In his recent book The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto, Daniel Boyarin—a distinguished professor of ancient Judaism at the University of California, Berkeley—takes old arguments against Zionism and dresses them up in the trendiest of academic clothing. The Jews, he contends, should celebrate their religious and national heritage, but realize that they are a thoroughly diasporic people who should embrace “not the promise of security, but rather the highly contingent possibility of an ethical collective existence.” Cole Aronson writes in his review:

One might propose that Jewish Zionists didn’t like life in Europe because Gentile mobs—often with the acquiescence or support of Gentile overlords—had abused, expelled, and killed Jews over and over again for centuries. Occasionally, Boyarin concedes that Jewish life before Israel was not all peaches and cream. But according to The No-State Solution, the thing most urgently to be remedied is not the misery or precariousness of Jewish life in the Diaspora, but that Jews came to associate misery and precariousness with life in the Diaspora. Western Gentiles not only made the Jews suffer; they also—the devils—confused the Jews into thinking that their suffering was due to their lack of a state with which to defend themselves against their enemies. If only Herzl, Weizmann, and Jabotinsky had realized the European imperialist source of their opposition to Jewish statelessness!

Early on, Boyarin asks: “What kind of social identity do we want for the Jews?” Good question. But without an analysis of the current Israeli answer and some thoughts on the likely consequences of other answers, Boyarin should not expect a serious hearing for his own. What Boyarin calls a “question of values” is not analyzed with respect to his progressive values or any other values. He doesn’t assess the costs and benefits of his proposed binational state in Palestine for the “Jews who live and breathe” there. He doesn’t do it for Palestinians, either.

In Boyarin’s view, for Jews to keep others safe is the ethical thing, whereas for Jews to do the one thing proven to keep themselves safe is at best the “secure” thing, at worst the “racist” or “fascist” thing.

Noah Rothman provides a worthwhile reminder of why a nuclear Iran is a threat not just to Israel, but to the United States:

For one, Iran is the foremost state sponsor of terrorism on earth. It exports terrorists and arms throughout the region and beyond, and there are no guarantees that it won’t play a similarly reckless game with nuclear material. At minimum, the terrorist elements in Iran’s orbit would be emboldened by Iran’s new nuclear might. Their numbers would surely grow, as would their willingness to court risk.

Iran maintains the largest arsenal of ballistic missiles in the region. It can certainly deliver a warhead to targets inside the Middle East, and it’s fast-tracking the development of space-launch vehicles that can threaten the U.S. mainland. Even if Tehran were a rational actor that could be reliably deterred, an acknowledged Iranian bomb would kick-start a race toward nuclear proliferation in the region. The Saudis, the Turks, the Egyptians, and others would probably be compelled to seek their own nuclear deterrents, leading to an infinitely more complex security environment.

In the meantime, Iran would be able to blackmail the West, allowing it occasionally to choke off the trade and energy exports that transit the Persian Gulf and to engage in far more reckless acts of international terrorism.

As for the possible consequences, Rothman observes:

Iranian retaliation might be measured with the understanding that if it’s not properly calibrated, the U.S. and Israel could begin taking out Iranian command-and-control targets next. If the symbols of the regime begin crumbling, the oppressed Iranian people might find the courage to finish the job. If there’s anything the mullahs fear more than the U.S. military, it’s their own citizens.