There are currently five million plus Jews living in I/P. The Zionists among them (and even the nonZionists- the Haredi who have no allegiance to the secular Jewish statehood, but feel safer under Jewish sovereignty) feel that turning I/P into a binational state (a la Tony Judt) would result in violence against them. I assume that Shmuel and Tony Judt and Phil Weiss feel that sufficient safeguards can be put into place to protect them or that the damage done by Israel is sufficient to justify the risks that the Jewish population might take by putting themselves at the mercy of the binational project that would take Israel’s place. But I don’t see those who wish to maintain Jewish sovereignty as suffering a delusion and certainly nothing comparable to the Shabtai Zevi delusion.
(The only possibly delusional factor are those who foresee a near term danger to Jews in America as justifying the Zionist project. It seems to me that the present tense dangers to Israel or created by Israel’s existence seem to outweigh the prospect for a Spanish expulsion or Inquisition, Czarist pogroms or Nazi type genocide taking place in America. This type of cool headed assessment rather than the “what if it happens here” assessment could term the “we American Jews need somewhere to flee” as delusional. But such a fear thought pattern still does not deserve to be equated to the Shabtai Zevi delusion which was a hope delusion rather than a fear delusion. I think the analogy is extremely poor.)
(On the other hand those who term the establishment of the Jewish state as the beginning of the planting of redemption could be accused of delusion, so those who view statehood as a religious event might be considered deluded. But if the fear factor rather than the religious factor is the predominant factor I don’t consider the analogy appropriate.)
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