re: #94 OhCrapIHaveACrushOnSarahPalin

What do you feel Israel — the Jewish state — should be called?

I’m fine with Israel, and realistically, it will be a Jewish state. Just don’t ask the people displaced to make it a Jewish state to call it that as a prelude to negotiations. That’s ridiculous and insulting.

Israel is a secular country, not a theocracy, and certainly not like the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I would say mostly secular (with certain key exceptions, as noted elsewhere), and you are right, it is far from a theocracy like Iran.

I also don’t see what American views on government have to do with anything…look at all the business/diplomacy we do with other “theocracies” (using your definition) like Saudi Arabia (a real theocracy), Bangladesh, Egypt, UAE, Malaysia, etc.

Okay, it still is something that shouldn’t resonate with many Americans. Calling someone Jewish is about more than just nationality. That’s the issue, and the reason the Palestinians will NEVER concede that as a prelude to negotiations. Once final status has been reached, the Israelis can do whatever they want. But I’m beating a dead horse here…you can’t convince the displaced to call their former homes the “homeland” of the displacer.

Lol! Czech Republic, Belarus, Belize, South Sudan, North Korea, South Korea, any number of countries…name one that isn’t a UN “fabrication”.

Fair enough, though I would call all countries, technically speaking, a “fabrication.” Just witness the crazy knots people get into over workers born just south of an imaginary line along our southern border (our = the US border).

What I was trying to communicate with the term “fabrication” (which was unnecessarily loaded) was that the UN essentially created Israel via declaration. The Palestinians have finally taken note of that fact. It seems the way countries are made in a particular patch of land in the middle east.