It is for good reason that 2000 years ago, the Talmud acknowledged that, after the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, prophecy was taken from the prophets and was given to children and fools. As a kindness, I'll assume that Christopher Hitchens is being ingenuous when he asks; "Can Israel Survive for Another 60 years?" And while he seems to play the role of "landsman" in asking so many question about the Jewish state, his concern about Israeli society seems less childlike than cynical when he cites the complexity of Israel's existence. And like much opinion that tries to answer the "mideast crisis", Hitchens' article is very much about Israel's physical being. It's certainly not about the Palestinian terrorism that Israelis must live with day-to-day, or the new antisemtism that finds a warm place in the world today. In Hitchens' eyes and mind all is forgiven except for the one thing that he is uncomfortable with, namely, Israel:

Has Zionism made Jews more safe or less safe? Has it cured the age-old problem of anti-Semitism or not? Is it part of the tikkun olam—the mandate for the healing and repair of the human world—or is it another rent and tear in the fabric?

That Hitchens asked some of these questions decades after the shoah (Holocaust) is rather inexplicable. Even after the murder of 6 million Jews, he wonders if Jews are safer with a homeland that will take them in, no matter what the situation. Just as cogent are the questions that he fails to ask: Does Britain have a moral obligation to explain its Palestine White Paper that in 1938 closed the doors to Jewish immigration, consigning millions of Jews to certain death under Hitler? Do the Arab have to answer for the fact that they refused to live in peace with the Jews who were then living in Palestine for centuries. Or the fact that many of them looked forward to Nazi intervention in the Middle East. More recently: must they respond to keeping their Arab brothers in dank refugee camps across the mideast with no freedom to join any country as a citizen (save Jordan) ?

Antisemitism has little to do with the activities of Jews. It is indeed, the irrational hatred of the other. Whether rich or poor, capitalist or communist, the Jew will always be a catalyst for hate and derision in the eyes of a Jew-hater. Does Hitchens really think that Israel was established to abate the disease of antisemitism or to allow a respite for its people and a community and culture that has only been tolerated very recently in a few countries? Has any one phenomenon stopped antisemitism in its tracks? To put this another way: Does the birth of another state in Africa lessen the racism of black-haters?

Hitchens goes on to ask if Israel's existence has healed the world: has it created tikkun olam? The fact that he never asked this question regarding another country denotes a double standard, as if other countries are not required to have social justice woven into their existence as nations the way Jews must have "repair of the entire world" knitted into their life's blood. Of course the question is obnoxious at best and Hitchens is very aware of this. To the extent that Israel has been able to absorb 700,000 Sephardic Jews kicked out of the Arab world, that alone is tikkun olam. Bringing over thousands of Ethiopian Jews, retrieving them from hunger and terror is tikkun olam. Giving Russian refusniks a home in Israel is tikkun olam too. Israel's aid to the African continent is tikkun olam. Every piece of technology that Israel has created that makes this world a kinder place is tikkun olam. Every time Israel extends itself to another country, that effort heals the world. Of course the preposterous question for Hitchens teeters on whether Israel's establishment was worthwhile because Palestinian Arabs that fought a war against Israel now find themselves on the fringe of every Arab society, unabsorbed by their brethren. For Hitchens, their pain neutralizes all the healing that Israel has completed and continues to dispense at age 60. But Hitchens continues in the same vein, now answering his own questions rather brusquely:

Do I sometimes wish that Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann had never persuaded either the Jews or the gentiles to create a quasi-utopian farmer-and-worker state at the eastern end of the Mediterranean? Yes. Do I wish that the Israeli air force could find and destroy all the arsenals of Hezbollah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad? Yes. Do I think it ridiculous that Viennese and Russian and German scholars and doctors should have vibrated to the mad rhythms of ancient so-called prophecies rather than helping to secularize and reform their own societies? Definitely. Do I feel horror and disgust at the thought that a whole new generation of Arab Palestinians is being born into the dispossession and/or occupation already suffered by their grandparents and even great-grandparents? Absolutely, I do.

With little compassion or historical conscientiousness, Hitchens sometimes wishes Herzl and Weizmann had not created the Jewish state. Again, against the backdrop of the shoah and utter destruction of European Jewry, this wish from a Jew is beyond bizarre. As a Jew I wished that they had created the homeland earlier on. But again, Hitchens' self-destructive hope is offered to the Palestinians who raise their kids to hate Israel and Jews with a vehemence unseen since Nazi Germany. He claims it is ridiculous that Russian and German Jews considered setting up a Jewish homeland rather than helping to secularize their own societies. Does Hitchen's not realize that German Jewry was one of the most secularized Jewish societies in all of history and Europe, that in spite of all the trials to fit in, Jews were ostracized and finally murdered by their German compatriots? Is the revulsion that Hitchen's feels the fact that Israel has always attempted peace in the face of Palestinian hostility and hatred or the fact that the Palestinians in their murderous hatred of Jews quite often hijack any peace offerings by Israel. Unfortunately not. His revulsion is probably the same ghettoized shame that he feels for anything Jewish. His embarrassment is not only his undoing but the undoing of a generation who is uncomfortable with anything that it can't understand. To save a world, you must first save yourself. After 2000 years of victimhood, Jews are ready to fight for what is theirs and Hitchens will just have to deal with that.

The Jews have lasted for over 5000 years. The state of Israel has a glorious future.