According to every liberal editorial page in America (and virtually every editorial page abroad), according to President Obama, the United Nations and every other liberal institution, and according to Jews on the left, the major impediment to peace in the Middle East is Israel’s continuing construction of settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

If my mail is any indication, I suspect I aroused considerably more anger among Jews by arguing that man is not basically good (and that the belief in man’s innate goodness is neither rational nor Jewish) than I would have had I argued that there is no God.

Ask most Jews if they believe that people are basically good and you are likely to get a positive response.

One of the most brilliant individuals writing today, a man who goes by the pen name of Ibn Warraq, writes in his book “Defending the West” that a unique aspect of the West has been its self-criticism.

Jews who call themselves “progressive” and are overwhelmingly in favor of building a $100 million Islamic center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero need to explain why, 26 years ago, “progressive” Jews were just as adamant in opposing the Catholic convent that was built near Auschwitz.

If there is anything that religious and secular Jews, liberal and conservative Jews, can agree on, it is that we live in a country that has treated Jews better than any other in which Jews have lived.