Michael Walzer Responds

Jim Rule has provided us with a useful example of a critique of Israel that is fairly common in some leftist circles—and that it is important to understand and reject. The common critique begins with the claim that all ethnic nationalisms and all nation-states are at least potentially unjust and oppressive, but Israel is an actual and particularly horrendous example. Well, there are, in fact, as Rule says, worse examples (he lists a few), but Israel's injustice is also ours, because of the financial aid and diplomatic support that the United States provides. And in any case, Israel is especially liable to criticism because it is a latecomer to the world of nation-states. "It arrived too late," as Tony Judt once wrote—that is, after the idea that nations need states of their own had lost its appeal to intellectuals like Judt. Today, all nation-states are anachronisms, but Israel is one nation-state too many.