Not to my knowledge. That is, the things they said that led to VB being banned in Belgium and Fortuyn being killed never seemed objectionable to me, and even then their statements were treated as more outrageous than if they had incited people to acts of violence.

What I find so appalling about Lieberman is not his nationalism as such, but the outrageous demand that people who are citizens of the state and whose families have lived on that land for generations have to take a loyalty oath to a government to which they have never been disloyal. On top of it all, this demand comes from a transplant from Moldova whose connection to the land is comparatively very new. Just imagine some naturalized American citizen pushing for a law demanding a loyalty oath from the descendants of people who were in the colonies before independence based on ethnicity, and tell me how you would respond to that.

We do understand the virtues of assimilation, and the Arab population of Israel has to a very great degree assimilated as much as they have been permitted to do so. I have written repeatedly about the problems of multiethnic states, particularly in democracies where ethnicity becomes the main political identifier, but the multiethnic make-up of Israel has been a reality from the beginning. I’m not a great fan of nationalism in general, and I am definitely not a fan of its hostility to patterns of settlement that have existed for centuries.

As someone who supports these politicians, and others like the late Jorge Haider, and who also has a soft spot in his heart for the heroic people of Rhodesia, I have a hard time jumping on the post-national, multicultural bandwagon and trashing Avigdor Lieberman’s wish for a Jewish ethnonationalist state. As far as I can tell, his proposal to swap Arab areas in “Israel proper” for Jewish settlement blocs in the territories is among the sanest and most comendable proposals out there. I understand why the left hates Lieberman, and why neocons are embarrased by him (see Marty Peretz). I understand the paleoconservative hatred for those pushing an Israel-first Middle East policy for America. What I don’t understand is why paleocons who ought to understand the virtues of ethnically homogeneity or at least assimilation are aping leftist talking points in discussing Lieberman’s proposals for dealing with the Arab population of Israel.