and it's not just the disconnect, but how overwhelming its become & the disturbing qualities its taken on. the disconnect is something that has plagued the Zionist project since its inception (how could it not?), but until fairly recently it was somewhat counterbalanced by a very sharp self-awareness of the difference between rhetoric & reality. all states, I think, manipulate that difference to their own ends, but the Israel of Ben-Gurion, Meir, even Begin (astute political operators all, whatever else they were) was particularly good at it, whereas the Israel of Sharon & Netanyahu has become particularly bad at it. I think the latter actually believe in their own rhetoric, or at least lack that self-awareness; they & others like them have succeeded in making that conscious manipulation of the difference into an almost complete divorce from reality. consequently the public discourse in Israel has gotten much nastier, as well as kinda delulsional - i.e. whereas Meir Kahane was seen as a fringe figure in his own lifetime, now you have a crypto-fascist like Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister. it's a complicated shift, & I don't want to present myself as (ahem) an expert, but I think there are turning points - '67, near defeat in Yom Kippur, Lebanon '82, first Intifada, Rabin's assassination, etc - where you can kinda see the transformation beginning & then crystallizing into a hard fact.
a bad look going forward, certainly.
