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Palestinian ideology has become a lethal cocktail of radical nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism.

I feel that the Jews have always had a special connection to this part of the world, which in geographical terms was called Palestine for so many centuries.

Israel was established as a homeland for the Jewish people and embraced all the Jews who had to leave Arab states. This should be also the true meaning of the future Palestinian state. It should be the answer for the Palestinians wherever they are - those who live in the territories, and those who are being kept as political cards in refugee camps.

Modernity has been largely shaped for Jews by three momentous experiences: the acquisition of citizenship by individual Jews in secular nation-states, the destruction of one-third of Jewry in the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel.

Extol Jewish virtue, modern Zionism and the Israeli Defense Forces.

Palestinian violence is not a response to the capture of the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian nationalism's roots are not so shallow.

While we all could agree that the Zionist ideal is alive and well, there is serious doubt whether the Zionist movement can be said to be an ongoing proposition, fragmented as its components are in ideology and in practice.

Given the events of even the 19th century, Zionism was inevitable. Given the events of the 20th century, Israel was inevitable.

A second characteristic of our time is the prevalence of nationalism. This is still spreading, affecting new communities, more peripheral regions and so-called backward peoples.

From its earliest days in the nineteenth century, and until the Holocaust, the Orthodox rabbinate in eastern Europe was not enthusiastic about the Zionist movement, which at the time was led by irreligious Jews.