Yes I know, Mooser. But there’s another thing that it’s very much about, also stated right on the masthead. After all, it’s not called Brits Against Zionism, or Londoners Against Zionism, or East Enders Against Zionism. It’s a J-blog, by and for Jews, and ultimately about competing visions of Jewish identity. Now that’s a lovely thing to be and it’s a sorely needed conversation, but sadly it also means that it’s going to be about one subject above all others: anti-anti-semitism. When the two goals collide, there’s never any doubt about which takes precedence.

Just read the comments and you’ll see what gets the juices flowing over there. (Or just examine your own posts.)

This refusal-to-readmit-its-citizens-to-their-homeland changed Israel’s electorate, which would have had a quite different demographic makeup had the refugees been allowed to return (and, of course, also been allowed to vote).

Do we call a country a “democracy” if it has expelled a significant demographic just because the army (or the government or the majority) didn’t want it to be part of the electorate, and refused the exiles readmittance?

It appears that Israel and its friends have no trouble pretending that this Israel (the real Israel) is a “democracy”, but I cannot join them.

Like hell it is. It is logically and legally impossible to be a citizen of the American state and not be an American, to be a citizen of the French state and not be French. It is however, the reality of well over a million people to be citizens of the Jewish State without being Jews. Your analogy is simply false – without even getting into refugee or naturalisation issues.

Damn! Broke my Witty rule again.

And you’re seriously going to equate that to American or even French citizenship?

The problem with you, Witty, is the gum is under your feet, sticking you to the ground so that you cannot move away from your zeal for Zionism. That’s not exactly “chewing.”

The problem that I observe is that too many can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, left and right.

“Realists” are beginning to be quoted in the mainstream:

“Extended deterrence would be meant to protect friends and allies in the Mideast and Europe from the threat of an Iranian nuclear attack — not unlike the security umbrella the U.S. provided for Germany during the Cold War, when the central threat was seen as either a Soviet land assault or a nuclear attack.

Some question whether such an argument can dissuade Iran, but retired Gen. John Abizaid, who oversaw U.S. military operations in the Mideast from 2003-07, says he thinks that a nuclear-armed Iran would make rational judgments.

“The historical evidence would suggest that Iran is not a suicide state,” he told a University of Virginia conference Oct. 5. “So it’s my military belief that Iran can be deterred.”

Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in an AP interview that Washington is mistaken in insisting that it would be intolerable for Iran to have nuclear weapons.

“Just as the world tolerates North Korea and Pakistan it would have to tolerate Iran as well,” she said.

link to news.yahoo.com

A realist American general echoing the sentiments of an Iranian peacenik, published prominently by the AP – admittedly at the end of article, but then no space was given at all to the “bomb Iran” crowd.