Quotes from the Internet:

“[In Israel,] Anyone who doesn’t believe in miracles is not a realist.” David Ben-Gurion”
Israel at 60: A Time to Celebrate


*President Truman's decisions in the essential issues of postwar diplomacy were extraordinarily prescient. This one was a straightforward moral case; so is the United States' continuing commitment to Israel's security.

*...recognition of Israel was not tantamount to continued support for Israel. The first Eisenhower administration distanced itself from and refused to arm Israel. Only after Suez, when the American public's anxiety over Nasser's intentions encouraged the US to have a closer relationship with Israel, did the special relationship solidify.

*... the real 'guarantor of Jewish security' would be the securing of full civil rights and protection from anti-semitic intimidation and violence for Jewish people within their states of origin - not the expropriation of their legitimate expectations and aspirations by zionism in isolation.

* In the Second World War Jews fought in a higher proportion than the rest of the population of their countries.

1.5 million Jews fought as regular soldiers in the allied armies, most of them in the American army (550.000) and in the Soviet army (500.000).

The rest, distributed in the armies of the rest of the allied countries.Tens of thousands more fought as partisans.

About 250.000 Jews gave their lives in the struggle. (not to be confused with the six million who were murdered in the Holocaust).

40.000 Zionist Jews of Palestine volunteered for service with the British forces. 688 gave their lives.

In Sept. 1944 The Jewish Brigade was formed, and fought in North Africa and Italy. This experienced combatants came back to Palestine after the war to fight against the British in the Jewish underground. (Fabian, source)

(From: Oliver Kamm's blog and comments)


So we now come back to the original question, why does Israel continue to arouse such passions in some many places, 60 years after its birth? I would speculate that it’s because a lot of people who have no problem at all with the nationalism of the Irish, the Uzbeks or the Tamils seem to be made, at best, uncomfortable by the nationalism of the Jews. Not by their own or anybody else’s, just that of the Jews. It seems to stick in their craws that the Jews have their own state. They are happy for Jews to be doctors, lawyers, shrinks and bankers but for them to have their own state, elect corrupt and ignorant politicians, defend themselves and commit the occasional atrocity, just like the great majority of other nation states at some point in their history, doesn’t seem to be acceptable. (A Postcolonial State-El Nuevo Pantano)