Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Better than I could say it myself:

1) David Grossman, like most of Israel’s leftists, sees binationalism as simultaneously utopian and dismissive of Jewish feelings. “You know, binationalism doesn’t work in so many places in the world,” he said. “You see it in Belgium now. And they expect, with this really hateful combination of Jews and Arabs, that it will succeed here? It’s so wrong. Part of the cure for the historical distortions of both peoples is that they need a place of their own with defined borders. We have to heal separately. I’m a little suspicious of these people who would experiment on us with binationalism.”

Reality, he said, has made a Jewish state necessary. “Since the world has failed to defend Jewish existence, there is a need for a place for the Jews to implement their culture and their values and their language and their history, a place in which to recover.”
-Jeffrey Goldberg

2) The Law of Return, despite all the criticisms of it, cannot be abrogated without also abrogating Israel's status as a Jewish state. Which, of course, is precisely what many of the law's critics would like to do. But it needs to be rethought and reformulated. The times have changed while it has not, and it is time to bring it in line with them. -Hillel Halkin

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