I will definitely be reading this. In a recent interview with PRI's Warren Olney, he wryly observed:

" [Anti-gay] Prejudice declined but support for government declined also. By the time I retired, there was still a disparity between the social acceptability of being gay and that of being a politician, but the order had reversed."

"When people polled about my activities, my having married a man while I was a member of Congress was much better received than having chaired the committee that wrote the financial reform bill."

That happens to be the truth, because I'm far more interested in what he has to say in his book about that bill than about his sexuality.

J_L_,

Having just finished the book, I'd like to make a few brief comments. First of all, thanks to you, Yoram and others for recommending it. It is truly a stunning piece of investigative journalism. To me, the book's main contribution lies not so much in divulging previously undisclosed information as in concentrating on a neglected dimension of Israeli politics and society, in other words, in the way it arranges and evokes facts that everyone could know about if only they dug deeply enough into Israeli news sources. Where Blumenthal excels is at making connections and putting those facts together in a powerful, I would say, holographic, narrative.Each small chapter is a fragmented miniature containing one perspective on the whole. Together they resolve the picture into one of great clarity. I learned a lot, but more important, I became more acutely aware of what others are leaving out or downplaying in their own narratives. This brings me to my final reaction. You are right to question whether Blumenthal is any more one-sided than many of the authors and reporters who have written about Israel from a more flattering perspective. What Gil_Gamish and others like him object to is one-sidedness that doesn't jibe with their preferred versions of the truth. Thanks for your spirited, intelligent arguments. Although the banter got a bit repetitive at times, it was a fun and enlightening read.

So why is it common to hear someone ask, rhetorically, what am I, an Arab? (As if that were a lower life-form)?

This raises several questions:

Where are Israelis getting their news? Israel HaYom, a right-wing newspaper funded by Sheldon Adelson and distributed for free, has a circulation of 300,000 that has nudged out its more moderate competition precisely because it is free. The airwaves are full of agitation by right-wing settlers. And what about Bibi, who Vanity Fair describes this way: "By appointment, intimidation, and infiltration, his tentacles have reached into every corner of Israel’s tiny, fragile journalistic eco-system." Would Israeli public opinions change if they had better access to a greater variety of journalistic viewpoints?

Do Israelis realize that some of their leaders sound a lot like the Iranian mullahs they criticize when they refer to a moderate Western leader, respected by the EU and other democratic nations, as "Haman"?

Do Israelis really want to inflame an already strained relationship with Jewish American leaders?

Why are there "fervent Israeli objections" to a deal that Israel's own Mossad and leading figures in the IDF do not oppose?

Why aren't Israelis more afraid of their own leaders who keep dropping hints about using tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities?

As an American Jew, I'm as baffled by most Israelis as they are baffled by most American Jews.

What's with the headline?

Is the ADL "clinging" to Jewish identity? Is J-Street or AIPAC?

JVP is not clinging to anything. It is Jewish, whether some people like it or not.

While extremely small Jewish settlements in Palestine were already established in late Ottoman times, under the auspices of wealthy individual "Mothers" from the Western diaspora, the Jews could never have established a separate political entity within Palestine without the crucial intercession of the British occupying authority in Mandatory Palestine.

In fact, the top Zionist leadership depended upon its subordinate role as British collaborators to realize their statist goals. The Zionist Commission for Palestine, chaired by Weizmann, president of the British Zionist Federation, had secured British promulgation of the pro-Zionist, Balfour Declaration of 1917. The following year, his commission went on a fact-finding mission to Palestine and reported back its recommendations to the British authorities. Its exploitation of ties with the British occupying force was critical to the success of Zionist plans.

Just as the German settlers enjoyed the protection of the British occupying force, so too did Zionist settlers enjoy British protection. They depended on it during the 1920s and 1930s when rapidly increasing numbers of these foreign (European) intruders sent shockwaves through Palestinian communities, prompting nationalistic revolts.

Part of the celebration of Islam entails celebrating Islam's success at conquering other lands and converting their people to Islam whether they sought such conversion or not. Most of the conquered probably converted of their own free will, but many did not. The Hasmoneans also practiced forcible conversion. I don't feel obliged to celebrate and exalt that fact.

Like other religions, Judaism has a long history of updating and transforming the meaning of earlier rituals. My kids grew up knowing the both the myth and the reality that surrounds the observance of Hanukkah. Nowadays, when we want to feel warm and fuzzy about sacred Jewish history, we reflect upon something truly sacred, such as the life of Gustav Landauer.

As any schoolgirl will tell you, German settler colonialism in the Americas occurred before the rise of a unified state, was not directed by a central government, and constitutes another prime example of settler colonialism without a mother country-settler relationship. So does the example provided by the Huguenot diaspora.

My best advice for you, if you'd really like to learn about colonialism, is to read. A recent good addition to the burgeoning literature is American Settler Colonialism: A History by Walter L. Hixso, published in 2013.

I see it somewhat differently. Although parents aren't responsible for a lot of the ways children turn out -- much has to do with temperament -- I firmly believe that parents set the tone. Those parents made encounters oppositional before they were half begun. I am not at all surprised at the way the son turned out.

I know many leading Rabbis who are also Jewish ethicists and law professors who would not agree with you.

Beautiful quote. Some of us were arguing about that very thing yesterday, in the comments for the editorial titled "The Dilemma."