As Palestinian Arabs were trying to blow up Israeli civilians, ambushing Israeli soldiers at Hebron, and sending gunmen to slaughter children at a kibbutz, Israelis have been doing something remarkable. Not 100 yards from the Frank Sinatra International Student Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where a suicide bomber struck this summer, some 500 Israelis and their American guests sat down this week to ponder the Federalist Papers, with an eye to applying the lessons of America’s founding to the Jewish State. The spectacle illuminates the difference between the two sides of this conflict. As Daniel Polisar, president of the Shalem Center, which is sponsoring the conference, told The New York Sun, Israel is undergoing a wave of renewed interest in adopting a written constitution and perfecting its democracy.

It currently stands alongside Britain as the only remaining democracies lacking such a document. The animating idea of the conference, which continues today, is that the Federalist could inform Israel’s constitutional project in terms of both process and substance. There was wide agreement that Israel would do well to adopt a process similar to America’s, in which the Knesset could propose a constitution but ratification would come directly from the people. Also examined was the question of minority rights. A professor of law at the Hebrew University and a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, Mordechai Kremnitzer, made the point that judicial review is especially necessary in nations with permanent minorities, such the Arabs in Israel, lest they fall prey to the passions of the legislative process.

Participants wrestled with the question of whether an analogy could be drawn between America in the 18th Century and Israel in the 21st. A professor of international law at the Hebrew University, Michla Pomerance, said that as America was a small, vulnerable state at its founding, so Israel is today. She also noted Alexander Hamilton’s use of the word “satellite” to describe a nation that allows itself to be protected by others, apropos Israel’s need to become self-reliant, as did America. A scholar on Madison from Stanford University, Jack Rakove, compared Israel’s West Bank problem today and America’s east bank problem in the 1780s. Spain had closed off the Mississippi to the colonies. Getting it reopened was a crisis that at least in part necessitated the formation of a stronger national government. Which is no doubt why so many partisans of the Zionist project are paying such attention today to the legacy of the great Federalist.