Israel is tearing apart the Jewish people

The current government is the first government to stand up to the rest of the world. Netanyahu is the best gift the Jewish people have been given in modern times. What Netanyahu is doing is actually uniting all JEWS.

It would be nice if we could display some more nuanced thoughts about this. I think both Jews in Israel and in diaspora can understand how/that this is a highly charged issue for everyone. For many (including me), being faithful to Israel means denouncing the actions that Strenger claims are tearing the Jewish community apart, not because I want Israel to be weakened, but because I want it to be a place I can be proud of. No one can deny that the problems are complicated, that the threats to Israel's security are numerous and serious, but the existence of those threats does not exclude the possibility that the actions of recent Israeli administrations have repeatedly crossed into the territory of dangerous aggression, blatant antagonism, and stubborn arrogance. And, yes, racism, justified or otherwise. (to say nothing of Israel's apparent disdain for the huge population of Jews whose Jewishness the state denies). Comments like Penny's and Howie's only demonstrate exactly what this article is talking about: instead of bringing Jews together, discussions of Israel increasingly serve to polarize and separate those who support Israel unconditionally from those who despair to see Israel violate the ethics they would rather it champion, but whose despair does not exclude an unshakeable belief in Israel's right to exist. If we cannot talk about this is reasonably and respectfully, without just setting up straw men to self-righteously tear down, who will?

The current government is the first government to stand up to the rest of the world. Netanyahu is the best gift the Jewish people have been given in modern times. What Netanyahu is doing is actually uniting all JEWS.

What'll we do with 3500 years of history then? We're Jews. We are not liked. Face the reality and get on with life.

War by definition is inhuman. Human Rights and War do not mix. The Arabs know this . That is why they target civilians by bombers and misiles and also make our lives miserable in the international community through the help of sympathetic NGOs. The purpose of war is to win, but my a book of rules, but at all costs. We blockade Gaza, do targetted assinations, block off Arab neigbourhoods for the sole purpose of furthering OUR interests. It seems that in the spirirt of human rights, carpet bombing, non conventional warfare, and ethnic cleaning is temporily off the table.

Just when I'm about to give up and conclude that all Israelis live in a parallel universe I read an article like this and I have some hope for the future of Israel. These voices need to get louder, and quickly.

I'm afraid that Israel has turned its back on liberal democracy. And vice versa. Many, many people in Western Europe - Jews and others - were strong supporters of Israel in the 1960s and 1970s, but have lost patience with what Israel has become. They see a racist supremacist Israel which ignores international law, and they ask themselves whether such an Israel can survive, and many ask even whether she should survive. And even those who continue to believe she should survive fear that, given the way she has lost the support of the West, and given her inability to face up to her own terrorist settlers, in the long term she cannot. The settlers have destroyed Israel, and the world will be a worse place.

Israel is only 63 years old, it will make mistakes. I know it was a much different time, but when the United States was that age, the first laws that allowed women to own property were passed. It is the first Jewish country in 2000 years. Many laws have the intention of preserving the Jewish nature of the country. And, if you cannot understand why Israel cannot include the West Bank Palestinians as citizens of Israel, you are missing the point of Israel. And, Israel certainly does not tear apart the Jewish people. It is something that really brings us together in many ways.

I understand that the left hates Netanyahu and Lieberman, but enough already of these sorts of exaggerated articles!!! Look at the facts - for all the talk of "Judaization of Jerusalem", the population of the city as about one/third Arab, and the Arab population itself has quadrupled over the past 40 years (during the 20 years of Jordanian rule, it was basically stagnant because of lack of economic development, minimal investment by the Jordanians, etc...). And the much maligned Knesset bills were so watered down by the time anything was passed, it is hard to see in practice what they really will do. As for the Naqba bill - what government of a country that is still in a state of war and surrounded by enemies, would provide funding to groups that support its enemies and want to mourn the fact that it won its war of independence?

No need to worry about world Jewry, which has a couple of millennia of experience in riding internal crises and a much stronger idea about what and who it is than Israel does.

Carlo Stenger must hae spoken to people who ave a hard time understanding tha the Arabs/Moslems are out to murder Jews and destroy Israel. Israel is not perfect and can be improverd. But Arabs in Israel are treated worlds better than Jews in Arab/Moslem States. To joln with Islamic and left wing haters of Israel in their campaigns to destroy Israel, just because Israel is imperfect is nonsensical.

at least two of the fathers that went to jail were sephardic because their daughters were in the chassidic track. so stop twisting the story. the division was ideological: chassidic versus non-chassidic of which there were both ashkenazis and sephardim in each school.

Palestinian property in Jerusalem, and the utterly racist talk about the 'Judaization' of Jerusalem. They feel that they no longer have arguments, even words, to defend Israel. Well . before the Wall was put up the Palestinians carried out 32 bus bombings killing 58 Israelis and another 4 cafe bombing that took more lives ,, > There isnt a good argument here !

This article is pure rubbish. Obviously this guy does not have a true connection to Eretz Yisrael!

Left leaning Jews are tearing Israel apart

Israel is led by a democratically elected government. If its policies pain Jews in the Diaspora so much, let them come here and do something about them.

Because by all indications, fascism is not only growing, but it's being embraced by the Israeli people.

Man's intrinsic nature is tribal, not universalist. Liberal democracy denies this, leaving lib. dem. regimes vulnerable to cultural and political subversion. Universalism imagines that mankind can eventually be molded into single, homogenous culture. Universalism is not compatible with Islam (which divides the world into believers and nonbelievers), nor with Judaism ( which has one set of laws for Jews and another for non-Jews), nor with Chinese culture (Han culture is believed to be superior to others), nor with Russian culture (which understands itself to be higher than others - ask the Russian Orthodox Church). For all of Herzl's valiant efforts towards the establishment of a Jewish state, he provided his children with little or no connection to Judaism. The sad stories of their lives are recorded in history. Who, in the end will survive -- Universalists, or the Chinese and the Russians?

Yet another article that pretends Israel is not threatened by millions of radical Islamists, choosing to confuse Israel's security measures as "racist and oppressive". Someone needs a reality check.

Accordion to Halacha, I am Jewish. My mother is Jewish. Her mother is Jewish. My Grandmother is Jewish. My Great Grandmother is Jewish. However, I am the only practicing Jew in the family. I am not Orthodox, but I still am Jewish. My wife, however, according to Israel's ridiculous standards is not Jewish. Whatever happened to ben-Gurion's simple statement of "if you say you're a Jew, then you're a Jew." Israel cannot afford to be so diffisive about who is Jewish, especcialy when its enemies want to destroy it.

Let us look at the composition of Israeli Jews today: 1. The former Soviets constitute about 20%. They grew up under a totalitarian regime and tend to prefer strong leaders and a brute-force approach. 2. The Sephardim/Mizrahim (from Islamic states), constitute about 1/3 of the Jews. They tend to hate Arabs, their former oppressors, tend to be more emotional people, and their grounding in democracy is still weak. Shasniks are of course worse in this respect. 3. Religious Ashkenazis, including Haredim, about 10% of the Jews (as estimated by Knesset representation, which minimizes their numbers because they have many children). Haredim and the religious are messianists and believe in Religious Law as superior to state law.// Altogether we have about 2/3 of the Jews with hardline tendencies, based on cultural and religious background. To them one could add the secular Ashkenazi right-wingers like Netanyahu, and you see that Israel is facing a democratic crisis. The big question is: How did the State manage to be formed as a democracy in the first place? The simple answer is that the main non-democratic forces were not yet citizens: The Russians, Sephardim, Haredim, and religious messianists, had a small and negligible representation in the 1948 Yishuv. They are now ready and able to destroy what their more democratic brothers had established.