To the Editor:

Tony Karon gets it wrong on so many fronts.
 
Calling Israel the home for the Jewish people reflects the historical truth -- the birth of the Jewish people as a nation was intimately connected to the land of Israel.
 
It reflects the fact that the international documents surrounding Israel's modern rebirth--the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the UN Partition plan of 1947-- refer to it as such.
 
And, saying Israel is the homeland of the Jews doesn't necessitate that every Jew live in Israel, no more than every Frenchman should have to live in France, to justify the right of the Jewish people to self-determination.
 
The Israeli government's insistence that the Palestinians accept Israel as the Jewish state, something President Obama had no hesitancy to do in his recent speech, is not only fair, it is essential.   The use of the term is intimately connected to the need for the Palestinians to resettle refugees in the new state of Palestine and not in Israel.  And more than anything, it would make clear that a peace treaty with Israel would not be a vehicle for continuing the struggle against Israel but a commitment to end the conflict.