In his neverending posture to appear accommodating to his (former) leftist friends, Dershowitz undercuts his basic defense of Israel by conceding the "evil" of settlements and of Arab sovereignty over the old city of Jerusalem. He thinks, by offering up Israel on these crucial, existential altars, his audience will come around to his way of thinking.

On the contrary, he ends up arguing for Israel's mortal enemies, that, in effect, Jews are only entitled to an ever shrinking polity in their aboriginal homeland, a polity that has only one inevitable outcome - disappearance. It's impossible to rail against Beit El and Ofra and to vigorously defend the right to keep Ariel and Maale Adumim. And when all of Judaea and Samaria are gone, Jaffa and Haifa will be next on the list. What he should be strenuously arguing is this:

Jews, like Arabs and Muslims, have an inalienable right to live anywhere, be it Beit El, Paris or Cairo. Would Dershowitz have argued that, in the interests of "peace", African Americans should stop building homes in Selma, Alabama in the 1960's? After all, whites in the South were residents before the slave trade brought blacks there. Israel must always concede actual territory while Arabs are only required to provide vague intentions (not even promises) to live in peace with the Jews.

Why should Arabs continue to flourish in Nazareth within Israel while Jews in Gaza are expelled?

When will someone with brains and guts finally declare in one of these "debates" that there is no "2 state solution" - only a "23rd state solution" ("Palestine" becomes the 23rd Arab state) that signals a "final solution" for Israel.

Well said.

The antagonism directed against the settlements is even more deeply grained than the favorable assumptions concerning the two state "solution."

Yet the most salient hallmarks of the arguments in both cases is a combination of presumption and a certain set of prepossessed attitudes - not a set of sound arguments that can more seriously withstand close scrutiny and critical review.

That doesn't mean that individual settlements cannot be argued against, not does it mean that a two state goal cannot be held up as something to be aimed for at some point in the medium to long term future, even to the contrary. But in general, as noted in these comments here at Solomonia, the default "liberal" or pseudo-liberal position is rife and riven with presumption and attitude, not with a full measure of gravitas that can withstand serious review.

A goodly portion of the blame for these confused rationales resides in western Jewish communities' wont to be and to appear "liberal," rather than arguing on the basis of recent, 20th century history and contemporary events, brought fully and responsibly into view.