David Remnick writes for The New Yorker:
Last year, Rivlin denounced fans of Beitar Jerusalem, the soccer team of the city’s right wing, after they held up signs reading “Beitar Forever Pure” to protest the signing of two Muslim players from Chechnya. Rivlin, a Beitar supporter, said at the time, “Imagine the outcry if groups in England or Germany said that Jews could not play for them.”
This same type of chauvinism would be healthy for other groups.
I love Israel’s turn to the right and I hope Europeans imitate it to protect their own cultures from hostile foreign influence.
Although Jabotinsky considered himself a liberal and a democrat, his nationalism was so fierce that he occasionally betrayed an admiration for Benito Mussolini…
The history of Jews living as a minority in Arab states is not a pretty one. Edward Said, when he was asked in 2000 by a writer from Haaretz what would happen to a Jewish minority in a binational state, replied, “It worries me a great deal. The question of what is going to be the fate of the Jews is very difficult for me. I really don’t know.”
Groups living as minorities don’t usually have a jolly time of it.
