You have probably been conditioned by the media and perhaps by religious upbringing to blindly accept that a Jewish race-state is a reasonable idea, but consider the idea of a nation explicitly defining itself as an "Aryan state", and you will see the problem. The whole idea of a race-state is obviously and intrinsically racist: how can you have a "racial homeland" unless you enforce demographic controls to retain a majority race, and how can you control the demographics of race unless you enact racist policies?

It has long been known that Israel is headed for a crisis of identity be

3. Wishful Thinking: Restore Palestinian independence. Ask Israelis to voluntarily withdraw from the occupied territories. Declare Jerusalem an international territory. Expect Israel to give up its long-term vision of restoring its Old Testament borders, and expect Palestine to give up its long-term vision of restoring its pre-1947 existence. Expect the two nations to live happily ever after, in peace and harmony. Hey, why don't we just ask them all to gather round a really big fucking campfire and sing kumbaya?

In my opinion, the only solution that would actually work is a radical one that would probably never happen: declare that Israel is no longer a "Jewish state", but rather, a secular democracy, and write an Israeli Constitution upholding human rights (it does not presently have one). Its stated goals of being a Jewish state and a western democracy are mutually contradictory. One cannot uphold western values of religious and racial equality while simultaneously stating that you intend to promote the welfare of one people over another.

As mentioned previously, the most common tactic of Israel's "amen chorus" when faced with criticism of Israel is to attack Jordan, Syria, or Egypt. This plays to the common belief that all Arabs are a single monolithic group, so the Palestinians are somehow responsible for the actions of Egypt or Jordan.

For all of their public rhetoric over the Palestinians, they have done nothing to mitigate the humanitarian problems they speak of. Hell, even Arafat's Palestinian Authority has a history of corruption, greed, and abuse of power, hence widespread Palestinian disgust with it (not to mention the fact that Hamas is regarded by many Palestinians as more of a legitimate government than the PA).

2. Jihad: Destroy Israel through terrorism and/or military conquest. Replace it with a glorious Islamic state called Palestine. This is the vision of most Islamic fundamentalists in the region, who clearly have no capacity for rational thought.

Well, sort of. The Israelis know they can't openly treat the Arabs as vermin outside the Occupied Territories where they have a flimsy excuse for doing so (the excuse being that it's not really part of Israel even though they control the territory and Jews there can vote in Israeli elections), but that doesn't stop them from having different rules for Jews and Arabs; the differences simply aren't as stark as they are in the Occupied Territories.

Some topics in this essay:
Declaration Independence, Deir Yassin, Israel Israel, Occupied Territories, Definition Israel, racial homeland, definition israel,