A reader writes:
Maybe people are so mad about your posting these maps because, well, the picture isn't very pretty and when you see it as a picture, it's hard to miss seeing something. When I was young I thought Israel was a fact, a friend to the US, a bulwark against Communism, & the Holocaust justified its existence. Looking at those maps makes clear the original problem in the American/European support of Israel's creation -- in your supposedly more Israel-friendly map, there is not a single region that you show where a plurality of the inhabits were Jewish -- by what right did any Jewish state rise up to kick this many people out of their homes & claim this land?
European war crimes don't justify this level of displacement of people who had nothing to do with the crimes. The older I get, the more I see the Palestinian point of view, even though the means by which the Palestinians push their point of view has grown more hateful & violent. Is there any intellectually honest map you could show that would not excite hostility? If not, then why would maps showing something that's true make people mad?
By the way, where are the "no apologies," never-bow-to-foreign-heads-of-state folks when Israel treats us poorly? Why isn't it weak of Obama not to stand up to Israel?
Ask Bill Kristol.