[From, Awakening: Kushner mugging leads UCLA prof to reject Zionism by Philip Weiss on May 5, 2011]:
``I know most Israelis don't deserve their worst American defenders, but if the result of having to defend Israel is that Jews start acting like bullies and sounding like Nazis, at some point the price gets to be too high.''
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In my opinion and as a way out of a politics of personal identity and personal insults it makes more sense to look at Israel's Nationality Laws, in particular the legal concept of jus sanguinis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_nationality_law
Consider the modern history of this legal concept going back at least to the Balfour Accords, the WZO, and 1920s Weimar Germany. It was a period of intense racialization and nationalism of people and their identities, their position as citizens and non-citizens within nation states.
``At the turn of the nineteenth century, nation-states commonly divided themselves between those granting nationality on the grounds of jus soli (France, for example) and those granting it on the grounds of jus sanguinis (right of blood) (Germany, for example, before 2000). However, most European countries chose the German conception of an `objective nationality', based on word, race or language (as in Fichte's classical definition of a nation), opposing themselves to republican Ernest Renan's `subjective nationality', based on a daily plebiscite of one's belonging to their Fatherland. This non-essentialist conception of nationality allowed the implementation of jus soli, against the essentialist jus sanguinis. However, today's increase of migrants has somewhat blurred the lines between these two antagonistic sources of right.''
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli
This kind of philosophy-law study leads to a more rational context, where the consequences of writing laws that privilage some people over others within a national state can be seen. You can find very similar US histories with Native Americans and African Americans.
Such a study arms you with many insights, arguments, and answers to the endless assaults on immigrants and minorities in the US and EU Immigration and naturalization laws have to be re-written to embody democratic principles, primarily equality before the law. These are the principles that have been under assault through out most of US history and have been seriously trashed under various excuses for the need for national security and the war on terror. And, get rid of the fucking patriot act.
I argue this line because it draws on enlightenment history, the founding of the US, the French Revolution, the separation of church and state, and the core of western liberalism in a nation state.
CG