All the Illusions are vanishing. Once we thought the world would accept Israel as deserving of nationhood no less than any other people, because of guilt over the Holocaust. Now we see that it is no linger true. The emergence of the Third World, uninvolved in the Holocaust, makes the guilt issue irrelevant for them. And the new generation in the West refuses to be held accountable for the sins of its fathers. Even Germans feel no more responsible for Nazi atrocities than Spaniards today feel for the Inquisition 500 years ago. Guilt may last forever, but guilt feelings are evanescent. Age erodes them. Israelis and American Jews projected the image of Israel as an ’outpost’ of the Western world in the Middle East. We meant well, and were proud of our technological achievements, whether in making the deserts of Israel bloom or offering much needed assistance to underdeveloped countries in Asia and Africa. Now this very fact is used as a stick to beat us. Israel is now viewed as a bridgehead of Western imperialism, as an alien, aggressive interloper which disinherited the Indigenous population.The State was righteously declared "socialist," with all the idealism and Ideology the term is meant to convey. Now Israel has become the target of all Leftist groups throughout most of the world.We piously proclaimed that Israel was "the only democracy in the Near East," and all but convinced ourselves that this is what Destiny preserved us for. Now we are dismayed to learn the bitter truth: So what? Who cares? Not even other democracies do.’ We read G-d out of the equation, and told ourselves and others that Israel was the "creation of the U.N.," and waxed rhapsodic about Israel making a reality of "the parliament of man,” and affecting a reconciliation within "the family of man." Now... All attempts to Justify our existence in the eyes of the world, by appealing to the canons of the world and ethos, have come to grief.What now?Now we must, perforce, come down (or "up") to esse…