A Quote by Daniel Gordis

Ari Shavit's My Promised Land is without question one of the most important books about Israel and Zionism that I have ever read...This is the book that has the capacity to reinvent and reshape the long-overdue conversation about how Israel's complex past ought to shape its still-uncertain future.
The most important thing in the Land of Israel is to build, build, build. Its important that there will be an Israeli presence everywhere. Our principal problem is still Israels leaders unwillingness to say in a simple manner that the Land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel.
The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple.
From the beginning, I said that Israel, one, has a right to defend herself, but Israel ought to be cautious about how she defends herself. Israel's a democratically elected government. They make decisions on their own sovereignty. It's their decision-making that is what leads to the tactics they chose.
Israel has WMD, and it has to sign [chemical warfare agreement], and Israel is occupying our land, so that's we talked about the Middle East, not Syria, not Israel ; it should be comprehensive.
Which Israel should we recognize? The Israel of 1917; the Israel of 1936; the Israel of 1948; the Israel of 1956; or the Israel of 1967? Which borders and which Israel? Israel has to recognize first the Palestinian state and its borders and then we will know what we are talking about.
I have also written a book about the Giving of the Torah, and a book on the Days of Awe, and a book on the books of Israel that have been written since the day the Torah was given to Israel.
I bury my mind in my book, the Bible. Every morning it's the first thing that I do. I've been doing it for years and years. So I want to come back here [to Israel] to see the places that I read about every day. It's very important to my faith to feed [my] spirit in Israel.
Since I invoke Torah so often, let me state that I don't personally believe in the God it postulates ... I am not religious, nor were the majority of the early builders of Israel believers. Yet their passion for this land stemmed from the Book of Books ... [The Bible is] the single most important book in my life.
A visit to Israel is always an experience in cognitive dissonance. The Israel you personally see and hear is so completely different from the Israel you read and hear about in the media.
What should be the future of Israel? Is the land the most important choice, and for that reason to keep the whole of the land at any cost, or to have a partition and build the Jewish state on part of the land? And the other part?
I read about the Trinity. I found something - Jesus was Jewish, he was a rabbi! - and I read a lot of stories about Jesus in Israel. And it's interesting that they picked me for this part in The Snack, and I'm Jewish, I'm kind of religious Jewish from Israel, and I don't look like the traditional Jesus with the long blonde hair and blue eyes.
Israel exists; it has a right to exist in peace behind secure and defensible borders; and it has a right to demand of its neighbors that they recognize those facts. I have personally followed and supported Israel's heroic struggle for survival, ever since the founding of the State of Israel 34 years ago. In the pre-1967 borders Israel was barely 10 miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again.
There is the worldview of Greater Israel, the worldview of settlements: to send citizens to live in those places. That's not about security; that's not about the army. That's about an ideology that believes we need to stay in all of the Land of Israel. I don't share that ideology.
It is depressing but not shocking to witness the liberal intelligentsia embrace Ari Shavit so enthusiastically. Shavit is someone who is as consistently wrong as Thomas Friedman on major issues, and at least as much a courtier of power.
Despite the present, temporary interests that Israel has in common with France and Britain, you ought not to forget that the strength of Israel and her future are bound up with the United States.
The Land of Israel goes with the Torah of Israel under the sovereignty of the State of Israel.
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