I posted the article yesterday about architectural plans to split Jerusalem, knowing that my old friend Ze’ev was not going to like it. He was anti-Zionist before it came into vogue, at least over here in the United States. You can see his full remarks in the comments page to that post. My only question that I would pose to him is whether or not Jerusalem is not already two cities, not one. He sees the problem in the rising tide of populism and nationalism in the country. My bet is that how and why Israel gets more and more populist, nationalist, and “religious” is in part a reflection of and a reactionary reaction against an already emergent one-state bi-national condition shaping the State of Israel and the West Bank. It might very well be that Israeli Jews seek to ramp up the “Jewish identity” of the State as the national identity of the country gets more called into question, not by leftist and Palestinian critics, but by conditions on the ground. No longer “natural,” Jewishness and Judaism are transformed by the identity-state into simulacra.