I envy the people who hate Israel , by Bradley Burston

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1150799.html

At times like these, I envy the people who passionately, frankly, with all their hearts, despise Israel.

Hate Israel enough, and the Jewish state's failings and blunders, its self-satisfied blindness and its resultant self-destructive policies, cause not pain, but delight.

Hate Israel enough, and you're spared all inclination to try to fix what's wrong, to work to set it right. On the contrary, hate Israel enough, and you may come to believe not only that that the country deserves to be punished to the point of replacement by a different state - Israel may well do the job all by itself.

This is one of those times.

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Article at link - the first four paragraphs aren't really meaningful, but they're all I'm allowed to post.

We usually put --snip-- between the sundered paragraphs.

And what would a day be without Haaretz breastbeating?

I've done so in the past, but I generally try to avoid it - if I pick four paragraphs then inevitably I'm putting my own slant on the author I'm quoting.

And I don't see breastbeating as an innappropriate response to living in a country run by Netanyahu, Lieberman and Barak - quite the reverse, if anything.

We have the BNP and the more influential RW tabloids; Israel has Avigdor Lieberman.

And who made him *Foreign Minister* - well, I know the answer; it was Netanyahu; but *why*? What a role for an extreme xenophobe!

Lieberman's party got more votes than Labour, remember.

Israel's self destructive tendencies have been evident for years. But hate is not the appropriate sentiment; it is rather a hope that the people of Israel come to their senses. One would hate to see this small country turn into another South African Apartheid state, about which Ehud Barak just cautioned, again, in a very recent speech at the Herziyla Conference.

When he speaks about people who hate Israel, I doubt very much he's talking about someone who feels like you do, but about others who actually really detest Israel with a vengeance. I've encountered some of them online, and there's no way you could see what they say and not view it as hate. That's why the article's well worth reading imo...

But they are usually escourted out the door. Most genuine people would just like to see a fair and just solution in which both peoples come out of it being free and self-determining. The possibility of two states at this point in time just seems so elusive.