The article below ran in a noted European newspaper a week ago. Can you guess which one?

They had no idea what they were talking about. Born and raised in Habsburg Central Europe, they were thinking just like their surroundings. And they were thinking in imperialist terms.
    The natives of Palestine would embrace them, Herzl believed. Jewish supremacy was bound to be preferable to Ottoman ditto.

Two world wars hence a number of things are up for debate, but hardly that the origins of Israel lie in a European understanding of race, religion and language as the foundation of the state. One either belonged to the dominant people, enjoying the privileges of state, or else one belonged to a minority and had to make do as best one could.
    Prior to World War I, the Hungarians ruled the Croats, Slovakians, and Romanians with an iron fist. Then followed the Greater Romanian Kingdom, which treated its Hungarians and Gypsies as third rate citizens. The Czechs would despise the Slovakians, the Serbs would oppress Croats and Albanians, the Greeks would terrorize their Macedonians and Turks. The madness culminated in the German genocide against the Jews.
     That Israel is a democracy is demonstrated by the recent parliamentary election, but Israel has a fundamental problem: the emergence of the Jewish state in the form of a Habsburg nationalist project in the Middle East, long after such projects were discredited in Europe.
    Not for nothing does the great contemporary British-American historian Tony Judt write that “the very idea of a ‘Jewish state’ — a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded — is rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is an anachronism.”

The debate will go on for a long time about what can be derived from the Israeli election and from that in the Palestinian territories, which Hamas won.
    Hamas’ involvement in terrorism and demands that Israel be wiped off the map are not the best starting point for detente.
    But what are the realities?
    The Hamas are laying low, knowing full well that they must continue to do so if they are to keep receiving financial aid from the West. Were they to give up terrorism, it would not be the first such change of direction in Middle Eastern history. The Israeli state was born in blood. One of its later heads of government, Menachem Begin, led the infamous Irgun Gang in 1948.
    Does Israel live up to its obligations? With its illegal settlements, Israel has done its part to sabotage the peace plan of President George W. Bush. Was the plan at all serious? That is open to doubt. As so much in today’s US Middle Eastern policy, it was rather a mixture of dreams and nightmares.
    Israel insists on a non-existent right to politically motivated killings. One absolves oneself of any responsibility for four million Palestinian refugees and displaced people who are entitled to return to their homes and property.
    For years, all that used to be in terms of Palestinian infrastructure — including the security apparatus, government buildings, olive fields, roads, and residential blocks — have been destroyed. Easily perishable export goods are routinely blockaded; customs and other fees due the Palestinian Authorities in Ramallah are not being paid. Whatever seeds of prosperity there were 15–20 years ago have been transformed into abject poverty. The Palestinians are stuck in their bantustans, powerless and desperate, hemmed in by barbed wire, minefields, roadblocks, passport requirements, and Jewish settlements. So far the latter encompass a quarter million colonists, many of them heavily armed. It is a lack of respect for international law and agreements that, one might say, also has a background in traditional European thinking.
    Radical rightwing politicians like Avigdor Lieberman declare their willingness to deport tens of thousands of Israeli citizens. Why? Because they are Arabs, not Jews. Lieberman is an immigrant from Moldova. To hear him speak is like hearing the Iron Guard on the march. There are many like him.

If the elections in Israel and the Palestinian territories are to have a common meaning, it must be that the time is ripe to abandon the old European ways.
    The initiative has to come from Israel, the military great power of the region. It ought to be generous: the policy that was implemented — alas, unilaterally — in Gaza should be followed up with an equally consistent withdrawal from all other illegally occupied areas. That means the Syrian Golan Heights; that means the West Bank; that means the Arab East Jerusalem. The parties may agree on modifications, but in general Israel must return to the borders from before the war of 1967. Furthermore, a genuine Palestinian state with its own airspace, sea territory, and security forces should be established — a serious country that inspires confidence in its citizens and that can be held responsible by the international community.
    To persist in building on a way of thinking that characterized Europe a hundred years ago is to invite a repetition in the Middle East of the European tragedy in the 20th century.

So where did the article run? Answer: the author is a staff writer at that most dreadful reactionary rag and purveyor of virulent ethnic nationalism, that foul anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda outlet: Jyllands-Posten.