'an Israel in dire need of a mid-century correction' is an accurate assessment, although it maybe fails to convey the urgency of the present situation.

Many American Jews, and Jews throughout the worldwide Diaspora, were appalled and dismayed at the brutality of the Israeli forces in killing hundreds of civilians, in Gaza, including women and children. Subsequently further dismayed at the refusal of the Israeli government to co-operative in the UN investigation of alleged war crimes, and finally astonished at the attempt to discredit the independent South African jurist, Judge Goldstone, who carried out the report.

It would appear that the arrogance of the present government in Israel knows no bounds, and, as a British Jew, that is not only a matter for extreme concern, but also one of shame and sadness.

This post typifies why I have zero confidence in the ability of J Street to bring about any significant change of any kind in either Israeli behavior or US-Israel relations. We have four paragraphs above about the author's personal feelings, yearnings, sentiments, dreams and ideals, and her precious sense of "identity", without the slightest hint of, or preparedness for, an actual plan of difficult political action.

As far as I can tell at this point, J Street isn't even an real political action organization. It's just an exercise in meaningless old-school boomer identity politics: a comfortable new club and retreat for middle-aged liberal Jews where they can go to "embrace their identities" and reminisce about those optimistic good old days, and the fuzzy and friendly Zionism-for-kids they experienced in Hebrew school, Jewish summer camp, and Israel's youth exchange programs. These big kids have now grown embarrassed over the unattractive face of the real-world Israel and the real-world US movement that supports it, and they want some new clubhouse to hang out in that is less embarrassing than the old one. Then they can put J Street bumper stickers on their cars, and say, "Look at me! I'm in J Street - not that mean old other lobby. So don't blame me!"

They can also then go about their business of doing absolutely nothing to stop Israel from doing whatever the hell it wants to do. We're all still waiting for MJ to tell us what coercive measures he is willing to support to change the behavior of an Israeli polity that is completely disinclined to change on its own. That non-committal stance is unsurprising, because the J Street formula for recruiting new members seems to be based on a tacit guarantee to the new recruits that they will never be called upon to support putting any actual teeth into a tougher US policy toward Israel, but that the tougher line will only be in the feel-good talk department.

Maybe they plan to get together to sing campfire songs in the general direction of Israel. A few verses of "Make Those Waters Part" might do the trick.

You know why 74% of American Jews support Obama? They see in him a kindred spirit: a weak, risk-averse, go-along tool who will wag his finger at Israel from time to time, but has not the slightest intention of doing anything serious about its rogue behavior, and who lacks the moral fortitude to confront outlaw behavior, or to see anything through even if he makes noises about confronting such behavior for a day or two. Obama actually seems to pride himself on being the guy standing between the powers that be and real progressive change, and has surrounded himself with a team comprised of the same Clinton-era retreads who helped get us into our current messes. His irritation with and contempt for the left are more apparent every day. His posture toward Israel is the same as his general posture toward banks, insurance companies and other powerful institutions: bent over submission, fear of confrontation and an eagerness to please.

The post uses the word "embrace" seven times and "cling" twice, which bespeaks more a childish emotional yearning for some lost teddy bear than a grown-up commitment to a rugged political agenda. But the rest of America can't afford to sit around and wait while liberal American Jews work out their Rosebud complexes toward the lost Israel of their youth - a country that never actually existed outside coloring books and other Zionist youth propaganda.

but a state that embraces democratic values by which it judges itself, the very same values that we, as Americans hold dear

From the earliest massacres in Palestinian villages in 1947 by the LEHI and Irgun gangs, the Zionist dream of Herzl was stillborn.

And the Arab massacres of Israeli Jews throughout the '20s and '30s? Or the Farhud in Iraq in 1941? They don't count? People like you have been masquerading as "Progressives" for far too long. You're just bigoted, anti-semitic fools without any real knowledge of history.

By 1923, in "Wall of Iron", Jabotinsky had understood what it would take to create a Jewish state. It took the Labor Zionists a while longer to realize that their dreams were foolish. People like Joanne Mort will never get it.

What a load of B.S.

Whose Israel is it? It's ISRAEL'S Israel as it should be.

If Joanne Mort is so god dammned concerned about her safe haven - the "democratic" home for Jews, she should go there to live, vote, pay taxes, shoulder an M-16, do reserve duty, and do her own slaughtering of palestinians and ghetto-izing of occupied territories. Be a board member of Peace Now in ISRAEL where maybe it will matter.

No one is stopping Mort any of the OTHER Jews around the world from claiming their place in their little homeland. There are no British boats barring the way as in the romantic fantasy "Exodus" or any other barriers to fulfilling your "dreams." There is no Diaspora, just Jews who stay away BY CHOICE.

Quit whining that you and the members of Peace Now, or J-Street or AIPAC or any of the other Jews around the world somehow aren't "safe." Go live in the freakin' militarized fascist state you created with the blessing and tax dollars from the rest of us.

And take all the rest of the apologist Zionists- in-name-only that post here with you.

and let the rest of us move on to something else more constructive.

I do not subscribe to the Israel was Evil from Day One school of historical simplification and mythology. It has become a very different place over the past decade and a half since Rabin's murder than it was in its early decades -more arrogant, more hypocritical, more cowardly, more dependent on corrupting America's politics- and IS very much in need of a "course correction."

But this approach of Ms Mort: Peace Now embracing America and Israel and Jewishness altogether in a warm fuzzy ball, will fail as utterly as Peace Now has in Israel unless it undertakes some very fundamental corrections to itself. For two reasons:

1. Israelis, especially the hardliners that have had defacto control of the place for the past decades, will say, not with some justification, that is not for Americans to tell Israelis what to do.

2. Peace, pluralism, diversity, etc. are warm hopeful ideals, that vanish from Israel like sunbeams on a cloudy day, whenever some mad Arab blows himself up in a Tel Aviv cafe.

American Jews can be pro-Israel and pro-America both, but not equally so. That is a recipe for endless handwringing and J Street becoming the kind of meaninglessly trivial minor tut tutting critquer of AIPAC that some fellow posters here already think it is. On the other hand if J Street does its REAL job (which is not soothing consciences but affecting substantial change) then it will say to AIPAC: You do NOT represent us American Jews, we demand a US Mideast policy that is consistent first and foremost with AMERICA's interests. Those in turn are consonant with the interests of Israel public most of the time, but very much NOT consonant with the barbaric Israeli governments of the last decade.

i just don't get this emotional attachment, as exemplified by Mort, to israel by american jews. i see this type of attachment, and longing for, the "old country" by first generation immigrants in the USA. but most of the american jews have been in the USA for multiple generations. what happens in your "youth movements, of Taglit/Birthright Israel or of ..synagogues" that makes you this way? luckily, the newer generation of american jews are dropping the tribal identity and are becoming more universal.

Breaking news: Some Jews feel hate towards Israel.
Another Breaking news: Some Americans feel hate towards US.

You should sue your shrink. He's seriously guilty of malpractice.

Interesting that the same people who likely favor the preservation of unique, ancient nations like the Inuit, the Catalan and the peoples of the Brazilian rainforest, who favor autonomy for the Inuit and the protection of the rain forest peoples from Brazilian cultural imperialism -- don't get why Jews want to preserve the Jewish nation, and see it fully flower in its own state in its historical land.

I'm making a supposition about BluePearl in particular. But it's a common dissonance in the minds of many people.

The Jewish nation is probably the oldest extant. Older than the Japanese by quite a lot; distinctly older than the Chinese and the Indians. Of course, it's hard to say the Jewish nation is more successful than these others: There are about ten times more Japanese in the world than Jews. Depends how you define succcessful. On the other hand, the Jewish nation seems to be doing better presently than the Inuit, and certainly than the Carthaginians or the Anasazi.

I'd attribute this mental contradiction -- it's kind of skitzy -- to the legacy of Freud. Lots of his odd ideas have trickled down into modern therapy, even while many are rejected. He remains the orthodoxy for the psychiatrists. And although much of what he wrote and said had nothing to do with science, actually true of most of therapy, true believers accept every idea of this famous cocaine addict as a kind of revealed truth.

Freud was dealing with the famous "Jewish Question" of Europe. We know others dealt with it. Freud's solution was universalism. He maintained that all Europeans, all people, should be encouraged to give up their religions and become one humanity. John Lennon's "Imagine," propounded with Teutonic earnestness.

And thus everyone today who's encountered a therapist--could be the majority in the US--has had universalism peddled to them as scientific and medical truth.

One problem with universalism is it's in fact an old idea. Alexander the Great wanted the world to speak Greek. For the sake of ultimate peace and harmony. Roman emperors had the same idea, except it should be Latin. Quite seriously, Mongols today insist that Genghis Khan was a man of peace.

Beethoven decided he didn't want to name his third symphony after Napoleon after all. Partly perhaps because Beethoven didn't want to have to learn French.

In concept, universalism has fundamental flaws. Most progressive people decry the notion of absolutes, even of objective truth, in societal matters.

So how do we decide which culture should be the universal one?

Should we agree that forcing Native Americans, or Aborigines, or Indigenous People to learn English and accept Western culture is wrong?

Let a thousand flowers bloom. Celebrate diversity.

Does every nation deserve its own state?

Who gets to say?

Ukrainians presently believe they are neither Polish nor Russian. Personally I'm fine with Ukraine as an independent state. Have to ask about the Ruthenians. The Polish fight for independence is celebrated in song and story. Norway was part of Denmark for about six centuries, and then became part of Sweden. It's been independent for about a century. Meanwhile Belgium seems to be unravelling, as Flamands and Walloons grow increasingly alienated from each other.

So what is it makes Israel exceptional? In fact, Israel's revival as an independent state isn't all that exceptional. Many have tried, some have succeeded, many have failed. What's exceptional is people like BluePearl thinking it's exceptional. And that's a conceptual dissonance I attribute to Freud.

Jewish-American attachment to Israel? Not very different from Italian-American attachment to Italy, Irish-American attachment to Ireland, etc.

Since there really is no way to know which societal and cultural example is best for all of humanity, or if there is one size that fits all, it in fact is the most universal thing to maintain a thousand separate laboratory experiments.

Of the many qualities that make the experiment called the Jewish state worthwhile is that it is the expression of a nation of great antiquity, that has succeeded certainly to the extent that it has survived for three millennia. Something that provoked Toynbee's hatred, and excited Mark Twain's admiration.

The Ottoman empire lasted about four centuries. The Roman empire, from Julius Caesar to the sack of Rome, about the same.

"In fact, almost all of the 'nations' that currently exist are the historical products of the efforts of vanished rulers and ancestors who were fired by universalistic aspirations, and who united what were once separate tribes into one political community."

Well, no. Lots of nations haven't had universalistic aspirations, in the temporal sense. The Navaho, the Scots, the Lydians, et al. Israel's "empire" at its greatest extent reached from a garrisoned Damascus to Wadi el-Arish. For even the most fervent, the Biblical prescription limits it. Gibbon wrote that the Jewish religion is admirably suited to defense, not so much to expansion.

The idea of the Jewish nation, to the extent that it is universalistic, is to set the example of an ideal society, that others would wish to emulate. Okay, so it isn't ideal at present. But it's a real-world effort, not a thought experiment.

Plenty of others in later eras have had a similar idea, from New Harmony to Deseret. It's certainly less intrusive and less violent than the usual sort of universalism, whether founded in Marx, Freud, Hellenism or Islam.

"...fasten rigidly to the ancient clan..."? Seems much bigger, more intricate, and more interesting than that. That description seems sort of disparaging.

Would you similarly disparage the Catalan for maintaining their unique language and culture? And those among them who favor independence?

The Jewish nation has its unique language -- more than one, in fact -- and every language has its own unique perspective. The word "lechem" for example in Hebrew means "bread"; its cognate in Arabic means "meat."

Maintaining and exploring and vitalizing this culture seems a worthwhile project to many.

"...just like every other nation that lives and dies on this earth, some day the Jewish nation will no longer exist, having undergone natural processes of dissolution and absorption, just like everyone else."

That's precisely what bothered Toynbee about the Jewish nation. It didn't follow that pattern. And part of what excited Twain's admiration. But whether any nation continues to survive isn't the point.

Like the Chinese and the Indians, nearly as old, the Jewish nation still thrives. The Jewish nation's survival to the present is a mark in its favor. Something also that reflects well on the Chinese and the Indians.

New and untested social forms are interesting, to be sure. But their "beta-testing" is barely started. Is something new always that much better? It may often merely be reinventing the wheel. "There is nothing new under the sun."