Tsvi Bisk is an American-Israeli futurist, social researcher and strategy planning consultant. He is the Director of the Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking (www.futurist-thinking.co.il). He is co-author of Futurizing the Jews (Praeger Press 2003) and author of The Optimistic Jew: A positive vision for the Jewish people in the 21st century (Maxanna Press 2007). Tsvi has published over 100 articles and essays in Hebrew and in English including two in Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of the Future. He is a popular lecturer in both Hebrew and English in areas pertaining to Jewish and Israeli futures. You can reach him at bisk@futurist-thinking.co.il.
The demand of Arab nationalists and Jewish post-Zionists to remove the Star of David from the Israeli flag as well as to replace the menorah as the national emblem and HaTikvah as the national anthem must be rejected with the contempt they deserve. This demand does not reflect superior moral and democratic values. It reflects the residual historical contempt of Christianity and Islam for any Jewish pretension at political equality as well as the habitual obsequiousness of a certain breed of Jewish intellectual.
England, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Greece, Iceland, and Switzerland are all democratic countries, and all have Christian crosses in their national flags. Most have an official state religion. England and Denmark are structural theocracies. The Queen is head of state and head of the Anglican Church in England. The flag of England and the flag of the Anglican Church are one and the same the cross of St. George. The Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom, is a combination of two crosses (the cross of St. George and the cross of St. Andrew). The Evangelical Lutheran Church is the official state church of Denmark and the only religious group to receive direct economic support from the state.
The Optimistic Jew: a Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble as well as Tzomet Ha’Sepharim in Israel.
