My privilege as a white Jewish American in Israel is a major factor in getting me so much access to the key institutions of the Jewish state.

There will be no Palestinian state

It was not the right-wing Russians or the gun-toting settlers who carried out the Nakba. The Nakba is the legacy of Zionism's putatively socialist wing. It was the grandfathers and mothers of the "enlightened public" of today's Israel who literally drove tens of thousands of indigenous Palestinians into the sea in 1947-48 all along the Mediterranean coast, or who marched them at gunpoint to Ramallah.

After a few months you stop noticing every incarnation of radicalism and violence. It is so saturated into your reality that it practically fades into the scenery.

There's still massive racism in the United States today that is rooted in sexual fears, but it's at least considered unacceptable. In Israel it's a mainstream phenomenon that's encouraged and supported by the state because it supports Israel's demographic imperative in its ethnocratic political structure.

I haven't seen American Sniper, but correct me if I'm wrong: An occupier mows down faceless Iraqis but the real victim is his anguished soul.

It is depressing but not shocking to witness the liberal intelligentsia embrace Ari Shavit so enthusiastically. Shavit is someone who is as consistently wrong as Thomas Friedman on major issues, and at least as much a courtier of power.