I'm not saying that Reform Judaism can't be fully accepting of gays.  I am stating that to do so alienates them from what has always been Judaism's textual and non-textual concept of normative behavior.  This may or may not be problematic to you or Reform Jews in general, I don't know.

I never said that a religion must define itself or is defined by its sacred texts (although to deny them outright seems, to me at least, self-evidently absurd).  I simply stated the obvious, which is that religiously, historically and culturally speaking, Judaism has never regarded homosexuality as normative behavior.  The Reform movement has now decided to do precisely that.  That is, Reform has split from -- that is, alienated itself -- from Judaism (or Judaisms, if you prefer) as it has previously existed, not only in the textual sense but in every other sense as well.  Again, you may think this is a good thing, but there is no sense in denying what it obviously is.

Incidentally, an amorphous or elusive concept of "Judaism itself" is, in and of itself, an idea embraced by Reform Judaism.  It has nothing to do with me or what I wrote, nor do I believe such a thing exists, there is merely a historical-cultural-textual continuum from which, on this particular issue, Reform has now broken away.

His entire life's work was dedicated to the revival of a nationalist Jewish culture not only separate from gentile culture, but also from the Haskalah, Reform Judaism (which he despised) and other attempts at Jewish revival which he saw as dangerously assimilationist. What can we call this except virulent nationalism? Or is nationalism now a dirty word in any context?

As for Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky, we may take the quote you cite, in which Echad HaAm holds that the Arabs are not savages who "live like animals." Both Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky agreed. I did not state that they reached the same conclusions as Echad HaAm (you really enjoy mischaracterizing people's views don't you?) and both men were writing in a later era in any case, but on this essential issue they were clearly in agreement.

I'm afraid you simply don't know what you're talking about.  Michael has spent a great deal of time in the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon, and has traveled throughout the Arab world.  Moreover, and unlike most mainstream reporters, who proclaim what "the Arab street" thinks from an Olympian distance, Michael actually talks to people like Kurdish taxi drivers and Hizbullah supporters.  You may not like his opinions, but he is infinitely better informed than most mainstream journalists who sit in coffee houses waiting for their stringers to feed them information, blissfully ignorant of the language, culture and politics of the country on which they claim to be reporting.

That the easy way out would have been for the employees to be armed so they could have killed or incapacitated their assailant before he had the chance to kill or injure anyone.  Or perhaps this would be barbaric...c'est la vie.