…Which brings us to the news story Monday, during the annual gabfest by major players at the Herzlia Conference where brand new Deputy Foreign Ministress Tsipi Hotovely spoke against the two-state solution and one major reason was the Jewish religion. The Jewish religion is the foundation of the Jewish people’s claim to all the land west of the river at least. She said so, and was challenged by Dan Meridor, former minister in Likud governments, former right-hand man to Menachem Begin, as his father in pre-state days had been a close Begin associate in the underground Irgun.

Today, though, like Tsipi Livni, Dan Meridor thinks about the Arabs like Yossi Beilin.

He objected to her bringing religion into the conflict with the “Palestinians” as he calls them, even though, again unlike his father, his father never did. Meridor protested that religious terms were never used in Zionism. He said, “If we want to speak in terms of justice, we must not turn Zionism, which is the most just movement of all national movements…into a movement for which justice isn’t important, or that formulates religious terms on a divine promise.”

And by justice he had in mind justice for the Balestinian refugees. He said, “In the entire Israeli declaration of independence no reference to G-d or religious rights to the land Israel are made. It cites history and not the religion that explains that we left the land because we sinned and were exiled from it.”

And I submit that in his words can be found the core of our current plight in the world as once again we have become the outcast of the nations…