Hirsch produces the form of an argument that, to whatever extent it is understood on its own terms, as accurately attributing to Zionism an un- or anti-Christian as well as illiberal essence, may make the Zionist position more difficult to sustain politically in a Judeo-Christian and broadly liberal national political culture: Zionism appears in Hirsch’s claims as an affront to the liberal-universalist commitments that define the United States of America aspirationally, and at the same time, for Americans who understand their Americanism as a nationalism, as a geographically concretized proxy ethnicity, as a fatally alien interest, subject to continual re-weighing in whichever balance.
