to as Autonomist Zionism, explicitly rejected the idea of a Jewish State.

They looked at the history of Jews in Europe and they saw pogroms, forced conversions, organized attempts at extermination and a people being constantly on the run. They then looked at the history of Jews in the middle east, and they saw communities allowed to put down deep and long term roots. It's really easy to forget that until the founding of the State of Israel, jews living in arab nations lived a much more secure and comfortable life than their comrades in Europe.

For my grandfather, the vision was autonomous communities of jews living in the arab nation of Palestine. In his opinion the US and Britain, eager to have a friendly outpost as a tool of the Cold War, granted State power to the right wing of the zionist movement and that's were it all went bad. It really shocked me to think about it, was there really a faction of the zionist movement that was not also imperialist and colonialist? I have not been able to find much documentation of this faction but my grandpa rarely told lies.

It's an interesting perspective and provides an interesting context for thinking about current events.