”It’s somehow absurd and trivial to use the word Israel and the expression 60th birthday in the same sentence or the same breath. (What is this, some candle-bedecked ceremony in Miami?) The questions before us are somewhat more antique, and also a little more pressingly and urgently modern, than that. Has Zionism made Jews more safe or less safe? Has it cured the age-old problem of anti-Semitism or not? Is it part of the tikkun olam—the mandate for the healing and repair of the human world—or is it another rent and tear in the fabric?” Chrsitopher Hitchens argue in Slate magazine. Read it.