In October, I took part in a conference at the luxurious, tourist-stuffed Mount Zion Hotel, a stone's throw south of the Old City wall in Jerusalem. My group debated "delegitimization," the current Israeli catch-all term that clumps together hostility to the post-1967 occupation with hostility to the existence of a Jewish state, hostility to everything Israeli, and hostility to Jews everywhere. The air was thick with anxious and angry embattlement, sarcasm and abstraction. A government minister told a nasty joke itemizing a long list of Palestinian sins. An official of the Foreign Ministry, his voice bristling with air-quotes, asked, "What is 'occupation'?" An American participant spoke of "the alleged occupation."