Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Fourth District) spoke at Congregation Sinai on Nov. 6. She had recently traveled to Israel and the Arab world, and she discussed her experiences and observations with about 100 people.
Her trip to Israel Aug. 7-15 was sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, which is affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She also was one of five members of the House of Representatives who participated in a visit to Arab countries Sept. 24-Oct. 3 as a delegate from the House Democracy Partnership.
The Congregation Sinai event was co-sponsored by AIPAC’s Midwest office, the synagogue, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
AIPAC does not allow press coverage of its events, but the JCRC arranged for Moore to speak briefly with Chronicle editor Leon Cohen afterward. Selected and edited excerpts of that conversation follow:
What do you think you learned from the trip that you may not have known before or that changed your thinking about things?
I’ve been to Israel three other times before this last trip, and this trip in particular was more [about] the geographical complexities and challenges facing a peace agreement. We looked at the so-called “narrow waist” of Israel, looked at the rocket ranges of Hezbollah fire, talked a little bit about the complexities of sharing resources like water… Just the complications of the West Bank and Gaza being separated, the complexities of land swaps that would ensure the security of Israel, and it was a whole different level of respect and appreciation for the difficulty in not simply just drawing some sort of line saying “this is Israel” and “this is Palestine.”
And did that change your thinking about how you’d want to approach this and how the U.S. should help?
I think it just is incumbent upon us to have a negotiated settlement. I think that I already came to the conclusion that simply declaring a Palestinian state was not the path, but negotiations were absolutely imperative, because there are major issues like Jerusalem, but there are also other issues, painful issues [like] which settlements can or cannot be swapped out in the West Bank, what the water arrangements will be. I was reinforced in my belief that it was extremely important to negotiate settlement as opposed to just some mere declaration.
The rest of this article will appear in the December-Chanukah edition.
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