It is unnecessary to insist that God revealed the entire Torah word-for-word. Good enough if we accept the divine origin of the commandments and agree that priests considerably adapted the law to changing circumstances, just like the Talmudic rabbis did a thousand years later. We cannot stop working on the Sabbath: power stations, police, air traffic controllers, and water suppliers must keep working. The clear prohibition that no one should work “in your town” can only be read as a ban on m’lacha, the exhausting work. Realistically, we cannot go on stoning the deviants who have sex with menstruating women.

Instead of appealing to the absence of Sanhedrin—which fact did not stop medieval rabbis from executing Jewish criminals—we can concede that priests made harsh laws to enforce morality, and it was hardly ever practiced for the impossibility of proving the crime. Instead of reading the caret punishment as some afterlife deprivation—despite the clear reference to temporal execution in Lev20:17—we should honestly ask ourselves whether the corpus delicti is of divine or priestly origin. This approach doesn’t come close to reformism, a nihilist teaching which reduces Judaism to gentile ethics. I just want to be honest about religion. Whatever is clearly impossible no matter how hard we try just cannot be of divine origin.

The Samson birth narrative confirms that out-of-the-Temple sacrifices were common, as Manoah had no qualms about sacrificing on the suggestion of a stranger who he didn’t know was an angel. Mesha stele speaks of looting “vessels of YHWH” at Nebo, and thus also confirms the operation of non-Temple shrines. Centralized Temple worship could not be a reality: Jews from Israel and Galilee could not travel to Jerusalem for routine purification and festivals. Already the First Temple lacks the Arc, urim and tummim, and the Second Temple lacks sacred objects altogether. The Temple is foremost a political institution of the Jewish nation. We should not wait for the ideal Temple to descend from the skies, but build up the Temple Mount.

Haredim are the nicest people around, and nowhere in Israel do I feel as much at home as in a Mea Shearim neighborhood. The spiritual depth, ethics, and morality of many rabbis are unparalleled. Their devotion to the Torah, which they study in poverty with the utmost dedication, is mind-boggling. But the hard question is whether their Judaism is true. Should Jews be nice? Torah scholars? Or should we live a full-bodied national life with secular studies, secular jobs, and wars? The Bible offers no indication that God wants Jews to live monastic lives. We’re repeatedly commanded to settle the land, work it, and fight.

Indeed, there is no choice: religious Jews launched massive settlement of the Land decades before Zionists, and Arabs repeatedly targeted the religious Jewish communities, which had no Zionist presence or aspirations to statehood. Subservience to nations is a disgrace of God’s name, and negotiations with enemies who claim the land promised to us testify to our rejection of God’s promises. He did his miracles in 1947 and 1967, but Jews refuse to follow through with our part of the job.

Arabs will not decrease violence to allow Israel an honorary withdrawal from the West Bank. Just like the Jewish fighters haunted the British in Palestine in 1947, Arabs will continue killing Jews even if Israel evacuates Gaza and the West Bank. Diplomats cannot understand why Arabs keep on killing Jews even in the face of diplomatic surrender. Simple: Arabs correctly view their victory as the product of fighting rather than diplomacy. Add their hatred of Jewish occupiers, and Arabs will continue killing the Jews until the last Jew leaves their land—which is not limited to the West Bank. The peace process only prompts the Arabs to kill the retreating enemy. Arab mujahedeen similarly flocked to Afghanistan after the Soviets announced their withdrawal.

The Golan Heights show how simple the peace process really is. The hotly contested Golans are the safest part of Israel. No terrorists cross from Syria. Sneaking through the hapless peacekeepers is not a big deal. The desire to confront Israel is there: recall the constant stream of guerrillas from Egypt during the cease-fire. Syria has the necessary prerequisites for guerrilla warfare with Israel: strong intelligence, zealots, small arms, and Hezbollah and Hamas expertise. Yet Syria refrains from sending guerrillas into Israel because it fears Israeli reprisals. Israel attacked Syrian aircraft on several occasions during the cease-fire, and overall proved capable and willing to take the war into Syria. Thus, Syria distances itself from guerrilla activity.

IDF mapped hundreds of buildings used by Hamas, PIJ, Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and other factions. Aggressively destroying them will go a long way toward pacifying the terrorist nest.

Extroverted and passionate Arabs recall urban Azeris rather than Muslim highlanders. Eager to establish their social stannding but unable to do so by rational means, Arabs resort to heated arguments, bullying, and spontaneous violence. They are not quiet, thorough, and dispassionate killers like the highlander Muslims. Arabs fight fiercely at first only, and only for a short time. Countered with cruel force or ignored, they cease. Concessions—mini-victories—prop up their pride and they push to continue. Counter-intuitive as that may sound, concessions lead to no peace. Historically, too, peace negotiations between nations have commenced near the war’s end. Negotiations during the war embolden the aggressor and encourage him to persist in violence.

Arabs, rather than Jews, have proved the biggest obstacle to Palestinian statehood. Jordan looked forward to annexing the West Bank, Egypt wanted the Negev, Lebanon had designs on the Galilee, and Syria wanted everything. Nobody cared about Palestinian Arabs. Jordan, seeking to annex the West Bank, even banned the word “Palestinian.” Later, Jordanian (the Black September), Syrian (1976), and Lebanese (1973) armies fought the brotherly Arab PLO. There was not a single instance of cooperation between the Arab League and the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee on Palestinian self-determination. Other Arabs used the Palestinian issue to settle their own scores: Syria tried to invade Jordan in 1960, ostensibly to save the PLO from being butchered by the disenchanted Jordanians, but actually to annex a part of Jordan. Likewise in Lebanon—but there Syria fought the PLO and even expelled Arafat from Damascus. Egypt enjoyed using Gaza as a trash can for its own radicals, and channeled the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities into Gaza. Jordan used the PLO to destabilize the West Bank, expecting to annex it. When the annexation appeared unworkable, Jordan switched to confederacy with the West Bank Palestinian state (the latest such agreement was signed in 1985). Lebanese Christians and Muslims alike were only too happy to slaughter the troublesome Palestinians: a single massacre in Tel al Zaatar refugee camp left about 3,000 Palestinians dead, six times the toll of the famed Sabra and Shatila debacle. No country has consistently supported the PLO. Nasser did for a few years only, and Jordan also did for a short time. Kuwait hosted the PLO organizations and charged a 5 percent tax to fund the PLO until the war with Iraq. The Russians intermittently aided the PLO, but less so after the PLO in conjunction with Israel crushed the Palestinian National Front, a communist outfit.

Palestinians themselves weren’t serious about statehood: only from 4,000 to 12,000 of them took up arms against the Jews in the Israeli War of Independence. Other Arabs didn’t take the Palestinian issue seriously until the late 1970s, when the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement ended the possibility of a large-scale Arab-Israeli war for a while. Palestinian statehood thus moved forward as the only credible pretext for refusing normalization of relations with Israel, and the only theater of military operations against the Jewish state. Other Arabs made the Palestinian cause prominent after the Camp David peace treaty with Egypt made war with Israel impossible; Palestinian guerrillas took the Egyptian army’s place in the avant-garde of Arab forces against Israel. The very word “Palestinian” to denote a “nation” became common at that time. Foreign Arabs continually inflamed Palestinian expectations and dissuaded Palestinian leaders from reaching a settlement with Israel.

Israeli Arabs did not revolt in any war between Israel and foreign Arabs. Being dispersed throughout the country, the revolting Arabs would have considerably impeded Israel’s military effort. A common explanation, that they were frightened, cannot explain the total absence of hostile activities: at least some would not be frightened at the prospect of Israeli retaliation. Neither, of course, were the Arabs loyal. Rather, they did not associate themselves with the invading Arabs, who were more hostile and brutal to the Palestinians than Israel. And so, as recently as during the 2006 war, Israeli Arabs didn’t aid Hezbollah, even though there was no fear of expulsion: the same Arabs routinely riot in Israel during peaceful times. They cheered the rockets flying at Haifa, but that’s it. Palestinians feel no attachment to Israel, and very little to other Arabs. Polls indicate that pan-Arab identification peaks after terrorist attacks on Israel, but that’s merely the human tendency to identify with my enemy’s enemy.

Israeli Palestinians are fairly content with nominal Jewish rule, just as they were content with Jordanian rule. But there is a difference. Jordan heavy-handedly pursued assimilation of the West Bankers, while Israel’s policy toward Arabs moved from the original isolation to multiculturalism and affirmative action. Arabs would be content with harsh Israeli rule, as they were content with the rule of the Ottomans or Jordan. But Israeli policy, which gives the Arabs a hope of national identity, is a time bomb. Foreign aid makes life in Palestine tolerable, and thus perpetuates the conflict; if the situation were unbearable to Palestinian Arabs, they would have accepted Israeli offers.

The 1947 partition of Palestine left the Jewish state with a 40 percent Arab population. Miraculously, the Arabs took off. Their flight started almost a year before the conscious Jewish policy of expelling the fifth column. Unlike in the previous periods of civil unrest, Arabs fled the country rather than temporarily moving into the hills. They fled without a hope of return, for they took their animals and belongings, and wouldn’t have realistically expected their villages to remain intact. Israeli leaders draw attention to the isolated calls by Arab leaders for the villagers to flee, ostensibly to clear the area for Arab military operations. No Arab villager would buy such nonsense. All of them understood that the Syrians and Jordanians wanted their emptied land.

God performs miracles without violating the laws of nature (that’s why there are atheists), and so the Arab flight was prompted by decades of unrest, a crumbling patriarchal society, a closed economy, spiraling clashes with Jews, loss of traditional leadership, and fear. Most Palestinian leaders argued against fleeing the country, but the peasants were of a different opinion. Jews, for their part, slowly switched to Plan D, attacking first the Arab villages, most of which—willingly or not—housed militias, and eventually cleansing the land of Arabs to gain a contiguous Jewish state. Out of hopelessness and fear of retaliation, the majority of Arabs fled Israel in two waves: amid the clashes before the proclamation of Israeli independence, and after the Jews had won the war. Much smaller numbers of Arabs fled during the war itself.

The near-absence of Arab flight from Galilee demonstrates that Jews did not plan to evict them; Arabs fled only the zones of intense conflict, rather than the entire Jewish state. Arabs that remained in Galilee developed into a demographical time bomb, and created an Arab majority in many parts of the Jewish state. Despite the huge influx of Jews since 1948, the Arab population of Israel continued to rise, from 10-19 percent to 34 percent among the Israeli young today. In order to create a Jewish state, Jews had no choice but to make the Arabs go.

Jewish actions followed the cruel logic of war and state-building, nowhere more clear than in Dir Yassin. That village, like many others, had an implicit non-belligerency agreement with Jewish settlements, but eventually succumbed to Arab guerrillas and bandits. Many villagers from Dir Yassin joined the bandits, and raided Jewish caravans to Jerusalem and the settlements. Pervasive ownership of firearms, the Islamic sanction of robbery, unemployment, and the youth bulge assured the village’s militancy. In the attack on Dir Yassin, Haganah forces shelled the village while Irgun and Lehi fighters stormed it, naturally being unable to discriminate between the full-blown militants and armed teenagers. Some women were also caught in the fighting. Testifying to the fierceness of the battle rather than an atrocity, Irgun subsequently paraded the survivors from Dir Yassin through Jerusalem and sent them into the city’s Arab sector. Arab propaganda, however, made the operation into a massacre and frightened many Arabs into fleeing. In terms of killed-for-fled efficiency, Dir Yassin stands out as a brilliant example of good military practice. In PR terms, Dir Yassin became a disaster for Israel for a single reason: Jews admitted it as such. No Palestinian talks about the Egyptian forces of Ibrahim Pasha or the British razing the Arab towns, though the Egyptian atrocities and British cruelties far exceeded Dir Yassin, Kfar Qasem, and all other infamous points of Jewish-Arab clashes. People complain of the things it makes sense to complain of. The Egyptians and the British offered Palestinians no opportunity to vent their grievances, but Jews were receptive to the enemy’s cries—and got more cries in return.

Palestinians didn’t define themselves as such until the 1960s. The original Palestinian nationalists of 1920s-40s, such as Istiqlal—the most radical party—spoke of Syro-Palestinian identity or Greater Syria. Syria, however, was under French occupation while Palestine was under the British. The British, accordingly, resisted Syro-Palestinian nationalism and evicted its proponents first to Syria, and then arranged for them to be expelled from Syria. Palestinian nationalism is the result of simple and efficient British measures to quash Syro-Palestinian nationalism. Such was a typical colonial policy of creating non-viable entities which cut across tribal lines, divide et impera.

In a historically typical manner, Palestinian nationalism was invented by local bourgeoisie, political bureaucracy, and relatively educated young people. They preferred to rule a non-viable state rather than continue as Ottoman, British, or Syrian administrators. The population preferred to belong to the larger (Syro-Palestinian) entity, but population doesn’t own media and have little say in immediate policies. Palestinian nationalism was never strong: Arafat’s nationalism crystallized in Cairo, and the early Fatah was concentrated in Jordan and lacked a support base in the West Bank. The vast majority of Palestinians, whether in Israel proper or on the West Bank, dislike Israel but don’t care to fight her. The rumors of a Jordan-West Bank confederacy caused no outrage among the West Bank Palestinians. Palestinians in Jordan still don’t protest the attribution to them of Jordanian nationality. Palestinian Arabs differ from Egyptian Arabs about as much as Texans differ from New Yorkers.

The Christian partition of the Land of Israel in 1947 was an ad hoc solution. At the time, Westerners were searching for a one-size-fits-all solution to international conflicts. The Wilsonian utopia had failed miserably, and diplomats saw partitioning as another wonder pill. Scores of countries, from Germany to India, were partitioned at the dawn of the new world order to satisfy all major contenders. That approach proved erroneous: artificial borders are either abrogated (Germany) or soaked with blood (India-Pakistan). The Palestinian state was of the same diplomatic stock as East Germany: a non-viable entity liable to continuously ignite nationalism on both sides. Saudi Shiites are more numerous than Palestinian Arabs, more different from Saudi Sunni than Palestinians are from Syrians, and more viable—they sit on Saudi oil deposits. Yet Saudi Shia didn’t get a state of their own. Transjordanian settled Arabs are more different from Transjordanian Bedouin than East and West Bank Arabs are different from each other; still, Transjordanian Arabs were lumped into a single state, while the East and West Bankers (in fact, the East Bank refugees from the West Bank) separated into two states. A Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria has nothing to do with national rights or justice, but is a rare remnant of the failed post-WWII diplomatic doctrine of partitioning problematic states.

The British Peel Commission didn’t even consider a Palestinian state in the West Bank, but allocated that territory to the already huge Transjordan, carved from the land allocated to Jews by the League of Nations. In 1945, after the Holocaust, Britain restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine even further. If not for Jewish terrorist groups like Etzel and Lehi, the British would have reneged on their promises entirely, and no Jewish state would have come into being. They envisaged Transjordan alongside a mixed Jewish-Arab statelet in Palestine.