“The Myth of Israel’s Insecurity” is an essay that traces the history of the underlying premises of Zionism. It shows how those premises have kept Jews locked in conflict, and therefore insecure, since the beginning of the Zionist movement.
The essay is in three parts:
1. The Zionist myth of Insecurity.
Ira Chernus Blog 
How can a professor be so dumb? this so called peace you believe in will be the end of Israel! You remove the Israeli grip on the west bank and we are back to 1995 when buses explode on a weekly basis and tens of Israelis die! The do NOT want peace, they want us all to die and we’re supposed to just let them? People like you should convert to Islam, you should be ashamed of yourself!! The only security Israel has is the one it makes for itself!! If we stop doing what we feel is necessary for that security, there will be no Israel. It’s no scam, we are under threat, you just don’t see it because Israel does a great job in preemptive measures designed to eliminate or at least minimize the threat.
Professor is not dumb, he is just know-it-best professor recklessly playing with the fate of his people. For once being born Jewish one is always Jewish to the rest of one’s life no matter how much one is in denial of that. Ira belongs to those useful idiots, which were defined by Vladimir Lenin. Ira’s memory of Jewish fate is totally bookish and he want to have approval of other useful people such as Noam Chomsky.
The problem with Jews is that if they are genius then they are very good at that. The same is in reverse: if they are dumb – they the dumbest.
Your response is dripping in ignorance and archaic racist language.
You are living in Plato’s cave. I applaud Professor Chernus’s intellectual honesty and ability against all odds to stand up for the truth. One day the truth will prevail, and Zionist parasites that are sucking blood of the people of the world will inevitably meet divine justice destined for them. You can fool the American people and ride on their necks, like the fabled fox does on the neck of the croccodile, for a long time, but in the end your end will come and you will have to face justice.
Please provide HARD evidence that any of those bus bombs were perpetrated by Palestinians
You come across to me sounding very anti semetic.
Oh my, here we go again, you Jews can’t ‘take a shit’ – without the use of the word ‘Semitic, huh? Hell, most of you AshkaNAZI’s are as ‘Semitic’ as the scrotum on my pet skunk!!!’
This article goes to reveal the complete stupidity of the federalized state run education system. A whole bunch of kooks in some fluffy world minus any thought of evil in our time. This professor has the same qualifications as any other breathing human being, making his opinion just as valuable as you who is reading this. Because we put the word professor next to an anti Semites name goes to show the foolishness that Americans are placing their children under.
Wow. The two commenters above succinctly illustrate the pervasiveness and (internalization to the point of knee-jerk response) of these myths. So handy when opponents back up one’s own evidence. Great essay! Thank you.
Thank you for this insightful essay.
Ira Chernus seems insane.
Israel faces constant terrorist attack, has been hit with multiple wars, and is surrounded by countries that hate Israel and preach antisemitic hate, but Ira Chernus says Israel’s feelings of insecurity are a myth?
This blog and Ira Chernus live in the twilight zone
Yassar, they hate the Jews because of the color of their kipa’s. Stop it fool! You bastard Jews have been hated since man crawled out of the primorial soup – and like the (Holocaust) ‘event,’ You Jews have learned nothing from your experiences except ‘how to dodge stones!!!’
Hundreds of rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza over the last few weeks. Because they are failing to successfully kill Jews, Israel does NOT face a security threat from them?
What kind of lunatic writes crazy garbage like the absurd editorials on this blog?
Ira Chernus is a professor? U of Colorado actually pays this guy to teach students? WTF!
Yup, but remember ZioNazi schmucks: “It’s not that the dog bit you – It’s why he bit you’ and, very often, he probably had ‘every’ right you bite your frikken face off. Like after the Jewish massacres in Gaza of 12/27/2008 and 07-08/2014, against basically unarmed Palestinians by the war criminal ‘baby killer’ Jews, remember?’
My response to just one point – enough to show that Chernus is not being intellectually honest:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/04/ira-chernus-agenda.html
Ira Chernus commits sin of Ham, ignoring his own forefathers, who most likely suffered immensely under the Tzars and general Russian Antisemitism. He and his ilk are under delusion that what happened in Russia and then in Europe cannot happen in this country. He and his ilk are perfect product of American education system. Once the envy of the world after Jewish infusion from Germany, Austria and other cultural centers of the Old Europe, American universities are fast coming back to their “normal” state of pragmatism ahead of everything else. Ira Chernus is but one of many living examples of what American Universities under guidelines of Lewis Powell (google Powell Memorandum 1971), former aid to Prez Nixon and his appointee as Supreme Justice, could and in fact accomplished for mere 40 years. Arguments with tea-partiers and “progressives” as Ira Chernus are totaly useless. They are beyond pale.
What a shameless, fraudulent, sad sack of a “professor” and a human intellect gone to waste. A phony “religion” professor who’ll say anything just to win accolades from anti-semites. I’ve heard that CU Boulder was kooky and hypocritical but now I understand just how far from reality it is. Rather than make any sort of positive intellectual contribution to humanity… or doing work that brings people to a greater understanding of his subject matter… he is dedicated to a spurious defamation and poisoning the Jewish state. Israel has been attacked countless times and it is now being encircled by the tendrils of Iran… every school child in Gaza and South Lebanon is well aware of what is going on.
Chernus is committing the blackest of all sins.. betraying, defaming and endangering (an already very endangered and oppressed) people for his own personal ego and vanity. Since it’s hard to write positive, original and inspiring content… he has taken the left-handed path of writing cheap blog posts that are “pornography” to arouse to Jew haters… a hungry and irrational audience that will trumpet and praise anything that confirms their prejudices. He does it for the same reason Hamas shoots rockets… it’s exciting and the easiest way to create a stir… by tearing something down rather than building something meaningful. I feel sorry for these people’s souls as they are bound to suffer terribly from the fruits of their own poison apples.
Prof. Chernus,
My guess is that you are probably moderating these comments in order to obtain more evidence of the pure hatred that people of any identity have for those who illuminate the Racist Zionist State if Israel. Being a keen observer of these events for nearly forty years, I personally applaud your efforts.
laoma, after you typed that did you goose-step your way to your dresser and put on your stormfront neo-nazi shirt and then go for a jog?
Oh California Bob!, your comments are so full of prejudice and over-repeated-false-clichés to justify the obvious failed Israeli posture towards the conflict that you should spend some vacations in Gaza to rethink you concept of Nazism.
Great work sir, I salute you. It is time to get rid of this israeli parasite which is sucking life out of america, Americans are getting killed to protect this illegal state of israel. Our economy and security is getting destroyed just because of israel
I am shocked by the ugly, violent comments that people write on this page. Anti-semite… self-hating jew… traitor of your own people… I know that in the old days it was an effective weapon, but do jews still use those torture instruments against their own people? It all seems so Catholic…
I know quite a bit about the ME-conflict, and you are right: Israel’s latest objections (1967 borders are indefensible and Israel must be a Jewish state) are fabrications to halt a peace process in which Israel already was the party that clearly resisted a peaceful resolution for decades, for some unclear reason backed by the USA.
Indeed: the insecurity of Israel largely is a myth and on numerous occasions Israeli leaders have stated their true intentions in Hebrew – as if we don’t listen and translate… By now, we all have seen enough evidence for any honest person to conclude that that Israel is an aggressor, not a defender. The grievances of Palestinians are quite justified, whereas the Israeli don’t even HAVE grievances – that’s how secure they are! But they can’t hold what they claim, and public support is evaporating quickly.
I hope you are able to let the ugly comments slide away from you and know that you have the truth on your side. Big respect!
[…] won’t actually feel any responsibility. That would violate their fundamental code, the myth of Israel’s insecurity: Israel must always be presented as the victim, aggressed upon though never aggressing, constantly […]
[…] won’t actually feel any responsibility. That would violate their fundamental code, the myth of Israel’s insecurity: Israel must always be presented as the victim…”So let’s start with this […]
Actually when the minority on both sides who believe only one side is as fault, come to understand that both sides hold some blame, only then will the extremists who they support realize that compromise is the only solution to this problem.
This sort of demonetization is what the fanatics on both sides trade in. The people lending support to the fanatics are truly the ones with blood on their hands. Alas the author of this article hasn’t come to this realization yet. We need broad-mindedness to resolve the conflict provincial thinking and extremism will only spill more blood.
[…] were objective fact. Rarely do our mass media allow any questions about, much less objections to, the myth of Israel’s insecurity. At least two questions are urgent […]
Zionists are merely Europeans who are occupying the home of others. No different that the American Europeans but more temporary.
[…] a world full of anti-Semites eager to destroy them. The hawks’ worldview is built upon this myth of insecurity. It demands instant retaliation so that Jews can show the world — but more importantly […]
[…] in a world full of anti-Semites eager to destroy them. The hawks’ worldview is built upon this myth of insecurity. It demands instant retaliation so that Jews can show the world — but more importantly […]
I worry about Israel. A great country that has it´s right to exist, sure. But these current politicians seems to insist in taking wrong decisions.. They’re isolating Israel and fomenting more stupid and avoidable anti-semitism.
[…] our identity might be washed away at any moment. Talk about being insecure! Israel is steeped in its myth of insecurity, as are we […]
Well, when you establish a country upon the corpses of farmers, beduins, villagers, and people that have been living there for hundreds, if not thousands of years, what do you expect? Of course they will want you dead. Tell me zionist jew supporters, what have the Palestinian people ever done to one single European zionist Israeli jew to deserve the genocide inflicted on them? It’s so ironic for the Israelis to wholesale slaughter and genocide the people of Palestine and then wonder why they are despised to the point that Palestinians are willing to blow themselves up as a final desperate act of revenge. Don’t be fooled by the jewish lying media, people aren’t blowing themselves up for Allah, that is total rubbish, they are blowing themselves up because they have nothing left to lose and their families have already been butchered by IDF terrorists. The truth is so far away from the rubbish of Israeli zionist media.
[…] Israel’s strategy is shaped by its own long-standing mythology. I’ve called it the myth of Israel’s insecurity — the story that says Jews will always be under attack from enemies who want to destroy their […]