Aszik and Gang : Stuff it !Zionism arose as a defense mechinism because of teriffic folks in Islam and Christianity who thought it was fun to treat Jews as second class people and kill them every once in awhile. Get over it. Its the so called Palestinians turn in the barrel. In 3000 years you can get out.

Thank you for the book suggestion!

Best regards

It is curious that Mr. Ignatius has gone in for long, 19th-Century novels. I have gone in the opposite direction; I find them insufferable, albeit classics. Only the 19th Century had the time for such long-winded nonsense. As for Daniel Deronda, I have tried to read it on two occasions but could not. It is overwritten. I still remember the horrors of reading Silas Marner in high school almost 60 years ago. Novels can indeed teach much about the world but these 19th-Century novels teach about a world long gone. And while it had its charms, the 18th Century had more.

The idea that there was something heroic or laudable in the original occupation of Cannaan by the "Israelites" is laughable. If you put any stock in Hebrew mythology (and I do think that some of the narratives of its brazen military conquests in the Bible may contain a germ of accuracy) then you must realize that the original deal was just one more primitive social band coveting and then stealing the real estate of another who had previously done the same thing in turn to some other tribe. This area probably has fostered countless but long forgotten "god given" deeds to its ever-changing demography - likely as many as there were gods themselves!

The real tragedy is the legacy of Harry Truman's half-informed recognition of the state of "neo-Israel" in 1948. If the U. S. ever has to absorb a nuclear attack resulting from a world conflict in which neo-Israel is an instigator I would hope (probably in vain) that there would be a couple of our ICBMs left to target her in keeping with her noble "eye-for-an-eye" paradigm!

Anytime Zionism or Israel is mentioned the alleged injustice towards the Palestinians is brought up. Yes, they have been poorly treated, more by other Arabs than by Israelis. In any case the injustice towards the Jews -- something at least 1700 years old from Christians and 1200 years old from Muslims -- should mean something. In any case no country other than Israel is ever asked to apologize for the unfortunate events in itw own nationalism. Only Israel.

As a counterpoint to this book, I recommend Jimmy Carter’s book “Peace Not Apartheid”. (Come on folks…let’s not get to “book burning”, you can use THIS comment can’t you?)

MumboJumbo and some of the other posters are, of course, correct, Israel is a racist, apartheid –based state which is guilty of brutal violations of human rights on a daily basis. We need to support groups such as Peace Now, CNI (Council For National Interest) and B’Tselem and try to limit the horror being inflicted by this vicious loose cannon of a country.

MumboJumbo and some of the other posters are, of course, correct, Israel is a racist, apartheid –based state which is guilty of brutal violations of human rights on a daily basis. We need to support groups such as Peace Now, CNI (Council For National Interest) and B’Tselem and try to limit the horror being inflicted by this vicious, loose cannon of a country.

800+ pages? Where's the Cliff Notes?

I will read , out of curiousity.

Here in Israel we are presently living under the threat of nuclear devestation by Iranian missiles, bacteriological, chemical devestation from... (?)Syria, or hizballah of Lebnanon.

Those who think that these are non-existent "threats", slyly manipulated by Israeli governments, COULD BE WRONG.

What then?

Israel is too fragile to recover from such an attack. The fictitious Daniel Dironda, 100 years old, is irrelevant to such a scenario.

Whe Israel strikes it will be in defense of itself.

The fact of the matter is that the creation of the State of Israel by the former European colonial powers after WWII was historically unprecedented. It has never happened before or since. Nonetheless, nobody, from the Jewish settlers in Israel, to the former western colonial powers, to the U.S. has acknowledged any responsibility for the massive injustice that was inflicted on the native population. The beloved Golda Meier was famous for saying that there is no such thing as a Palestinian.

Jewish people are quick to say that Israel has a right to exist and that that must be acknowledged by the occupied Palestinians. But these very same people say nothing about the Palestinians having any right to exist, because they don’t think they have any right to exist.

As the magnitude of the crimes inflicted on the Palestinian people, both Palestinian-Israelis and the occupied Palestinians, continues to increase, the intensity of the hatred toward the Israelis and toward Jewish people generally will intensify. People are in so much pain, so enraged, and so humiliated that increasingly they are not distinguishing between the Jewish people who are horrified by the assaults on Arab and Muslim dignity, and the bigoted Zionists. It is all blending together in one right-wing religious nut job crusade against the Muslim people.

Avigdor Lieberman is a very scary guy, and Jewish supporters of Israel proclaim that Israel has a right to defend itself. So, Avigdor runs with that and like Andrew Jackson-Indian Fighter, wants to simply slaughter the Palestinians into submission the same way the Americans did before they put the native Indians on reservations, where they have remained relatively quietly, if not prosperously, ever since.

Why is the only legitimate public voice of American Jewish people the most ugly right-wing nut-jobs the Israelis can elect?

At a minimum, the State of Israel, Israeli-Jews, and Jewish Americans, generally and officially, have to acknowledge the massive injustice that was inflicted on the native population as a result of the creation of the State of Israel. What do you think the chances are of that ever happening?

So, we will continue into the future as we have in the past. More Palestinians will be slaughtered, rump puppet governments, such as Fattah, will be installed to represent the Palestinian people, and any protest, whether physical or verbal, will be defined as terrorism and exterminated.

But that could never happen here. The State of Israel and all the concomitant injustices is an idiosyncratic event that will never again be repeated. So, lets get on with the genocide, clean up afterward, and forget that it ever occurred, just as we did with the American natives. Denial is a wonderful thing.

The palestinians have been paying the price of the hollocaust for over 60 years. Apartheid israel has ethnically cleansed palestinians, israel wiped many palestinian towns off the face of the map, israel created 6 million palestinain refugees.In west bank apartheid is very clear, jewish settlers use different roads than palestinians, jewish settlers get more water than palestinains, jewish settlers can kill palestinian civilians for sport, jews demolish palestinian homes and expropriate their property to build jewish only settlments. The palestinians have been going through a COLD HOLLOCAUST for over 60 years. Shame on the supporters of APARTHEID ISRAEL.

Apartheid israel 101 for dummies
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4752349n

I intend to read the novel.
The jewish leaders were politically very saavy in securing the backing of a super power - first the British and then the American and outsmarted the moslem leaders. They brilliantly played the Holocast card and manipulated historical events in their favor.I don't have great love for the moslem world but I feel the history keeps cheating the Palestinians. Because of the dominance of the Jewish people in the Ameican polity, American policy always unfairly supported the Israel government. Hopefully the Obama aministration will be more even handed.

PBS broadcast Daniel Deronda a few years ago. It is available on DVD. I heartily recommend it. You can probably get it from your library.

The story is amazing and it is wonderful to read a book by a major author that is sympathetic to Jews.

Mr. Dironda's experience does stand as a metaphor for the beginnings of one political ideology, but it does so only by standing on the ashes of another. This older idea was the ultimately empty promise that the Enlightenment could end the centuries of powerlessness and relentlessly brutal persecution suffered by European Jewry. This is important because, viewed in this way, Mr. Dironda's story is really just an intervening chapter in the millenia long Jewish struggle to return home.

We need more zionists to settle Iran.