Surprising, given the source?

A former Knesset speaker and Jewish Agency head drew fire for comments construed as anti-Zionist.

Avraham Burg, an Orthodox left-winger who has spent most of his career in Israeli politics, described the Jewish state as a lost cause in a newspaper interview.

"To define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end," Burg, 52, told Ha’artez.

"Judaism always prepared alternatives," he said. "The strategic mistake of Zionism was to annul the alternatives. Israeliness has only body; it doesn't have soul."