I always find it amusing when I hear people describing America as "The land of freedom and democracy". The truth is the the U.S.A. is quickly becoming the most un- democratic country on Earth. How can democracy work in America if their political system and democratic system has been corrupted by lobbist groups and political donations? The politicians are clearly working for the favour of the few, as opposed to the many.

One state solution is the only long-term solution as both Muslims and Jews need to see each other eye to eye.

History is the best and most objective assessment of the behavior of Muslim, Jews and Christian in the middle east. As far as my knowledge is concerned, whenever Muslim is in control of Jerusalem they allowed coexistence of all religion;

Former US President Jimmy Carter in his 2009 book: 'We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land - A Plan that will work' reveal his decades of effort in creating peace in the Middle East. According to Carter, it is Israel aggression that hinder peace in the middle east, not the Arab nations or Iran.

In this book, Carter also complaint about the US media in ignoring the peaceful message issued by the Arab nations and himself. (p. 16 and 108)

It's difficult to take Loewenstein seriously when virtually every line contains a demonstrable error of fact. The comments section is too short for a complete fisking but a few glaring ones need to be mentioned.

Mitt Romney didn't declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel. The Congress and Senate of the United States and plain common sense did that for him. The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 (Passed 93-5 in the Senate and 374-37 in the 104th Congress of the USA) declared US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and demanded the US Embassy be moved there.

As for common sense, every dictionary in the world defines capital as the seat of government and administrative centre of a country. The Israeli parliament, every ministry and the head of state are in Jerusalem and nowhere else. That makes Jerusalem as much the capital of Israel as Canberra is of Australia, no matter what Mitt Romney or Anthony Loewenstein might think.

Nor is Israel SELF described as the only democracy in the Middle East. It is so described by the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, Freedom House, the CIA World Factbook, every credible encyclopedia and even the never friendly BBC.

At no point is the Levy Report's legal reasoning actually challenged. As Loewenstein doesn't actually mention any of this we know he totally and imperiously rejects the conclusion without paying any attention to the argument.

Did the Research Assistant at UoT actually take the time to read it? It certainly doesn't seem so. If he had he would have seen one thing, for certain. It doesn't cite God-given rights as part of the argument. However, it does cite International Law and precedent.

These are clumsy errors of fact, part of an ideological rant but the delusion that a Jewish minority and Arab majority will live together in one democratic state shows an amazing ignorance of the region he is moralising about. The basic documents of Hamas, who won Palestine's only election twice declare it an Islamic obligation for even the stones and the trees to assist in killing Jews. Does that sound promising?

Whatever difference there are in public opinion one thing is clear. Both sides of the Palestinian political debate, the Islamists i.e. Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Nationalists i.e. FATAH and what remains of the PLO say openly, unambiguously, consistently and officially that Palestine is Arab and Muslim. There is no place for the Jews.

Will Loewenstein be campaigning for Australia to admit Jewish refugees from the former democratic state of Israel should its government be suicidal enough to do anything he suggests? I doubt it but, no doubt, from his ivory tower in Broadway he will edit a book about it. Don't buy it.

(I will gladly expand this into a full rebuttal if the Conversation is willing).

Mr Loewenstein's opinion is flavoured by typical Marxist, anti-US and Israel propaganda, as one would expect. No secrets there.

As such, I would dismiss it as irrelevant to any useful dialogue on the subject.

Read more in his book: *Left Turn: Political Essays for the New Left*. And no, that's not a plug for the book, unless you want to be harangued by a failed ideology proposing nonsensical solutions to important current geopolitical issues -- in my opinion.

What a pointless piece of blather. All the hallmarks of a teenage ideologue. The complexity of the situation have clearly overwhelmed Mr Loewenstein.

It has been obvious to me for a long time that Israel has no interest in a Palestinian State. Why should it when it holds all the cards. It has the power to marginalize and brutalize an ethnic group it sees as inferior. It can control movement of goods and individuals, imprison individuals it sees as a threat without trial or charge for years, divide communities and take whatever land it wants with impunity. It can make up the rules. Why on earth anyone thinks that Israel would want t give up this power is beyond me.

As for Romney comparing the the "magnificent " development of Israel to the shambles of the West Bank. Has he been living under a rock for the last 20 years? Or is it just another case of a Yank totally unaware of any events of events outside the USA?

The reason Australia is silent on Israel has nothing to do with "American or Israeli dictates", but with the simply fact that the Australian state is no different from the American and Israeli states, and along the same modernist historical trajectory that called up Leviathon and imposed it as the new model for 'democracy'.

We even have Australian Native Title lawyers over there in Israel working with Palestinians on their claims.

And here we have quite as many demographic cohorts never mentioned in official discourse, who are deemed not to exist as distinct populations, ethicities or social identities, most of it as lingering overhang from Australia's disastrous White Australia Policy, no different in any way from Zionist policy except that here the Jews were considered alien alongside the Chinese, and something had to be done to placate them.

But that still doesn't help the rest, and hasn't helped them. The best they can expect is a life on welfare, and if they are lucky relief occasionally from forcible state intervention.

Many of the points made are valid. But in throwing stones at Israel and the Zionists we blithely ignore the fact that we in Australia live happily on occupied land, taken by force from Australia's Indigenous Peoples, and have done so since 1788. Perhaps before launching a barrage of stones at Israel and the Zionists we should look seriously at our own dreadful misdeeds that include wholesale murder and genocide. It is always so much easier and more uplifting to take the moral high ground regarding a distant land rather than facing and trying as best as possible to rectify (probably far too late) our own horrendous, and ongoing, misdeeds. In Norm Stone's vein, do we care for example about PTSD in Australian Aboriginal children? Do we even care about the fact that the incidence of rheumatic fever and heart disease among Aboriginal children in the NT is among the highest in the World*, despite of the fact that rheumatic fever can easily be prevented as has been the case in our Australian developed (i.e. non-Indigenous) communities ?

*J Paediatr Child Health. 2010 Sep;46(9):527-33. doi: 10.1111/j.1440-1754.2010.01841.x.
Rheumatic fever in indigenous Australian children.
Parnaby MG, Carapetis JR.

A violation of the disclosure statement on this site puts all of Mr. Loewenstein's comments into limbo. In his eleventh paragraph he promotes a book he "edited" and thus would benefit from its sales.

Far from being a journalistic piece this item unfortunately spills on into being an op-piece - not the kind we’d want here at the Conversation. Australian readers may be more interested in facts (eg the bases for the court ruling) than the author’s entrenched views.

While that court ruling in Israel is an interesting development in terms of its implications, it is a far cry from the Israel accepting it as its main formal policy. Therefore jumping to the author’s pet solution – a one state option is drawing a very long bow.

If historic precedence is used, then Israel has demonstrated it is willing to withdraw settlements from occupied land (Gaza strip). So for that matter, even if that land is not occupied, Israel was still happy to hand it over for what it felt then was strategically useful. Thus, there is no theoretical or legal to do the same in the West Bank. In both cases the same legal idea exists, i.e. the land was taken from states (Jordan and Egypt) who themselves occupied the land in 1948 rather from a state which was sovereign.

As commented by others, it is always a pity that any discussion on matter re Israel-Palestine end up with simplistic arguments rather than giving us here in Australia the complexity of the situation. It would be nice if the for example in discussing a one state solution, we would get to know, what different groups in society think of it. We know for example, that Palestinian have always claimed they will not be willing to accept Israeli settlers with territory (not that the latter would wish to I assume), but then again we know of groups of anti-Zionist ultra religious Jews who keep supporting Palestinians. So who knows…

Ok, I won't go into Loewenstein's obvious hypocrisy, instead I'll ask you to imagine something.

Imagine if the inhabitants of Redfern decided that regardless of where in Australia they come from (and I'm related to virtually all of the ones from Mt Isa and places west of there), but wanted to be referred to from this day forward, and indeed backdated to first settlement, as Redfernians. Let's imagine for a second that unlike the inhabitants of Israel, the land Sydney was built upon was actually stolen without any UN Mandate whatsoever, from the Redfernians.

Having endured over 200 years of self-evidently illegal occupation, police brutality and sub-standard health, housing and schooling (we are still imagining here, right?), these Redfernians have had enough. Young Redfernians begin to engage in open and outright public disobedience, throwing rocks, building barricades, etc. while older Redfernians begin to use these youths as cover in order to snipe at Police. The media of course would be all over it like a rash, including the international media.

Pretty soon, the entire area would be a no-go zone for anyone not in an armoured vehicle, wearing body armou. In order to press their advantage (there is no real media interest in a long-running standoff after all), the Redfernians begin to engage in an insurgency, placing bombs in cafes and shops, nightclubs and markets, in order to increase the area of the entirety of "Redfern" (all of greater Sydney) that is ceded to them and to break the will of the population to resist them.

Pretty soon it would become intolerable, the Army would be sent in to root out the troublemakers, the job being too big and too dangerous for Police. But the media is there in droves, the chances of using artillery or indiscriminate responses to snipers would be nil, given the media circus. So casualties would be horrific, far more than the Australian public would be prepared to accept. So heavier and heavier weapons would be needed, more and more troops, and of course, the relatives of the Redfernians in the rest of the Country would be getting restive as well.

Contrary to what a lot would imagine, there are regional powers in our region that take a dim view of Australian foreign policy, or which might see some benefit from supporting these Redfernians militarily (some rather extensive gas, oil and mineral concessions in Northern Australia for one). So arms start to be smuggled into the Redfernian enclave by unscrupulous individuals.

Next thing we know, the Redfernians, pressing their advantage, start firing rockets into greater Sydney. They aren't exactly accurate, but Sydney is kind of hard to miss from Redfern. Where on earth would we go from there? A two-state solution, or the current one-state solution? I can't see the Redfernians going for the status quo, there is just no advantage to them in doing so.

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones and they should be awfully careful of ratbags suggesting we light the fuse that will destroy ourselves.