It is easy to get angry over what Avraham Burg told Haaretz's Ari Shavit in Friday's magazine, primarily because his comments about Israel and Zionism - including his view that a Jewish state is unworkable - will carry double the weight, especially abroad, by virtue of having come from the mouth of a man who used to be chairman of the Jewish Agency and Speaker of the Knesset. All the same, it is much more important to argue with Burg than to be upset at him.

Like many post-Zionists before him, Burg uses the belligerence that has taken Zionism over to justify his divorce from it. Israeli society is indeed a very belligerent one. It exerts a great deal of force against external enemies, and terrible violence has also taken root within. Burg contrasts this belligerence with Jewish spirituality. But in his revulsion at contemporary experience, he ignores the reason that first caused Zionism to rebel against that same spirituality: the feeling that it brought with it a terrible misery, the shameful condition of helplessness in the face of any passing enemy.

Escaping from this passivity did indeed have a price: a need to abandon absolute "Jewish morality" and a need to use force. (Incidentally, "Jewish morality" in the time of the Bible and Mishna was far less moderate than in later periods, when the Jews did not have the option of using force.) Disgust at the price that had to be paid is the common denominator between post-Zionists and right-wing supporters of the Greater Land of Israel. Both adhere to complete, pure ideologies that characterized the Jewish Diaspora dream of longed-for sovereignty. This sovereignty could remain pure as long as it was only a dream. But as soon as it became a reality, it was obligated to make difficult decisions, and people at both extremes refuse to accept this: Right-wingers find it hard to accept a Jewish sovereignty that gives up parts of the Land of Israel, while post-Zionists find it hard to accept a sovereignty that compromises "Jewish morality" and uses brute force.

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Burg is right in claiming that for many Israelis, the Holocaust legitimizes a belligerence that quite often exceeds the limits of security needs. But the way to deal with this is not by showing contempt for the trauma of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is not a "complex," as some critical researchers refer to it dismissively, but a genuine trauma. Had one of Burg's children acted violently due to trauma he experienced as a child, it is reasonable to assume that as a father, Burg would oppose the violent behavior but would not scorn the trauma that led to it. Instead, he would presumably use the utmost sensitivity in trying to disentangle the link between the trauma and the violence.

He is also right in arguing that Zionism must now advance to the spiritual phase proposed by Ahad Ha'am in his famous argument with Theodor Herzl. But Burg's contempt for Herzl's physical-political Zionism, which he brings in the name of Ahad Ha'am, is inappropriate, since on the issue of priorities, it was actually Herzl who was right. It was necessary to build a physical-political home for the Jews even before investing in its spiritual quality, and even at its expense - and the Holocaust is the greatest proof of that. The Jewish national home needs two levels, the physical and the spiritual. But the physical level is the foundation and the condition that allows for the existence of the spiritual one, even if the spiritual level is a lot more stimulating.

What Burg and the right wing have in common is remarkable on this issue, too. The right wing believes that it is permissible to risk our sovereign existence in the name of maintaining the "pure" ideal of the Greater Land of Israel. It turns out that Burg is so attracted to "pure" spirituality that he, too, is prepared to take that risk.