"Yet all this donnybrook about Israeli policy, which is primarily designed to preserve her existence."
No it is not - Israel in a rich State with world-wide support - it a nuclear power with a highly trained heavily armed

Israeli Policy is openly aggressive and expansionist, so much so that many Jews are now distancing themselves from their ulta-right win policies
Among those who have compared their behaviour to that of the nazis are at least two of the ex-heads of Mossad interviewed for the documentary, 'The Gatekeepers - the other four where highly critical but didn't quite go so far

On September 1982, the Israeli Army armed and transported a group of Falangist militiamen to the Sabra Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, opened the gates and stood by while they massacred up to 3'500 unarmed refugee men women and children over three days; they lit the site of the massacre of two full nits so the massacre could continue day and night, turning back refugees at the gates who attempted to escape.
They assisted with the digging of mass graves with their bulldozers, then drove the killers away allowing them to escape
Nobody knows the exact death toll as they later built a sports stadiumm over where the bodies were buried
Eye witness, American/Jewish nurse, ellen seigal has dedicated her life to bringing Israel to book for the greatest single mass murder of non-combatants in the latter half of the 20th century.
The man found to be responsible for facilitating this massacre (even by Israel's own enquiry) Ariel Sharon (founder of the Likud Party) was punished for his crimes by later being elected Prime Minister Of Israel
None of this can be described as in any way 'defensive' or 'democratic'
Israel's history is peppered wit incidents such as ths - the earliest warning of the possibility of Israel developing into a fasist state was in a letter Letter to The New York Times. December 4, 1948 when he and 26 of his fellow intellectuals recred to massacres that were taking place as far back as that
Now, recent surveys have found that between on third and one half of Israeli citizens are in favour of ethnically cleansing Arabs from the territory
Where do you get this stuff?
Jim Carroll