A Jewish oddity in the middle of a mess

Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes in the London Review of Books about the essential problem still facing Israel (and one that will continue as long as the state occupies the Palestinians like a colonial administrator):

If there is a ”˜tragedy of Zionism’ it is surely this. Without wanting to or even realising what was happening, the Jewish state has found itself on the wrong side of a much greater divide than the mere dispute between Jew and Arab. The reason for the global obsession with the Holy Land is that it has become a crucible, an epitome, a distilled version of a ”˜clash of civilisations’, or at any rate a Kulturkampf, with the world miserably split and Israel, whether it likes it or not, cast as a European settler state. That is why, whatever other achievements Zionism may claim, it has palpably not created a ”˜nation like all others’, normalised the Jewish people, or removed them from the pages of history.

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