Well stated Gadi Taub. Wish that the clear differentiation you expressed so well were stated as such the Knesset!

A flag, a national anthem, and a bunch of "ministers" do not make a state; a state is a sovereign entity that commands loyalty and supreme authority over an inviolate territory. The leftists argue that the best way to maintain a state is to renounce claim to legitimately acquired territory, stay passive in the face of physical attacks, and tolerate the virulent anti-semetism of their neighbors. That is how people behave when they live in a diaspora without a state, and if people who have a state behave this way, they wind up without one. If Israel does not take territory being used to attack it it abdicates the right of sovereign self-defense. If Israel surrenders land that it legitimately acquired in self defense, it is not a state And leaving all that aside, the author's main argument that Israel must give up the territories for demographic reasons is also an argument for abdication of sovereignty. First of all any entity that does not require its own citizens to recognize its authority is not a state. Second of all, even granting the absurd notion that a state can exist with a disloyal minority, the fact is that the Israeli Arab population is growing faster than the Jewish one, so the "give up territory to maintain a Jewish majority" solution ends with Israel giving up all of its territory, at which point I'm pretty sure it ceases to be a state even by the author's farcical definition

the leftist positions of Gadi Taub as fraud. All the leftist policies in the last 15 years have failed to bring peace and worsened Israel's security and standing in the international arena. Now they want to blame their miscalculations on the Religious Zionists. Pathetic!

Let's just imagine that every Haredi in Israel will suddenly rush to join the IDF and then miraculously all obtain excellent, high-paying jobs. Then they will all be "religious Zionists" and YNet will still find reasons to hate them.

The difference between religious Zionism and secular Zionism is not big, the difference is big with post-Zionists like Gadi Taub. They don't care about why we have the right to live here as long as they let them stay in Tel Aviv. Please Gadi, what is the basis for our right to this land according to you? A UN resolution?

a greater threat than stealing sensitive military documents that could cost 1000s of lives? Probably not.

I have two words for this author "Gush Katif". There is the result of surrendering land. You care only for yourself in Tel-Aviv, but think of this, if we give up anymore land the next goal will be Tel Aviv. If you pull your head out of your sweater you would know that the PA is already teaching their children that Tel Aviv, in fact All of Israel is theirs. Remember, if you destroy the settlers there will be nobody left to protect you in Tel Aviv.

...the rule of law. Not some myth, not some false idea of a "Greater Israel" - that dream is dead. Herzl's is alive and well, on Israel's side of the Green Line. Get there and have peace. Continue with the illegal colonists outside of Israel and face certain doom. It's just that simple. There is no skydaddy handing out land deeds, and you can no more make claims that go back thousands of years ago anymore than us Cherokee can. So get over it, time's up.

waiting for your answer gadi

according to our enemies is our Occupation of their LAND. The Zionists who founded our State understood that its only resettlement of our historic homeland that gives us the right to political independence. Partition is a straw man which will not solve the demographic issue or bring us peace from our enemies.

I am just practicing my award winning famous yellow journalist skills to test how much BS you can take from me.

"No Jew is at liberty to surrender the right of the Jewish Nation and the Land of Israel to exist. No Jewish body is sanctioned to do so. Even all the Jews alive today have no authority to yield any piece of land whatsoever. This right is reserved to the Jewish People throughout the generations. This right cannot be forfeited under any circumstances. Even if at some given time there will be those who declare that they are relinquishing this right, they have neither the power nor the authority to negate it for future generations. The Jewish Nation is neither obligated by nor responsible for any such waiver. Our right to this land, in its entirety, is enduring and eternal. And until the coming of the Redemption, we shall never yield this historic right." whereas Gadi says: "Yet in the eyes of Herzl, Ben-Gurion, Weitzman, Jabotinsky, Rabin and even Begin, Zionism was a whole different matter. They believed in a Zionism-of-State, not Zionism-of-Land, and in their view the State was the objective, not the means"

Gadi Taub wrote: "Meanwhile, the Zionism-of-State camp, today and at the time of the 1947 Partition Plan, is willing to partition the land in order to prevent the Jewish State from sinking into an Arab majority." "Some" Zionists were willing to 'take what they could get' as a result of the 1937 Peel Commission Partition plan, but by means not all Zionists were willing to accept this plan. The same held true with the November 1947 United Nations partition plan. Some, though not all, Zionists advocated taking what we could get, hoping for a more favorable outcome as the years progressed, and indeed a more favorable outcome came about. Both these plans preceded the wars of annihilation waged by the combined Muslim-Arab armies against Israel. Following the 1967 Six Day war and the erasure of the 1948-1949 armistice lines, all bets were off. As #13 indicated, few if any committed Zionists would accept any partition plan following Israel's stunning victory; following the re-acquisition of our ancient land; Biblical Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, the Golan and even Gaza itself. Those who are willing to contemplate the re-partitioning of Israel are not authentic Zionists in my estimation.

why is some idiot trying to impersonate michael hess? malcomb spinterling, jr. manchester, england

To claim the religious right endangers Israel is utterly ludicrous. Who is responsible for the Leban and Gaza retreat disasters, which brought us two totally unnecessary wars? Who is responsible for arming and freeing terrorists who mass murder Israelis? Who is responsible for pretending Holocaust Denier and terrorist Abbas is our friend? The left and it's policies are responsible for almost all Israel's ills.

WITHOUT AN OKAY HEART ! YOU CANT BE A HUMAN TOO.

B"H It's interesting to see how an assimiliationist author like Taub takes refuge in promoting Jewish statehood, something that he really hates, just in order to deliver a punch to the face of the even more hated religious settler. But, and there is a huge but here, his punch misses and turns out to be a boomerang, making him fall to the ground. What is the "but"? Simple. Taub is pretending that giving up territory, and let's forget about the morality of it for a second, reinforces the State, whereas holding on to the territory weakens it to the point of "jeopardizing the Jewish State’s [very] existence", as he puts it. This pretense is not only false but 100% false. For there has not been one single withdrawal that reinforced the State in any way and that has not directly caused the loss of Jewish lives. Not one single withdrawal led to the results its defeatist proponents hoped for. Not even Begin's Sinai withdrawal, that people like to like and praise. Only a few days ago Egyptian Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit called Israel an enemy and his country allows dozens of terror groups to operate in the Sinai. The Gaza withdrawal was and still is a disaster on many fronts and what Taub sterilely calls a "partition", would with certainty not bring peace but deadly rocket fire on Tel Aviv. In turn, this would, again with certainty, lead to war, not to peace. Taub projects his views as statists, but in reality they are assimiliationists. There is no place for Judaism in his world view, not even in Israel, not even for Jews. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is called: anti-Semitism.

assuming malcomb spinterling, jr. identity is not befitting of you cousin calcinton spinterling, sr. edinburgh, free scotland

Even Ben-Gurion knew Jewish rights preceded the State. PM Ben-Gurion in his speech introducing the Law of Return stated: "It is not the State which grants the Jews of the diaspora the right to return, this right existed before the State did and it is that which built the State." According to one expert on Israel law: "The Law of Return is applicable not merely to the State of Israel but to all of the Land of Israel, as is evidenced by the use of the Hebrew word eretz (in the form artza, meaning 'to the land') rather than medina ('state'), to describe the destination of the Jewish immigrant and Jewish settler in the land. The distinction between eretz and medina, which indicates the territorial scope of application of the Law of Return, was made in the Law itself, as well as in the Explanatory Note when the bill was first tabled in the Knesset on June 27, 1950. . . . The Government of Israel cannot therefore deprive Jews of their right to live in Gaza or Samaria, both of which, without doubt, constitute integral parts of Eretz Israel." Another expert gave this analysis on the Law of Return: "The right is not to immigrate to the State, but to the Land. In the other paragraphs, the law makes a clear distinction between Israel the state and Israel the land. The legislators were careful to specify that the right to immigrate was paired not to the state, which is the framework, but to the content of this framework, which is the land itself. Thus, the founding fathers of the state transmitted to us a meaningful message: the state serves as a tool to bring the Jews...to the land! . . . . Although the Knesset has the power to change the Law of Return, and although the Supreme Court has the power to interpret the expression 'to the Land' differently than it was interpreted here, such acts would be illegitimate. If not on the legal-technical level, then at least in the sense that such acts would contradict the unwritten constitution of the Jewish state."

In 1920, Palestinian Jews signed anti-Zionist petitions denouncing Ashkenazi rule. The Mizrahim who arrived in Israel ended up in agricultural work, 10-12 hours a day in conditions of disease and squalor. Their high death rate was explained by one Zionist official as a “common and natural thing”. Today Mizrahim constitute around 50% of the Israeli population and Palestinian Arabs make up another 20%.

in the Jihadi cespool of backwardness the sad part about it is that you even don't realize it. you have become a mouthpiece parroting their Quranic propaganda non-stop

remember that setllers were protected by the idf the same like TA and setllers will never protect the idf and TA IS NEVER PROTECT THE IDF .. AND THE IDF CAN NOT PROTECT ITSELFE IN ALL THE WARS AND FOREVER .. BECOUSE OF THAT PEACE MAY PROTECT CITIZENS MORE THAN WAR

IT IS YOUR OPENION BUT NOT MINE ..... YOU GET IT ....

arabs will never melted even with more fire and more movment .. you can not milt the water with the palastinians ......

the argument of Zionism of land vs Zionism of state was never the argument in Zionism. Labor Zionism was opposed to a Jewish State and it was one of their complained against revisionists (Jabotinski and Begin.) As for demographics no one was for partition as Arabs were 60% but once the flood gates of Europe and the middle east opened no one feared the Arab population. This article is revisionist history.

they would demand for a multicultural society with immigrants from africa to tend their resturants.... just like in europe. if the west bank is to be taken from us severe measures against anything that threatens the jewish rule in the rest of israel should be taken.