Whenever there is even a transitory lull in the hostility and dangers threatening Israel's existence, one can be sure that there will be voices within Israel attacking the country's essence and the future of the Jewish people. After a month of escalated and intensified Palestinian attacks on southern Israel, it appears for the moment that Hamas and Fatah have more than enough to fight about themselves to give Israel a brief respite.

It is not surprising, therefore, that almost a year after one of Israel's foremost writers, A.B. Yehoshua, spoke to the American Jewish Committee and insulted the entire assemblage by trivializing their form of Jewishness and their "so-called" Zionism, that Hillel Halkin and Avraham Burg engage in separate though equally provocative arguments.

Halkin, the American-born writer and translator, and Burg, a sabra, former speaker of the Knesset, and former head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, have taken Yehoshua one step further. In two very different venues, Burg has challenged his Zionism and Halkin his Judaism.

Writing in the June issue of Commentary magazine, Halkin paints a very bleak scenario under the title "If Israel Ceased to Exist." Written even before the Hamas takeover of Gaza, Halkin's article deals with the geopolitical threat facing Israel, as well as the seriousness of the fanaticism and belligerency streaming out of Tehran. Halkin also directly confronts the nature of his identification with the Jewish people. Rejecting 2,000 years of Diaspora Judaism, Halkin essentially suggests that his connection with Jews is one of national identity. If, God forbid, Israel were to cease to exist, he believes there is no contemporary relevancy for a connection to the Jewish people through its religion.

Even Yehoshua did not reach Halkin's conclusions, although there have been others who have posited views similar to Halkin's. Considering Halkin's traditional, American religious background on the one hand and his growing following among Jewish neocons in America on the other, it was exceedingly alarming and depressing to see Halkin's essential rejection of Jewish history.

Burg's new book, Defeating Hitler, and even more so his complex interview in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz with Ari Shavit, suggests an equally fundamental challenge. While not engaging in the apparent controversy as to whether the interviewer conducted an appropriate exchange and/or whether the English translation of the interview was complete and accurate, it is clear that Burg is also challenging Israel, Israelis, and all Jews to reexamine the role and place of Israel in Judaism.

First among the challenges he raises is whether Theodor Herzl's Zionism, calling for a national homeland and created in large part out of a fear of anti-Semitism, should be replaced today by a vision of Israel as a spiritual homeland in the tradition of Ahad Ha'am, the Ukrainian-born writer and Herzl's ideological rival. This leads him to suggest, as many have concluded for many years, that the Jewish Agency and the program of resettling Jews from other countries has lost its purpose today. Aliya, therefore, is not as critical as addressing the cultural and spiritual needs of Israeli society.

Burg appears very worried about the militarism and racism that he believes are overrunning Israel. In this regard, he draws an extreme analogy between Israel and pre-Nazi Germany in its nationalism, militarism, and fear of the "other."

Finally, Burg suggests that perhaps the way to revive Israel is to recognize some of the more universal models and norms that were part of German Jewish culture prior to the rise of Hitler and a counterweight to the extremes of German nationalism.

Like Halkin, Burg, despite substantial personal baggage and a long history of personal and professional controversy, develops a genuine challenge to the future character of the State of Israel. He, too, forces Jews throughout the world to reconsider the place and the role that Israel should play in their lives.

As if this was not sufficient for Israelis to ponder, there is one further classic confrontation for both Israelis and American Jews to consider. It concerns the role that Israelis believe Diaspora Jews should or ought to play in Israeli politics. In a poll conducted by the Begin-Sadat Center and the Anti-Defamation League, by a 2-1 ratio, Israelis surveyed said American Jews have the right "to freely and publicly criticize Israel and Israeli policies." This study suggests that Israeli Jews overwhelmingly believe that American Jews are an integral part of the debate over the character of the state and the future of Israel.

On the other hand, in a B'nai B'rith International study released Monday, 54 percent of Israelis surveyed believe that Diaspora Jews do not have the right to criticize the Israeli government publicly. Such largely conflicting data clearly indicate considerable turmoil about how Israelis perceive the role and place of Diaspora Jews.

These complex identity issues all reemerge as Israel faces the potential of another hot summer. Despite the current lull, there are life and death threats that Israel — as well as its neighbors in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt — face from Hamas and Hizbullah as well as other radical Islamic groups. Questions of Jewish identity and the future of Zionism will be replaced soon by the genuine proximate threat of regional radicalization, but they will not go away.