This week I’d like to step back a bit from our ongoing conversation, which has mostly focused on the peace process, and consider a meta-question. I will put it in the form of a conflict I myself feel from time to time.

A fantasy: There will soon come a day – perhaps a week or even a month – in which there will be no reference whatever to Israel in the newspapers or on television. Israel will have ceased to be “interesting,” controversial, important (except, of course, to those of us who are, for want of a better term, Zionists). The Evangelicals will find other preoccupations, and the antisemites will reform, and the Arabs will decide, at last, to do their home work. Israel will be a “goy k’chol hagoyim,” a national like all the others. What a kick that would be. Take a deep breath, let it out, and from then on breathe normally. When the morning news begins with the words “Seven teenagers were killed by a suicide bomber . . .” your chest doesn’t tighten until the announcer says “in Afghanistan,” at which point, to your embarrassment, you feel relief. Normalcy.
Read on…