A change of heart and mind

"My views began to change in my late teens. On my annual trips over ( to Israel) I began to feel less and less comfortable. The notion that the place belonged to me solely because of what my religion happened to be didn’t sit quite well. In Israel I saw Palestinians and came to understand that this land had once been theirs. How was it that all this was supposed to belong to me? The separation began to seem not a good thing but a bad thing. I tried to reconcile my uneasiness with my allegiance to Israel, but many new questions arose. I tried to forget them - only I couldn’t. Some of these trips were followed by family get-togethers where a cousin of mine would challenge me on my still right-wing Zionist views. I found I had no morally or intellectually acceptable answers. College soon followed and I came to the unexpected and inevitable realizations that much of what my community had taught me about Israel was falsehood, or worse, indoctrination and my former Zionism had been predicated on this dishonesty."