I’m about to say something that may not land well with my usual readers who are opposed to the State of Israel. But I think it’s true. We often compare Israel to settler colonial states. Increasingly the comparisons have been made to fascist movements and states, even Nazi Germany. I’d like to suggest a different comparison, which may help make better sense not of Israel itself but of its supporters, particularly the ones I know best, here in the United States. I’d compare those supporters to the true believers on the left, who supported the Soviet Union between the 1930s and 1950s, often even afterward. I’m not the first to make this comparison; Tony Judt did before his death in […]