re: #428 Fairly Sure I’m Still Obdicut

It’s not just religion, though. That’s not the extant of what’s meant by a Jewish state. It means it was a state created by and for the Jewish people, who had faced persecution all over the world—it’s important to remember Israel was an idea and a goal pre-WWII: Jews were not welcome, and they knew it, in most parts of the world. The US, remember, refused lots of Jewish immigrants. That’s the history of Israel, that its creation was a reaction to this persecution. This doesn’t equate to the idea that Jews should get special privileges in Israel, but it does mean that the “Jewish” nature of Israel is important because Jews still face many nations on earth that are directly hostile to Jews—and have been since before the creation of modern Israel.

My grandfather was against the creation of Israel because of where it was, but he supported the idea of the creation of a Jewish state. He thought it was a terrible mistake situating the new Jewish state in the midst of enemies, but it was already a done deal. He was briefly heartened when he saw the quick reformation of Germany and Japan into democracies, but the Middle East showed no such progress—due, in his opinion, to neocolonialism and the US and USSR using the area as a proxy-power battleground with no regard for rewarding or promoting actual good governance.

Anyway, the point is that Israel came to be in the way that it is. Just as the US would not remain the US if we started denying birthright citizenship, Israel wouldn’t be Israel without being a state committed to being a safe haven for Jews in a world that still has many areas totally hostile to them. I wouldn’t be surprised, for example, if there were current Jewish emigres from the Ukraine to Israel.

Safe haven and irreligious are not mutually exclusive - difficult, but not impossible. I think my argument stands.