Is Israel a rogue state?

I have to admit that I have great admiration for the Jewish people for surviving as an ethnic community despite all the attempts to eradicate them.

And while I doubt whether Israel can prosper as an exclusively Jewish entity divorced from its Arab Middle Eastern surroundings, historically the setting up of a homeland for the Jews did give this persecuted ethnic group a sense of purpose which comes through nation building.

Israel is here to stay. My hope is that it will be able to re-invent itself as a Jewish-Arab liberal democratic hub existing side by side along emerging secular Arab democracies in Lebanon and Palestine, freed from Iranian and Syrian hegemony.

But nothing can be further away from this utopian vision than the present. Israeli patriotism has been deformed by the brute occupation of another people. The sense of historical victimhood seems to have endowed Israel with the right to behave as if it was above international law. Israel has assumed the right to use military force against anyone standing in its path. Anyone standing in its way is labeled a terrorist and a fair target.

This attitude makes Israel a rogue state whose only way to survive is by creating mayhem, which foments the clash of fundamentalisms which destabilizes the Middle East.

The Israeli right-wing seems to share a common interest with Iran; destabilisation and mayhem. The corruption of Israel's soul was more than confirmed by recent revelations on its dealings with apartheid South Africa. The very idea of the children of the Shoah offering the atom bomb to a country run by neo-Nazi sympathizers makes me puke.

Only America (and perhaps the international Jewish lobby) can save Israel from becoming its worst enemy by pulling the plug. Those who love Israel have to stand up to be counted.

The military attack on a peace flotilla is a clear warning that time is running out to save Israel from its alter ego.