These, and other like views, are the destroyers from within.

Baseless hatred and intolerance of different opinions have harmed Israel before. Folks like the one who uttered the shameful quote are ripping down the sukkah of David as we speak.

Everyone is certainly entitled to their views.

Shalom

You cannot be a man of God nd endless war at the same time. You cannot be a man of God and ignore the apartheid wall; you cannot engage in the favorite ploy of preachers–the straw men–I won’t let you. You give us no alternative to Jeish repressio and apartheid. How dare you say that American Jewry cannot survive if Israel, as it now exists, doesn’t. It did for 200 years. America is a safer place for Jews than Israel. Indeed, so is Egypt and Jordan. Return to the dream of the founders–one Israel Jews and Arbs. The rest is endless war and the demise of what Jews and you are supposed to stand for–”Justice, Justice shall ye pursue.”

So, for what’s it worth here are my thoughts about the two paragraphs in your column.

You are of course correct, generally speaking no country at war can maintain the same freedoms as those countries that are not facing an existential threat. However, what needs to be defined more specifically is the definition of “existential threat” and “freedoms”.
I think that we can both agree that the Arabs living in Israel do not pose an “existential threat”, although some of them may be security risks. I think that the same holds true for the Israeli Bedouins and the Israeli Druze. But, as you are very well aware, and as the American Jews are becoming increasingly aware (I am not writing here about the American Orthodox community but rather about the much larger Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist communities) these Israeli communities have been denied the same level of institutional support as has the Jewish population. And, yes, I agree that when resources are low one must first care for ones “family”. But, the degree of neglect by the government of these communities is not correlated with to the available resources, it is as a result of those communities being the “Other”, and that, in my mind, diminishes from Democracy as it is currently practiced in Israel. And that diminishing will be increasingly more difficult to explain.

Your argument, that Israel can not allow itself to put in place democratic the kind of democratic norms, that are common in Western Democracies, because Israel is in a state of war, should be qualified by the following realities that are specific to the State of Israel:

A relatively small, but increasingly influential, segment of the Jewish community in Israel is not supportive of democracy as a desirable form of government. Many in Israel’s religious Jewish community would prefer a theocratic form of government and many in the Russian community would not shed a tear if democracy was replaced by an autocracy, as long as they would be on the “inside”.

But, the more significant internal impediment to Israel’s ability to adopt a more democratic governance apparatus, especially in the West Bank, is the state’s implementation of foreign and domestic policies that are based on either messianism or romanticism, and that, my friend, to phrase it colloquially, is nuts!

So you see I agree with you that Israel could not possibly put in place democratic norms of the kind that some American Jews would like it to. But, in the service of “transparency” you should also explain that some of the reasons that it can not do more to increase democracy within its domain is not due to existential threats, but rather is as a result of internal constraints that the state itself often perpetuates or turns a blind eye to.

The Palestinians OWN defintiion of “justice” is to be left alone you’ll find, if you were to for example TALK to them.

“The international community is not asking Israel to cease to exist. Nor are the Palestinians even. They are just asking for justice, which is something any adult can see – they are not receiving from Israel.”

Actually, anyone who promotes the fiction of the “right” of return (of great-grandchildren of refugees from the war the Arabs started in 1947) is asking that Israel cease to exist as a Jewish state. And anyone who supports the “BDS” movement is asking that Israel cease to exist as a Jewish state,since that movement demands not just Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank, but also this non-existent “right”. Read the PACBI statements.

As long as the Palestinians’ OWN definition of “justice” is the elimination of Israel, then they will be unable to build a state of their own.

“why do the JEWISH PEOPLE continue to war, year after…”

Why do you focus on jewish people; esp in a country that is being attacked since inception like israel. why not ask why a rich country like America, mostly inhabited by jesus loving christians (peace, love, and forgiveness) is at war year after year–that might be more interesting.

“…path to statehood”
Israel is already a State–that’s one reason i asked if you had been there.

and for Wisdo–”justice from israel…” what would justice look like? Israeli’s firing thousands of rockets from ashdod? send terrorists into cafes in the west bank blowing up people at parties?

no, i cannot have a discussion with you.

the part of Daniel’s piece that i find most interesting, is the belief that American jewish life would not survive the end of Israel. Jewish life has survived the Romans, the Nazi’s, the Persians, the Brittish etc etc. Why wouldnt Jewish life in America not ‘survive’? Maybe no country in the world would survive the end of Israel, G-d forbid. And this i have an easier time believing.