Jewish State

The trouble with Israel is that it's a Jewish state. Like the Jews, it's a pain in the neck, and the world would feel relieved without it. Or at least if Israel insists on persisting, let it have the good grace to be, again like the Jews historically, a victim. If only some Jews had been killed in the recent tragic events in Jerusalem! Then we could be sure the chancelleries of the world would have pulled from their files the form letter they dispatched when Jews were murdered by various Arab terrorists, expressing their condolences.

With slow, deliberate movements, Pope John Paul II stepped onto a rain-soaked Israeli tarmac, fulfilling his life's dream of visiting the land where Christianity was born. As he continued a weeklong trip to the troubled Mideast, the Pope stressed that he had come to spread a message of coexistence to Christians, Jews and Muslims across the region and the world. "We all know how urgent is the need for peace and justice, not for Israel alone, but for the entire region," said the pontiff, deftly acknowledging the aspirations of the Arabs while according Israel the full Vatican affirmation it has sought since its founding more than 50 years ago. "May peace be God's gift to the land He chose as His own," the Pope said, concluding with the Hebrew word for peace, Shalom.

The two dozen distinguished scholars who assembled last week here for a conference celebrating the "Centenary of Political Zionism" disputed many things, but did agree on one thing. It was that Zionism, which, against enormous odds, created a thriving, democratic nation in the ancestral homeland of the Jews and brought millions of Jews from all over the world to it, transformed the self-image of the Jewish people, as well as their image in the mind of the Gentile world. As Ruth R. Wisse, director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University, summarized it: "Israel is the greatest miracle of the 20th century.

On a Galilee hillside where rustling pines once invited contemplation, the golden arches of a new McDonald's restaurant rise high above a neighboring shrine to Israel's war dead. Today's soldiers en route to the northern frontier with Lebanon pause not to pay respects to the infantrymen of the elite Golani Brigade, who died storming the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War of 1967. Rather, Golani Junction is their pit stop for a quick Quarter Pounder. It's one of many signs of the times in Israel - and not a particularly welcome one to many Israelis.

As the state of Israel turns 50, many Israelis underestimate the magnitude of their achievements. Amid the independence celebrations, Israelis are soul-searching about the growing divide between secular and religious and the hostility between Israelis of European or Middle Eastern origins. And they remain divided over whether peace with the Palestinians is possible. Israel's leaders say her security is too precarious to swap much land for peace. Enough already with the glass half empty.

Some of Israel's most vocal American friends seem surprisingly unaware of a most disturbing aspect of the Middle East quagmire: How is the Jewish state going to accommodate the 1.7 million Palestinians of the occupied territories? Through their recent uncritical support of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who says he will never trade land for peace, these friends may inadvertently be helping plant the seeds of Israel's destruction. That the ultimate goal of Israel's ruling coalition is annexation of the occupied territories is uncontested.

A refugee's plight Re: "Waiting to be a citizen," Nov. 6: Kudos for the poignant article written by Michael Vitez, describing Shmul Kaplan's struggles in the nine years since he was granted asylum and terminated in 2004 from federal Supplemental Security Income disability benefits because he has not as yet been able to become a U.S. citizen. Kaplan is a resident here at Galilee Village, and as his social worker, I am grateful for this recognition of his situation and that of other refugees in this country who hope that Congress will extend SSI eligibility to elderly and disabled refugees and asylees in an appropriations bill now that the election is over.

AMMAN SNOWS SMACK HOLY LAND Snowstorms swept the eastern Mediterranean again yesterday, blanketing Jerusalem and other cities in the region's harshest winter in more than 40 years. At least 15 people died in floods and avalanches. Israel radio said the Sea of Galilee, a major source of drinking and irrigation water for the Jewish state, was rising a half-inch an hour. With the lake level up six feet since November, the city of Tiberias was in danger of being flooded, and the radio reported last night that millions of gallons of water were released into the already flooded Jordan River.

The United Nations' overwhelming vote to repeal the 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism removes a shameful blot on the world body's record and offers another dramatic sign of how the world has changed. The resolution claimed that the ideology that called for reassembling the Jewish people in their Biblical homeland was racist. Back in 1975, this resolution was backed by the votes of 75 communist, Third World and Arab states. But on Monday, with the Soviet empire in collapse and Third World radicalism no longer in fashion, 111 states voted for repeal.

Israel and its Arab neighbors have embarked on a course toward compromise that could finally end 43 years of bitter conflict. Middle East cynics, of which there are many, say they doubt that this latest U.S.-arranged peace plan will overcome the passionate disputes that have proven intractable for so many decades. Indeed, the Israelis and Arabs remain unconvinced that the other side really wants peace enough to make concessions. Rather, they suspect each other of only acting as if they want peace to stay on the good side of the United States, the only superpower left in the post-Cold War era. The Israelis contend that Syria has thrown its lot in with Washington because it has been abandoned by Moscow, its longtime patron.

CAIRO - A leading Muslim Brotherhood member and adviser to Islamist President Mohammed Morsi created a stir in Egypt when he called on Egyptian Jews in Israel to return home because Egypt is now a democracy and because the Jewish state won't survive. Essam el-Erian's remarks in a TV appearance put the Brotherhood, which holds power in Egypt, on the spot as opponents - and some allies - jumped on the comments to denounce the group. Morsi's office this week disassociated the president from the comments, saying they were Erian's personal opinion.

Folly of Palestinian cause Daoud Kuttab's op-ed "Pointless punishment in Gaza" (Friday) continues the folly that has plagued the Palestinian cause for nearly a century. Israel should "deal politically" with Hamas, he says, an organization that denies Israel's right to exist, calls for its destruction, and eschews any solution save violence ("There is no solution ... except through jihad"). He bemoans the loss of civilian life, ignoring that Hamas deliberately positions its rocket launchers in heavily populated areas.

CAIRO - The top leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood denounced peace efforts with Israel and urged holy war to liberate Palestinian territories on Thursday - one day after the country's president, who hails from the movement, mediated a cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians to end eight days of fierce fighting. "The enemy knows nothing but the language of force," said Mohammed Badie. "Be aware of the game of grand deception with which they depict peace accords," he said in a statement carried on the group's website and emailed to reporters.

JERUSALEM - Israel's prime minister said Tuesday that he still hopes to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians, because the alternative would be absorbing them into Israel and destroying the Jewish character of the state. "I want to solve the conflict with the Palestinians because I don't want a binational state," Netanyahu told a rare news conference. "For as long as it depends on me, we will ensure the Jewish and democratic character of Israel. " The statement was notable because it in effect concedes a key argument made by Netanyahu's ideological opponents on Israel's Zionist left: A pullout from territories the Palestinian claim for a state is not just a concession that could be made in exchange for peace - but also an imperative for an Israel that wants to remain a Jewish state that is also democratic.

This week, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited President Obama in the White House. The two met, together with their national security advisers, then had a chat alone, then moved to a lunch with various high officials. Many words were exchanged, but they all might have been superfluous. Netanyahu delivered his overriding message quite efficiently, and almost wordlessly, in the form of a gift. The gift he handed Obama was a copy of "Megillah of Esther," the scroll that recounts the heroics of Queen Esther in ancient Persia.

JERUSALEM - He's considered to be one of the greatest scientists of all time. But Sir Isaac Newton was also an influential theologian who applied a scientific approach to the study of scripture, Hebrew, and Jewish mysticism. Now Israel's national library, an unlikely owner of a vast trove of Newton's writings, has digitized his theological collection - 7,500 pages in Newton's own handwriting - and put it online. Among the yellowed texts are Newton's famous prediction of the apocalypse in 2060.

I'm embarrassed to say I went to the University of Pennsylvania. Penn is a great school, and I loved learning from excellent professors and classmates and growing through the many opportunities available there. But apparently, since my graduation, Penn has decided that intellectual honesty and academic integrity are no longer among its preeminent values. Starting Friday, PennBDS, a university-recognized group, will sponsor the 2012 National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a complex issue, one that deserves serious scholarship and open, civil debate. Expect to see none of that next weekend on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, where the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement is staging a "conference. " Instead, as we should have learned from many past BDS events at colleges around the country, this will be an exercise in disinformation and propaganda, a call for political and economic warfare, and an attempt to foment hatred of Israel.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of The End of Sparta Will Israel survive? That question hasn't really been asked since 1967. Then, a far weaker Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab dictatorships that were equipped with sophisticated weapons from their nuclear patron, the Soviet Union. Now, things are worse for the Jewish state. Egyptian mobs just tried to storm the Israeli Embassy in Cairo and kill any Israelis they could get their hands on. Whatever Egyptian government emerges, it will be more Islamist than before - and may renounce the peace accords with Israel.

Rubin misses Mideast reality On reading Trudy Rubin's "A U.N. vote on Palestinian state just might offer a way forward" (Sunday), I felt I could have been reading a dispatch from Al Jazeera or the offices of any Mideast Arab state. Yes, the Arabs do indeed want a "two-state" solution, but on their terms only, which means they will accept one state, "Palestine," which would be totally Islamic, and no Jews would be allowed to live there, and the other state, called "Israel," would be overrun by up to four million Arab refugees from all over the world, causing what was Israel to become a wing of Palestine, where all the Jews would have to become second-class citizens ( dhimmis )