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No original: "In revealing respects, Israel today resembles the small nationalist states that emerged in Eastern Europe after the end of the Russian Empire. Had Israel—like Romania or Poland or Czechoslovakia —been established in 1918 rather than 1948, it would have closely tracked the small, vulnerable, resentful, irredentist, insecure, ethnically exclusivist states to which World War I had given birth. But Israel did not come into being until after the Second World War. As a consequence, it stands out for its slightly paranoid national political culture and has become unhealthily dependent upon the Holocaust—its moral crutch and weapon of choice with which to fend off all criticism. (pt) |
