Hitchens brings up several excellent points about the state of Israel. The question of whether it should be defended as part of "the West" goes straight to the paradox of its nature. Israel cannot be considered part of "the West" if it is a state defined as the homeland of Jews and Judaism. Such a state would be inconsistent with Western ideas about statehood. However, open Israel up to the secular values of Western statehood and it would be overrun by a Muslim majority that would quickly overturn those values.

Even so, that's what I would do. Currently, the presence of Israel as a Jewish state lends power to radical Islamic leaders and governments. Remove it, and those social structures will start to collapse. Currently, there are few more dangerous places to be a Jew (or anyone else) than Israel. So how is the state of Israel helping Jews or the West?

You'd "open Israel up to the secular values of Western statehood"? What does that mean? Open their borders? Eliminate all mention of Judaism from state documents and their flag?

Israel already holds elections and have a parliament etc. Like many European nations they have a state religion. There are millions of Arabs/Muslims who live in that nation and do quite well. Opening the borders would mean the end of Israel, and changing wording of the laws etc. would have a minimal impact within and outside Israel.

Do you really think that if Israel became a Muslim or plural nation then the entire Muslim world would become calm and peace-loving? The globe would somehow benefit from Israel becoming another Jordan or Lebanon? Seems to me your solution would not change much except for returning jews to a pre-WWII condition while Muslims would find another cause to complain about. I can hardly blame jews for not wanting your solution.

Israel is valuable as a refuge because it gives Jews around the world a place to go if, as in Russia most recently, they are oppressed for their ethnic heritage. This options is valuable even if Israel's current Jewish citizens are at higher risk than they would be now in the US, Europe, Russia or Argentina.

With the world community still unwilling to intervene to stop genocide or lesser ethnic oppression, and with anti-Semitism on the rise in Western Europe, Jews are unlikely to agree to re-design Israel as a secular state that will eventually house a minority Jewish population.

This is understandable, and still tragic. To support Israel the US has to, in effect, continue to support ethnocentric policies that we spent hundreds of years, and hundreds of thousands of lives, to overcome in our own country. It forces us to be hypocrites, undermining our credibility, the credibility of the United Nations and our relationships with more than just the Gulf states.

We need to ask not whether a certain peace plan will work, or who is right or wrong with the latest attack, but how we can support a state whose values and behaviors conflict so strongly with our principals and strategic interests. It would be nice to find a solution that would let the people there (forget history for a moment - they're there now) preserve a safe state and let us live up to our own principles. But I suspect that such a search will return a null set. Which doesn't mean that the West should withdraw all support, but does mean that future aid should be contingent on Israel pulling back fully to its '67 borders.

"Do you really think that if Israel became a Muslim or plural nation then the entire Muslim world would become calm and peace-loving?"

No, that would likely require the US to withdraw from the Middle East as well. :)