Poor Thomas Kuhn . Superzionist, a.k.a. Yoram Hazony, author of the quirky The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul, has drafted the author of the seminal but flawed classic of the philosophy of science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, to explain why everyone hates Israel.
I’m late in getting to Hazony’s essay, Israel Through European Eyes which he e-mailed to his fans last July 14. But it just reached me, through a series of forwards long enough to man every team in the World Cup. Like all of Hazony’s writing, it displays great erudition, has lots of footnotes, and makes some obvious points while parsing them all wrong.
Behind the excess philosophical baggage, Hazony says something that has been said before—that the antipathy that Europe, and especially Europe’s political left, displays toward Israel is deeply rooted in the Holocaust. Hazony correctly notes that Zionism and the European left learned two disparate lessons from Hitler’s genocidal program. Zionism claimed that no one would defend the Jews if they did not defend themselves, while the Europe emerged from World War II horrified at the death and destruction wrought by chauvinistic nationalism and concluded that national feelings were too dangerous to be left to politics.
The Zionists established a Jewish state, while the Europeans sought to create a pan-European political framework that would make it difficult for the fanatics of any one European nation (but those of Germany in particular) to persecute outsiders and to seek to impose hegemony on the entire continent. So we have Israel, and we have the European Union.
But Hazony can’t just say that. In keeping with his neoconservative heritage, it’s not just enough to make a political point. The issue has to be presented as the product of a fundamental philosophical error—because in the neocon universe, its ideas, more than people, that are the actors in history. Hazony offers an extensive explanation of Kuhn’s theory of scientific paradigms, but I’d suggest that anyone who wants to understand it look elsewhere. Hazony likes Kuhn because Kuhn argued that certain basic sets of ideas, which he called paradigms, inhabit different universes of ideas and therefore cannot be compared or weighed against each other in any rational way. Hazony claims that the European and Israeli views of nationalism and the nation-state are two such incompatible paradigms. Israel defends itself, and Europeans accuse it of Nazism because Israel defends Jews and not humanity as a whole.
But that’s a false dichotomy that applies only to the most ideologically hidebound of Europeans and Israelis. Auschwitz doesn’t have to have just one meaning. Most Israelis outside Hazony’s Shalem Center instinctively understand that being a Zionist does not require one to view the Holocaust solely as a crime against the Jews, and most Europeans do not view it as only a crime against humanity, rather than one against the Jews. The claim that the Jewish people deserves and needs its own nation-state does not contradict the claim that nation-states can be hazardous in the wrong hands. One can believe in the nation state as an essential political framework for preserving and advancing national cultures and protecting distinct groups, while acknowledging that power-hungry rulers and intolerant national majorities have and continued to use nation-states to oppress outsiders and minorities. Nation-states are not an absolute category; there are good ones and bad ones. The good ones build into their laws the proper checks and balances needed to ensure that national pride does not turn into xenophobia and oppression.
Israel has real enemies in Europe, people who accuse the Jewish state, and only the Jewish state, of being heir to Hitler. But when Europeans deplore Israeli settlement of the Palestinian territories, or the botched handling of the Turkish flotilla to Gaza, they do not automatically reject the claims of Zionism. Defending Israel against its enemies requires us to assert the fundamental justice of the Zionist cause—but also to work to fight racism, messianism, and political shortsightedness in Israeli politics and society. This is the important work being done in Europe by left-wing, pro-Zionist groups such as Britain’s Engage.
Kuhn’s theory of paradigms, in its bare-bones form, is almost as over-cited as the ostensible Chinese curse about living in interesting times. It can be roped in to apply to nearly everything, a sure sign of its weakness. But it’s especially unsuited to application to politics because of its categorical structure. In Kuhn’s schema (again, taken simplistically), every scientific endeavor belongs either to one paradigm or another. Nothing is in between. You can make an argument that this is a valid way of looking at the natural sciences (although I think even there it is very problematic). But in politics there are, by and large, no hard categories. A nation-state is not a hard category. There are nation-states of all different kinds, and Europeans of all different kinds, and Zionists of all different kinds. Politics is the art of finding balance between competing and often irreconcilable values. In the real political world, philosophical clarity that ignores contingencies can lead to extremism and disaster.
The irony of Hazony’s essay is that Kuhn’s philosophy leads inevitably in a direction that Hazony would deplore. Hazony wants to assert ultimate truths, one of them being the Jewish people’s right to cultural and political self-determination. But Kuhn’s view of science leads to relativism—to the assertion, made most explicitly by Paul Feyerabend, that all systems of knowledge are equally valid. Notably, most working scientists think that Kuhn’s paradigm theory doesn’t really accord with the way they pursue their work—it’s too stark and simplified. Most working Zionists should be equally skeptical about Hazony’s theoretical scaffold.
Oh, that Hazony article. I agree, it was way top-heavy with philosophical name-dropping – Kant, Kuhn, etc. That said, I don’t see what’s wrong with looking for the answer in ideas, which of course are always in the minds of real people. The Israeli-Arab war is about land and peoples, not ideas. But the attitudes of people in Europe towards Israel are conditioned on ideas which those Europeans have been taught.
The main problem with the article, though, was that Hazony identified the problem wrong. He asked why “enlightened” Europeans dislike Israel’s existence as a 19th-century-style nation-state, or at least why they so disproportionately condemn Israel’s actions. Hazony’s answer would suggest that Europeans oppose all ethnic nation-states, but that’s not the case.
What he should have asked is why Europeans see the Holocaust as teaching us that (ethnic) nation-states are bad for Europe and Israel, but not that bad for Africa and Asia. I’ve already harped on my answer enough – Western, postcolonial guilt as the leading cause – so I won’t go into it again here. Whether you agree or disagree with my own answer, it should be clear that Hazony formulated the question wrong.
Whatever the ideology, unchecked power is dangerous. If the ideology is inclusive, it can be bad enough (America) but if it is exclusive it is worse (Germany, Israel, South Africa).
Your comment about power-hungry rulers should be emphasized. It is almost impossible to separate hunger for power from high office. When this is combined with a free pass to do anything, be it by great national wealth (America) or protection and arms without restriction (Israel) then look out world.
What makes Israel such a threat is the combination of power with self-justification through the Holocaust. “Never again” means several things in practice – we will attack first, we will never be passive, our judgement of any situation will be final and not open to appeal because we are uniquely right. In addition we never apologize.
Self-righteousness is the chariot driver of the Israeli right-wing. If I may steal from Martin Luther, it is justification by Holocaust alone. And to warp another religious thought into the mind of Israeli leadership, if America be for us, who can be against us?
Israel is proof that every “people” boil down to a similar collection of human beings. We shouldn’t be surprised that Jews would come to the age-old abuse of power in the form of oppression, because they are people like the rest of us.
If only Netanyahu and company could wake up to this; could realize they are re-running the same tired movie that the world has seen countless times before – and that it’s having the same effect of antagonizing millions, if not billions of other folks.
Dear Bibi: Your leading role in The Movie: The Israel Iteration has been impressively in character. May I suggest you check out any one of the many previous iterations and watch the final reel? While you undoubtedly think your policies are novel and worthy and your people an exception, you are assuredly riding on a pair of rails taking your country to a sorry destination. There is no Holocaust switch in the tracks that will route you around it.
Human rights, or at least talk of them, transcend human boundaries, always migrating to find a temporary home. They latch onto facts of death and denial, but these facts are, in themselves, unable to sustain talk of human rights in any one place. Defense of Israel as such will fail human rights talk just as defense of America as such–or defense of the European Union as such.
Last week the Turkish government released its autopsies of the 9 killed in the May boarding of a ship trying to break the Gaza blockade. One of these dead, a 19 year old, was an American citizen. His autopsy report details five shots, one “point blank” (about 18 inches, the report says, or at least reports of the report–no, I have not read the original). The IDF has asserted no claim of gunfire against them. The boy, the autopsy says, was filming the action on deck. What exactly happened we will probably never know. The United States may speak privately to Israel, but I doubt any more than this. What the United States will definitely not do is take the incident to the International Court of Justice (the ship was in international waters at boarding), because the United States will not submit its own military to that jurisdiction, for obvious reasons. The facts abide, such as they are, but human rights cannot attach to them, for jurisdiction will not be accepted for reasons quite similar to those given by Israel. If you want to stretch toward justice, you must accept risk in turn, risk that others will similarly come after you. Human rights are toxic to all boundaries; Israel is not privileged in this, only more susceptible to attack. Whatever happened to that boy (in the US, at least, 19 is often still boyhood) will be as much lost through US inaction as Israeli defense.
Last week as well the current Israeli Foreign Minster suggested in a speech before the United Nations that Israeli Arab citizens might be annexed to a Palestinian State in return for annexing West Bank Jewish Settlements to Israel. Abstractly, there is no difference in this from deporting German Jews to Madagascar, as some pre-war Nazis advocated. Citizenship stripped is denial of jurisdiction, which denies remedy to human rights violations; that the foreign minister can chance this proposal at the UN is strong evidence that Arab Israeli rights violations are extant. Israel is not unique here. Second and third generation Turks, born in Germany, speaking German primarily, were for decades denied voting rights in their birth country. The EU, which requires universal suffrage in local elections, broke this blockade; now, I understand, such German born ethnic Turks can vote in all German elections. There were reasons to deny the vote, there always are. But human rights are not about reasons and, again, they ultimately are foe to any jurisdiction.
Zionism made a homeland for Jews. You have that. Now you could go further. Instead of deporting Arab Israeli citizens by altering the map, why not allow these citizens to import only their relatives of one generation, a small homeland for them, a small right of return to mimic the right of refuge which began Israel. Why not allow Israeli citizens holding use rights on land to sell those use rights to any Palestinian whose ancestors were expunged in 47-48–if there is some reasonable level of proof (not so easy to meet, I suspect). An Israeli citizen (presently a Jew) would have to want to sell, a Palestinian would have to have the money to buy, and prove the requisite background. These two acts would extend the logic of Zionism without, at the moment, imperiling the right of refuge core to Zionism. I say “at the moment,” for in a democracy one cannot know how this extension of the logic of Zionism will effect future polities. But justice is always future risk (the US and the International Court of Justice, above). The strange mix of Zionism and Knesset granting of citizenship for (some) resident Arabs could allow a new venue for the creation of human rights. Zionism would not die perforce, but it would have to risk. The creation of Israel would not be done. What is more Zionist than that?
Human rights are foe to all of our social creations. Their claims continue to appear because no social creation encompasses all people. The “other” is our conscience, we consciences for these others. Yoram Hazony’s phrase “Islamic terror state in Gaza” is comfortable; but small, deluded boys will continue to knock at your barriers, and the State of Israel will still end up killing them. More honest to say “someone must die and I want it to be you.” Say it, be honest and true in war. But do not expect talk of rights to stop. Japan could not do it. Germany could not do it. The United States could not do it. South Africa could not do it. Zionism is no warrant against the breath of all. But it could still, I think and hope, be something even more remarkable than its past. Decide. But, if you do, you will have to face yourselves. Perhaps better to suffocate lives in Gaze unseen.
It’s interesting to see this interpretation of Kuhn’s work. I reread his book a few years ago, and have a completely different impression of Kuhn’s work than what I see here.
Because it is science, in Kuhn it is not merely to which school of thought (which paradigm) you belong. That paradigm, that world-view, gets tested by the experimental method against the physical world and against the paradigm (the expectations/world view) itself. Because knowledge is imperfect, anomalies arise that cannot be explained by the paradigm. Scientific “progress” occurs in iterations – a new paradigm is elaborated, experiments identify anomalies, when the contradictions between theory and experimental evidence become severe enough a new paradigm (a new school of thought) is formed.
Applying this to politics is specious in that politics never has to experiment and find consistency with the observed world to maintain it’s worldview, expectations, or paradigms. Political paradigms simply run their course until extinction or conquest ends the paradigm.
If I were to engage in social Darwinism, or in this case “geopolitical Kuhnism”, I would merely state that Zionism has been an evolving paradigm, and that many goals of that paradigm don’t “jive” with what we observe of the world (specifically the conflict between Jewish values and occupation). This gives rise to the need for a new Zionist paradigm. Anything more – like comparisons to Europe, as if heliocentric vs. earth centric astronomy was being debated – is a real stretch.
Actually Chaim, I think the essay was a good one because he explained precisely why Israel can do no right in the eyes of some. The European Union is a grand attempt at post-nationalism, and Israel is indeed a nation State. As someone who has spent (wasted?) time online talking about these issues, I thought the essay achieved new ground in explaining the way Israel perceived negatively, all the time.
I agree with Hazony’s basic premise as to why facts are irrelevant for certain ideologues who seem to represent modern Europe’s hostility towards Israel.
However, I would argue that support for Zionism wasn’t ever particularly high in the world, except maybe right after the Six Day War. The much vaunted 2/3 UN vote consisted of the USSR, which wanted to dismantle Britain’s colonial monopoly on the Middle East, as well as several European nations who wanted a place to dump the Jews who were living in DP camps. Of course the crucial votes came from (literally) banana republics in Latin America, and this might have had to do with a remarkable Zionist banana tycoon based in New Orleans pulling some political strings (no joke).
Also, the ‘post-national’ European paradigm might be a flash in the pan. It wouldn’t have been possible without the benign stewardship and de facto occupation of the US. For example, had the US not encouraged France and Germany to cooperate in the postwar era, the EEC would likely never have happened, and as late as 1999, had the US not intervened in former Yugoslavia to bomb the Serbs into submission, I seriously doubt the adoption of the Euro currency or expansion of the EU could have happened.
And more importantly, the dream already seems to be unravelling. Within living memory of Europe’s extermination of its last minority, they are already at crisis point over their new Muslim minority, and right wing populist, ie nationalist, governments are gaining ground everywhere.
And of course, what Hazony ignores is that in order to achieve this harmonious post-national Europe, Europeans first had to divide themselves into ethnically homogeneous nations following the collapse of the great empires. It’s a bit rich for the most ethnically homogenized nation-states on earth to preach to other nation states to do what they themselves could and would never do, and that’s the epitome of their hypocrisy. What Hazony does not explicitly state is that the Nazis didn’t carry out the Holocaust in spite of European opposition, but with active support and collaboration from the very nation states who now criticize Israel for its nationalist character. Without that support, the Holocaust could never have happened, as it didn’t in a few small places like Denmark.
And most importantly where Israel is concerned is the paradigm shift towards Zionism. For centuries Jews lived as a nation without a country, and we saw what happened. Before the Nazi era, most Jews were not Zionists. Afterwards most are Zionists, for obvious reasons. That’s the determinant factor for Israel’s continued existence, not fickle European opinion. Most of us are far more swayed by the reality of Europe than the rhetoric of Europe, that’s what matters.
And most
Yes, Dave, all of us only care about our race and nation, and that is why one has to protect oneself from all other races and nations. If someone fails to hold this view, they are either traitorous or naively dangerous. Deviation from true conflict is a weapon used by others against you in that true conflict; deviation is not just an affront but a bullet fired against you.
Sterilize them, deport them, trade them to back to their own people/race, suffocate them economically until they conform. It is the only way humans are.
Not a novel doctrine, but then the only true way cannot be novel–it is as old as old can be. If anything else were possible, what would that say about you? Let us each enjoy the certainty that only our people matter.
I don’t even know what you’re talking about, gregory. Frankly, your first post is unreadable and your second post is a childish lecture that has nothing whatsoever to do with my post.
Yes, dave, I ranted–in my 50’s. And the same day as my rant Haaretz reports
“Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Tuesday that the Palestinians’ refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state raises concern that before reaching a peace deal, they would try to create autonomous Arab regions within Israel.”
Assuming “within Israel” refers to land recognized by the Israeli High Court as under civilian jurisdiction, Arab (citizens?) are now accused of trying to congregate in the country of their birth! Will a majority city council which is Arab fall under this prediction? This logic yeilds a race war, and I would rant before seeing another (another) one of those.
Unlike some opposed to Israeli State policy, I KNOW Zionism is better than this. I, a nothing, will not give up on this belief; so I rant.
Well, Gregory, good luck with your quest. I happen to believe that the decision to launch Intifada 2000 was a horrendous move on the part of the Palestinians that will set back the “mutual recognition paradigm” at least half a generation. But a fervent idealist (ideologue?) like yourself instinctively understands that time is irrelevant; however long your perfected Zionism takes to manifest itself is how long it will take, and your continued support will be unwavering. It’s not all that dissimilar to the ultra-orthodox and their version of a perfected Israel.
But surely you realize that this sort of idealism doesn’t always mesh with the real world, full of imperfections and imperfect people.
Zionism is many things to many people. On one hand, they said the Jewish state would be a light unto nations, and clearly the Israel we know is far from perfect.
In the more avuncular sense, Israel is a chance to give Jews normalcy: a chance to become goyim, in the literal meaning of the word and perhaps in the vernacular understanding of the word as well.
For 2,000 years the Jews had the luxury of creating firmly in the realm of the intellect. They could argue for generations as they perfected their virtual society because they were the people of the book, not the people of the soil aka the goyim.
We all have our dreams of how things should be and how they would be if we were in charge. But when it actually comes to implementing these ideals into reality, there are inevitably snafus. I can imagine a perfect symphony in my head, so can everybody, but nobody can transfer that symphony from the realm of the imagination into the real world.
The effective people are the ones who can make do with what is there, who can roll with the adversity and unforeseen circumstances. It doesn’t matter how much of a genius you are or how pure your soul is if you get flustered to the point of chronic distraction at the first sign of trouble.
As I said earlier, most Jews weren’t Zionists in 1932, by 1947 most Jews were Zionists. This is certainly not because in the intervening 15 years the Yishuv impressed them as a light unto nations, but because the real world reared its ugly head and slapped us all across the face in that decade and a half.
When an airplane is trying to navigate turbulent and sometimes unfriendly skies, you can complain about some passengers being treated unfairly and losing their seats, but for God’s sake don’t expect the crew to drop everything over it.
Please don’t get outraged and remind me that there is no time for airplane analogies when an American citizen gets a bullet in the head on the Mavi Marmara or when ha’aretz reports that Lieberman wants a loyalty oath. Let’s just say you’re free to rant all you want wherever you want, but I don’t see how continually inserting your peeve of the day into a basically unrelated discussion is at all productive. Actually, it seems self indulgent. Where rants are concerned, Gregory, oftentimes less is more.
Dave,
I too think the 2000 intifada is too much silenced on the left. As I think the Gaza bombardment of late 08 early 09 too much silenced on the right. All of the many sides know death will continue; all they want is that that death be redirected elsewhere. And the calculus of death in invariant to ideology.
Your racial protective logic will lead, really has already lead, to apartheid. Those passengers losing their seats in your racial plane really shouldn’t have been given tickets in the first place. You are in danger not just of having them rolling in the ailes during turbulence, but opening the door and throwing them out. A danger– or a wish?
I am aware of Nazi history. The claim you would live that history unending is a yoke on those you would fly to protection. You may have your aparthied. Transfer natural born Arab Israeli citizens to a never existent foreign State, not by transport, just by pen. Have a loyalty oath which will humble the naturally born foregin in your land. Warn of coming enclaves of foregins growing as cancer in your vitals. Settle land to save other land. Buy land and then allow it only to be sold in use right to those deemed of Jewish descent. And kill when the rebellions come, condemning the rebel for just being.
Label me a ranter to silence my kind. Better, just laugh. That will work–for a time. But there will come a time when you are silencing those failing the call of your race. Apartheid will work for a time, but only that. What you think you have will be transformed in any case. There is still time, perhaps, to shift that transformation, to conserve something of the right of return, of refuge.
Take heart. Perhaps the German Chancellor agrees with you, each in our own House, protected from all other Houses. I supect even the Israeli High Court will ultimately turn from this.
Gregory, I’m not Avigdor Lieberman.
And Israel isn’t a Mitteleuropean nation state. Although anyone who follows current events is used to frequent comparisons of Israel to Nazis and other forms of ethnofascism, the fact is the face of modern Europe with its quaint little nation states was created not just by expulsion but by extermination.
Say what you want, but there is nothing comparable with Israel and its ethnic war of creation. As you know, expelled Jews were considered the lucky ones, because they still had the gift of life. But somehow with Palestinians, expulsion is equivocated with extermination. Central Europe is harmonious now because the minorities have all been murdered. Exterminated people cause no strife. In fact, it is precisely because Israel has not gone to European measures that we have the current situation. I for one am glad about that. But if ‘the world’ is going to accuse you of genocide, what difference does it make whether there was genocide or not. That’s the irony: Europe is now harmonious because the minorities weren’t merely dispossessed, but disappeared. In Israel, where the defeated population was merely expelled in large numbers while a significant chunk also remained in place–not only that but multiplied in great numbers–there are accusations of genocide, apartheid, and Israel’s illegitimacy.
And of course, much of Israel’s criticism comes from Europe. Oh, the irony. These Europeans will explain that America is hopelessly biased because there is too much Jewish influence. What does that actually mean if you bother to parse it out? Does it mean that unlike Europe, America didn’t cull its Jewish population and purge it from society? Europeans will be shocked, shocked if you dare suggest that, but what else could they really mean?
Anyway, Israel has a sizable minority population, which in polite Europe would have been exterminated or expelled by now just on principle. And yet Israel also has a sizable affiliation of refugees that seek to delegitimize their very existence.
Considering its circumstances, I’d say Israel has behaved quite well in comparison to other nation states of this past century. I’m no supporter of Lieberman or right wing causes and populism in general. It’s easy to lament Israel’s direction and worry about what direction it’s heading, but let’s remember that the “good guys” in the Israel-as-bully paradigm, the (non Israeli Arab) Palestinians, would do to Israeli Jews in a heartbeat what they claim Israel is doing to them.
There are so many parameters to this situation, it can be daunting to comprehend. I guess it’s easiest just to dismiss Israel from afar, from the comfort of a nation whose hostile minority populations have long been neutralized and are no longer around to cause a scene.
Dave,
I believe you are largely correct about Europe’s past–and you can add the United States too. In the second quarter of the 19th Century the US Supreme Court essentially said that the Cherokee Indians in the state of Georgia could not be moved from their land. Famously, President Andrew Jackson (who graces the US $20 bill) said “the Court has made its decision, now let it enforce it.” He forced the Cherokee nation westward in what became known as the “trail of tears.”
For long, two decades or more, I have thought Israel in a situation the West has never experienced: ascendent, it could nonetheless not expunge all defeated from its land. Frankly, I think Israel is poised at a new step in the development of civilization. It cannot do what has always been done before it. On another thread of this blog I have tried to suggest how Israel might move forward, indeed, move civilization forward, dealing directly with the harm, on all sides, of the past. Perhaps post apartheid South Africa has made a forward movement as well through its Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I am not trying to present “the answer” to this unending hell of conflict, just suggest lines of thought that might find ground within Israel itself. I do not think you can neutralize a hostile minority population without decimating it; but you can give it your own tools of ideological defense and so change BOTH sides, in hope.
The right populist protectionism (propelled by immigrants!) I think will need check by the elite institution of the Israeli High Court. That Court has of yet apparently not declared the Declaration of Independence as fundamental law, grounding even the Kenesset. But the United Nations vote for partition stipulated that each side create a Decleration of Independence and that this Declaration be absorbed into the nascent countries’ constitituion. Israel accepted the parition at first; its High Court could argue that in doing so the Declaration became fundamental law. That Declaration says in part
“Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the “Ingathering of the Exiles”; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
and
“in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months — to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions. ”
These passages are perhaps more powerful than the American Constitution’s 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause. No Knesset passed Loyalty Oath could infringe these clauses if they were given the status of foundational, constitutional law. I am not saying this will happen. But I see in your history a path forward. It will require the hurts of the present to be seen. But it would also make fundamental principles live again.
I know this is arrogant to write. But I truly believe there is a way out, for Israelis, made by Israelis. At its end, if at all successful, Israel would not be what it is today. But, as I have said previously, I believe what it is today ultimately unsustainable.
Often “middle ways” are seen as averages of conflicting views. I see something else. I think of a middle way as taking parts of conflicting views to make something new, not an average, keeping parts of what were in opposition whole, but now combined into something else. Or so I see.
I know I have used much posting space lately and have said what I can say. Thank you, hosts, for letting people so speak in your created space.
Has anyone noticed that a part of the Jewish State is missing? Why is our heartland not part of our state?!
For a different perspective, see this:
http://tinyurl.com/JewishRights
and this:
http://tinyurl.com/LeftWingMythsandLies