And Returning to the Dugout From Far-Left Field...

My good friend and debate partner (sometimes even on the same side of an opinion), Yossi Klein Halevi, had an article published in yesterday's International Herald Tribune and I've selected this portion to be highlighted because some commentators at my blog just can't grasp the enormity of what this position means:

Terror enclaves aligned with Iran - Hezbollah in the north, Hamas in the south - have formed on our borders. For the first time since the 1948 war, the Israeli home front has become the actual front.

Meanwhile, an Iranian regime whose threats to destroy Israel have become so routine that they are scarcely reported anymore may be about to cross the nuclear threshold. And the notion that Israel's very existence is a moral affront is spreading, not only in Muslim countries but in the West.

I moved to Israel in 1982...For the first time, many Israelis were questioning the justness of their nation at war. The apocalyptic images of May 1967 no longer seemed adequate to explain the moral and political complexities of the conflict.

That self-doubt intensified during the first intifada of the late 1980s. I...became convinced we needed to make almost any concession to end this pathological conflict. Concluding that Israel was partly culpable came as a kind of relief: If we shared blame for the conflict, that meant we could help solve it.

I joined the growing number of Israelis reaching out to the other side...I discovered that even as many Israelis were trying to understand the Palestinian narrative, Palestinian society was teaching its children that the Jewish narrative was a lie.

There was no ancient Jewish presence in the land of Israel, no Temple on the Temple Mount, no Holocaust. One leading Palestinian moderate told me that the Jews weren't a people, only a religion, and that after the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, the Jews would resume their status as a religious minority.

He was hardly alone: The notion that the Jews aren't a people and have no right to a state is endemic throughout Palestinian society, in fact throughout the Arab world.

The Israeli left won the debate over the need to end the occupation, but lost the debate over the viability of peace.

The fear of losing our ability to defend ourselves explains, in part, the motivation with which Israeli soldiers fought during the recent war in Gaza. It explains too why so many young Israelis, who came of age during the suicide bombings and missile attacks, will be voting for right-wing parties in Tuesday's Israeli election.

Meanwhile, we move from one unresolved conflict to the next, finding ourselves increasingly isolated and condemned. Yet we know we have no choice but to fight this war we tried to avert. We know too that, this time, there will be no easy victory, no Six-Day War to dispel the demons of May 1967.