ya gotta give the Kibbutzim a break. There are communes run by Palestinian groups too. I think the kibbutzim are great. I stayed at one for a few days, on a hill east of Jerusalem, and at one on the west shore of the Sea of Galilei, another halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where they celebrated the hardscrabble fighting in the early fifties
Israel has a solid communist elite power community, which is one reason even in America there is such a determined progressive elite. Some call them Zionists, but there are different kinds of Zionists. Getting these people on the same page is like getting American Constitutionalists on the same page.... in life or in lit. It's like herding cats.
Survival across millenia has required strong communitarian values, but on terms of intellectual liberty.
For Palestinians, whom I call genetic Israelites...., or for the returning Diasporian Jews, the idea of community cohesiveness is a universal.
But nobody knows how to keep toms from squabbling over their turf. I love cats and let them run the yard. Rhetoricians trying to make hay of their issues are just nuts/.
