The Jews.

Lash, That may be true, but people have strange reasons for killing many innocents. Remember Tim McVeigh? How about Columbine?

CI-- I just utterly reject their reasons.

~~~~~~~~~

More reading:

Antisemitism: Persecution of Jews along Racial Lines:
Subsequent attacks against Jews tended to be racially motivated. They were perpetrated primarily by the state. The Jewish people were viewed as a separate people or race.

1806: A French Jesuit Priest, Abbe Barruel, had written a treatise blaming the Masonic Order for the French Revolution. He later issued a letter alleging that Jews, not the Masons were the guilty party. This triggered a belief in an international Jewish conspiracy in Germany, Poland and some other European countries later in the 19th century.

1819: During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, many European Jews lobbied their governments for emancipation. They sought citizenship as well as the same rights and treatment as were enjoyed by non-Jews. This appears to have provoked sporadic anti-semites to engage in anti-Jewish violence. The rioters cried "Hep! Hep!." The origin(s) of this cry are not clear. Jews and their property were attacked first in Wuerzburg, Germany during 1819-AUG. The rioting spread across Germany and eventually reached as far as Denmark and Poland. 17

1840: A rumor spread in Syria that some Jews were responsible for the ritual killing of a Roman Catholic monk and his servant. As a result of horrendous treatment, some local Jews confessed to a crime that they did not commit. This "Damascus Affair" spurred early Zionist writers like Hess to promote the Zionist cause. 17 More details.

1846 - 1878: Pope Pius IX restored all of the previous restrictions against the Jews within the Vatican state. All Jews under Papal control were confined to Rome's ghetto - the last one in Europe until the Nazi era restored the church's practice. On 2000-SEP-3, Pope John Paul II beatified Pius IX; this is the last step before sainthood. He explained: "Beatifying a son of the church does not celebrate particular historic choices that he has made, but rather points him out for imitation and for veneration for his virtue."

1858: Edgardo Mortara was kidnapped, at the age of six, from his Jewish family by Roman Catholic officials after they found out that a maid had secretly baptized him. He was not returned to his family but was raised a Catholic. He eventually became a priest.

1873: The term "antisemitism" is first used in a pamphlet by Wilhelm Marr called "Jewry's Victory over Teutonism."

1881: Alexander II of Russia was assassinated by radicals. The Jews were blamed. About 200 individual pogroms against the Jews followed. ("Pogrom" is a Russian word meaning "devastation" or "riot." In Russia, a pogrom was typically a mob riot against Jewish individuals, shops, homes or businesses. They were often supported and even organized by the government.) Thousands of Jews became homeless and impoverished. The few who were charged with offenses generally received very light sentences. 1

1893: "...anti-Semitic parties won sixteen seats in the German Reichstag." 2

1894: Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an officer on the French general staff, was convicted of treason. The evidence against him consisted of a piece of paper from his wastebasket with another person's handwriting, and papers forged by antisemitic officers. He received a life sentence on Devil's Island, off the coast of South America. The French government was aware that a Major Esterhazy was actually guilty. 3 The church, government and army united to suppress the truth. Writer Emile Zola and politician Jean Jaurès fought for justice and human rights. After 10 years, the French government fell and Drefus was declared totally innocent. The Dreyfus Affair was world-wide news for years. It motivated Journalist Theodor Herzl to write a book in 1896: "The Jewish State: A Modern Solution to the Jewish Question." The book led to the founding of the Zionist movement which fought for a Jewish Homeland. A half century later, the state of Israel was born.

1903: At Easter, government agents organized an anti-Jewish pogrom in Kishinev, Moldova, Russia. The local newspaper published a series of inflammatory articles. A Christian child was discovered murdered and a young Christian woman at the Jewish Hospital committed suicide. Jews were blamed for the deaths. Violence ensured. The 5,000 soldiers in the town did nothing. When the smoke cleared, 49 Jews had been killed, 500 were injured; 700 homes looted and destroyed, 600 businesses and shops looted, 2000 families left homeless. Later, it was discovered that the child had been murdered by its relatives and the suicide was unrelated to the Jews. 4

1905: The Okhrana, the Russian secret police in the reign of Czar Nicholas II, converted an earlier antisemitic novel into a document called the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion." 16 It was published privately in 1897. A Russian Orthodox priest, Sergius Nilus, published them publicly in 1905. It was promoted as the record of "secret rabbinical conferences whose aim was to subjugate and exterminate the Christians." 5 The Protocols were used by the Okhrana in a propaganda campaign that was associated with massacres of the Jews. These were the Czarist Pogroms of 1905.

1915: 600,000 Jews were forcibly moved from the western borders of Russia towards the interior. About 100,000 died of exposure or starvation.

1917: "In the civil war following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the reactionary White Armies made extensive use of the Protocols to incite widespread slaughters of Jews." 5 Two hundred thousand Jews were murdered in the Ukraine alone.

1920: The Protocols reach England and the United States. They are exposed as a forgery, but are widely circulated. Henry Ford sponsored a study of international activities of Jews. This led to a series of antisemitic articles in the Dearborn Independent, which were published in a book, "The International Jew." The Protocols were sold on Wal-Mart's online bookstore until they were removed on 2004-SEP-21.

1920: The defeat of Germany in World War I and the continuing economic difficulties were blamed in that country on the "Jewish influence." One antisemitic poster has been preserved from that era. 6 It shows a German, presumably Christian woman, a male Jew with distorted facial features, a coffin and the word "Deutschland" (Germany)

1920's, 1930's: Hitler had published in Mein Kampf in 1925, writing: "Today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." The Protocols are used by the Nazis to whip up public hatred of the Jews in the 1930's. Widespread pogroms occur in Greece, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Rumania, and the USSR. Radio programs by many conservative American clergy, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, frequently attacked Jews. Reverend Fr. Charles E Coughlin was one of the best known. "In the 1930's, radio audiences heard him rail against the threat of Jews to America's economy and defend Hitler's treatment of Jews as justified in the fight against communism." (12) Other conservative Christian leaders, such as Frank Norris and John Straton supported the Jews. 7

Discrimination against Jews in North America is widespread. Many universities set limits on the maximum number of Jewish students that they would accept. Harvard accepted all students on the basis of merit until after World War I when the percentage of Jewish students approached 15%. At that time they installed an informal quota system. In 1941, Princeton had fewer than 2% Jews in their student body. Jews were routinely barred from country clubs, prestigious neighborhoods, etc. 8

1933: Hitler took power in Germany. On APR-1, Julius Streicher organized a one-day boycott of all Jewish owned busienss in the country. This was the start of continuous oppression by the Nazis culminating in the Holocaust (a.k.a. Shoah). Jews "were barred from civil service, legal professions and universities, were not allowed to teach in schools and could not be editors of newspapers." 2 Two years later, Jews were no longer considered citizens.

1934: Various laws were enacted in Germany to force Jews out of schools and professions.

1935: The Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws restricting citizenship to those of "German or related blood." Jews became stateless.

1936: Cardinal Hloud of Poland urged Catholics to boycott Jewish businesses.

1938: On NOV-9, the Nazi government in Germany sent storm troopers, the SS and the Hitler Youth on a pogrom that killed 91 Jews, injured hundreds, burned 177 synagogues and looted 7,500 Jewish stores. Broken glass could be seen everywhere; the glass gave this event its name of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. 9

1938: Hitler brought back century-old church law, ordering all Jews to wear a yellow Star of David as identification. A few hundred thousand Jews are allowed to leave Germany after they give all of their assets to the government.

1939: The Holocaust, the Shoah -- the systematic extermination of Jews in Germany -- begins. The process only ended in 1945 with the conclusion of World War II. Approximately 6 million Jews (1.5 million of them children), 400 thousand Roma (Gypsies) and others were slaughtered. Some were killed by death squads; others were slowly killed in trucks with carbon monoxide; others were gassed in large groups in Auschwitz, Dacau, Sobibor, Treblinka and other extermination camps. Officially, the holocaust was described by the Nazis as subjecting Jews "to special treatment" or as a "solution of the Jewish question." Gold taken from the teeth of the victims was recycled; hair was used in the manufacture of mattresses. In the Buchenwald extermination camp, lampshades were made out of human skin; however, this appears to be an isolated incident. A rumor spread that Jewish corpses were routinely converted into soap. However, the story appears to be false. 10

1940: The Vichy government of France collaborated with Nazi Germany by freezing about 80,000 Jewish bank accounts. During the next four years, they deported about 76,000 Jews to Nazi death camps; only about 2,500 survived. It was only in 1995 that a French president, Jacques Chirac, "was able to admit that the state bore a heavy share of responsibility in the mass round-ups and deportations of Jews, as well as in the property and asset seizures that were carried out with the active help of the Vichy regime." 11

1941: The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC estimates that 13,000 Jews died on 1941-JUN-19 during a pogrom in Bucharest, Romania. It was ordered by the pro-Nazi Romanian regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu. The current government has admitted that this atrocity happened, but most Romanians continue to deny that the Jews were killed on orders from their own government. 12

1941: Polish citizens in Jedwabne in northeastern Poland killed hundreds of Jews, by either beating them to death or burning them alive in a barn. According to the Associated Press: "The role played by Polish citizens was suppressed for nearly six decades until publication of a book by a Polish emigre historian, Jan Tomasz Gross. After release of the book in 2000, the Polish government launched an investigation. 'The role of the Poles was decisive in conducting the criminal act,' [prosecutor Radoslaw] Ignatiew, said. The book, 'Neighbours,' sparked national soul-searching among Poles, many of whom could not believe that anybody but the Nazis would have committed the atrocity." 13

1942: The Nazi leaders of Germany, at the Wannsee conference, decided on"the final solution of the Jewish question" which was the attempt to exterminate every Jew in Europe. From JUL-28 to 31, almost 18,000 Russian inhabitants of the Minsk ghetto in what is now Belarus were exterminated. This was in addition to 5,000 to 15,000 who had been massacred in earlier pogroms in that city. This was just one of many such pogroms during World War II. 14

1945: The Shoah (Holocaust) ended as the Allied Forces over-ran the Nazi death camps.

1946: Even though World War II ended the year before, antisemitic pogroms continued, particularly in Poland, with the deaths of many Jews.

It seems they never learned from their own history; they are now treating Palestinians like they were treated. It seems they're no better than the people they accuse.

Plenty of British Jews now reject Israel's policy toward its neighbours (and its arab citizens). Late, but welcome.

About anti-semitism I cannot comment, apart from saying it is wrong, and deplorable obviously.
But I am heartily sick of the "anti-semitism" cry being raised every time Israel's actions are criticised.

Maybe it started with the hundreds of deliberate, not accidental, bombings of Israeli civilians by Palestinians over the years. What about the murder of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich by Black September? What about firebombing Israeli buses? Did you forget those insignificant details?

Bombings are a method used by all. Remember the Stern Gang and the Irgun...terrorists of their day. A terrorist is a man with a bomb, but no army, as the saying goes. Let us consider state terrorism and ethnic cleansing.

The deliberate targetting of civilians as the primary, intended target is not a method currently used by all, it's a method used by the Palestinians. And, no, a terrorist is not a man without the means to form an army. A terrorist is anyone, with an army or without, who deliberately murders civilians, as the primary, intended target, which the Palestinians do, like it was going out of style, but which the Israelis do not do.

Well we seem to differ on that point. I think they do.

Brandon 9000- You are correct. Anyone like Mr. Imposter, who appears to equate the Israelis with the terrorist Muslims, obviously is not aware of the Islamic Doctrine of the Twelfth Imam


Iran's President and the Politics of the Twelfth Imam
Guest Commentary
November 2005

by: John von Heyking



Observers of Iran have been puzzling over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's actions lately. A populist, but not terribly popular, president, he raised the ire of the West and some of his domestic rivals when he recently proclaimed Israel should be "wiped off the map." Iran's nuclear ambitions are well-known. However, Western observers have paid less attention to the political and religious ideology behind some of Ahmadinejad's actions, which he has expressed in recent speeches (and here) that have had messianic overtones and are deeply troublesome.

In a region known for bombastic (pardon the pun) politicians, it's unclear how to understand the direction Iran is moving. This is due in part to its closed decision-making process. Writing recently in the New York Review of Books, Timothy Garton Ash draws several comparisons between Iran and the former Communist bloc. Interpreting the intentions of the Iranian leadership resembles Kremlinology with its "reading the tea leaves" methodology of trying to interpret events with the slimmest of evidence. Understanding Iran is further complicated by the fact that it lacks a unitary structure, or sovereign, that makes decisions. Iran in fact has two governments: its formal democratic government run by Ahmadinejad and a religious-ideological command structure headed by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Mediating these two power structures is the Expediency Council, headed by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, (whom Ahmadinejad defeated in the recent presidential election) who has also recently been in the news accusing Ahmadinejad of destroying the Iranian Revolution. Power is extremely decentralized in Iran, with a myriad of patrons and cronies vying for control over its institutions, leading Ash to conclude: "No wonder Iranian political scientists reach for terms like 'polyarchy,' 'elective oligarchy,' 'semi-democracy,' or 'neopatrimonialism.'" Ahmadinejad's bellicose speeches must be understood in light of his ambitions amidst the faultlines of Iranian domestic politics, but they may have ominous implications for the rest of us.

In a speech on November 16th, Ahmadinejad spoke of his belief in the return of the Twelfth Imam. One of the differences between Sunni and Shi'ite Islam is that the latter, who dominate Iran and form the majority in Iraq, believe that Allah shielded or hid Muhammad al-Mahdi as the Twelfth Imam until the end of time. Shi'ites expect the Twelfth Imam, which Jews and Christians would recognize as a messianic figure, to return to save the world when it had descended into chaos. Shi'ite orthodoxy has it that humans are powerless to encourage the Twelfth Imam to return. However, in Iran a group called the Hojjatieh believe that humans can stir up chaos to encourage him to return. Ayatollah Khomeini banned the group in the early 1980s because they rejected one of the primary commitments of the Iranian revolution: the concept of Vilayat-i Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist). In other words, they opposed the notion of an Islamic republic because it would hinder the Twelfth Imam's return on account of it being too just and peaceful. Today, in addition to the possibility of Ahmadinejad himself being a member (or a former member), the group has connections to Qom ultraconservative cleric Mesbah Yazdi whom Iranians frequently refer to as the "crazed one" and the "crocodile." Four of the twenty-one new cabinet ministers are purportedly Hojjatieh members. Some reports state that cabinet ministers must sign a formal pledge of support for the Twelfth Imam.

The possibility of Ahmadinejad belonging to this group does not make a lot of sense, at least if one wishes to regard him as a pragmatic politician. Why would the president of the Islamic republic object to the existence of that Islamic republic? Moreover, his recent references to the Twelfth Imam have been to promote Iran as a "powerful, developed and model Islamic society. Today, we should define our economic, cultural and political policies based on the policy of Imam Mahdi's return. We should avoid copying the West's policies and systems." Most Iranians would have interpreted this statement as typical Iranian nationalist and Islamist rhetoric aimed against the West and as a reference to his policy of using oil money to improve the plight of the poor. However, helping the poor is central to Islamic social teaching and he need not have referred to the "Imam Mahdi's return" to say this.

In terms of pragmatic politics, Ahmadinejad's actions make some a degree of sense because he is using radicalism to secure power in a fraying society whose economy is in trouble. Despots historically use this strategy to secure their power. While a populist, he is hardly popular. He was elected president because he was perceived as the least insider of the insiders who competed for the office. Iranians rejected former president Hashemi Rafsanjani for being too much part of the establishment. Ash reports: "'A stick would have won against Rafsanjani,' an Iranian politician told me." Rafsanjani, for his part, has come out with withering attacks (at least for Iran) against Ahmadinejad's nuclear anti-Israel speeches and for betraying the Iranian revolution. The conflict between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani reflects a struggle over political power but also an ideological struggle over the direction of the Iranian revolution. If Ahmadinejad's enemies are to be believed, he wishes to undermine the Iranian revolution. However, as Ash observes, double-talk is a way of life in Iran and in societies in the decadent stages of their revolution, and so readers should be skeptical of everyone's claims. Even Rafsanjani, the supposed "moderate" (at least in comparison to Ahmadinejad), supports uranium reprocessing for the country's nuclear program.

Yet, Ahmadinejad's speeches and actions cannot be understood exclusively in terms of a despotic figure who radicalizes politics for the sake of power. He has chosen to radicalize Iranian politics in a particular way, and one that issues a direct challenge to the underpinnings of the regime. This returns us to Ahmadinejad's references to the return of the Twelfth Imam. The Hojjatieh's belief in humans' power to effect his return, which, to repeat, are unorthodox for Shi'ites, should be of grave concern for everyone. This belief should remind Westerners of a long tradition in the West of millenarians dating back to medieval times, and including even Marxian notions of "immiseration of the proletariat," who believed their religious and ideological activism would inaugurate a new age for humanity. Medieval millenarians, famously documented by Norman Cohn in his The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, stirred up political chaos in the apocalyptic hope that it would effect the return of Christ. More recent expressions of this "metastatic faith" (to borrow a term from political philosopher Eric Voegelin) include the poison gas attack on the Tokyo subways by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult and of course the 9/11 attacks that were part of al-Qaeda's "divine" politics intended to destroy the "dar al-Harb" and pave the way for a worldwide Islamist empire. Political scientist Barry Cooper has documented the apocalyptic core of their "Salafist" violence. Groups like these believe their religious and ideological violence is "altruistic" because it purports to "cleanse" the world of the impure and infidel.

According to Shi'ite teaching, the Twelfth Imam will not require an introduction upon his return. His identity will be self-evident to all, or at least to those capable of recognizing him. One view states that he will rule through a deputy, or perhaps the deputy will precede the Imam's return. Perhaps the deputy's identity should also be evident to all who can see.

While Ahmadinejad has not drawn an explicit connection between his desire to see Israel wiped off the map and an activist belief in the Twelfth Imam's return, the dots are there to be connected once one understands the tyrannical "logic" behind someone who, perhaps viewing himself as a self-proclaimed deputy for the Twelfth Imam, might wish to effect Mahdi's return. The deputy would promote Iran's nuclear capabilities for they are key to effecting chaos in the world. The deputy would also purge diplomats, dozens of deputy ministers and heads of government banks and businesses, and challenge the Iranian ruling clerical establishment. All these moves push the regime toward a "coup d'état" (according to one Iranian source) or at least a constitutional crisis. But a constitutional crisis would be a mere stepping stone for a president for whom the Twelfth Imam does not require an Islamic republic to return.

Western observers need to be able to understand the ideological and religious overtones of the current situation in Iran. Ahmadinejad's peculiar references to the Twelfth Imam are no mere eccentricity to be taken lightly. Nor do they seem to be the rhetorical ploy of a politician manipulating the excitable masses (as some have interpreted Saddam Hussein's embrace of Islamism in the later part of his rule). Minimally, Ahmadinejad's speeches and actions portend a constitutional crisis for the Iranian regime. Maximally, there are times when one should take bombastic statements not as double-talk, but for what they are.

John von Heyking is an associate professor of political science at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada.

At least 54 people were killed, with 37 of them children, news agencies reported.

Rescue workers and neighbors worked frantically to find survivors among the wreckage of a house, where two large extended families were hiding in a garage. Six small children, their mouths open and full of dirt, were brought out and laid on stretchers.

"I felt as if I was turning around, and the earth was going up, and I was going into the earth," said Mohamed Chaloub, a father of five who was thrown into a doorway and managed to escape. All five of his children, including a 2-year-old child, were killed. His wife, sister and aunt were also killed.

Neighbors said they ran to the house after the first strike, around 1 a.m., and that they heard screams and tried to reach people trapped inside, but the strikes persisted and they could not reach them. In the morning, rescue workers pulled bodies of 22 people out of the rubble, but neighbors said more bodies were inside.

The death toll climbed as rescue workers retrieved more people from the collapsed building, carrying limp bodies away on stretchers and in blankets.

The strike came as thousands protested in Beirut and a mob of young men started breaking windows and damaging buildings. Television footage showed crowds of men attacking a United Nations building in the capital.

The Israeli government said in a statement on its Foreign Ministry Web site that the Israeli army attacked missile launch sites in the area of Qana, from where it said hundreds of missiles were launched towards the Israeli city of Nahariya and the communities in the western Galilee.

It said that Hezbollah has "turned the suburbs of Lebanon into a war front by firing missiles from within civilian areas." It said 18 Israeli civilians have been killed and over 400 have been wounded by Hezbollah rocket attacks which have disrupted the lives of tens of thousands of Israeli citizens.

The statement said that residents in Qana and the region had been warned several days in advance to leave the village.

The strikes on Qana came after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returned to Israel on Saturday evening to press for a substantive agreement that could lead to a more rapid cease-fire and the insertion of an international force along the Lebanese border with Israel.

Ms. Rice, on her way back from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, had praised the Lebanese government, which includes two Hezbollah ministers, for agreeing on the outlines of a possible cease-fire package.

But she cancelled a visit to Beirut today after the Qana strikes, according to news agencies.

While there has been a sense that President Bush, after his meeting in Washington with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, had suddenly decided to give Israel a shorter period in which to hammer Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said in a statement today that Israel was not "rushing in" to a ceasefire before Israel had achieved its goals.

Mr. Olmert said today that Israel regretted the death of civilians in Qana, where he said Hezbollah had fired rockets at Kiryat Shmona and Afula.

Ms. Rice is working to draft a United Nations Security Council resolution that would allow for the insertion of 15,000 to 20,000 international peacekeepers along the Lebanese border with Israel and along Lebanon's border with Syria, to prevent the rearming of Hezbollah. The force would also work with the Lebanese Army to enable it to begin patrolling the border itself.

On Monday, there will be a meeting at the United Nations to discuss which nations might contribute to such a force. American officials said they might seek a Security Council resolution authorizing the force as early as Wednesday. The United States has been isolated in its refusal to call for an immediate cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon, arguing that the conditions were not ripe for a sustainable cease-fire.

But the international cry for a halt to Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon has been growing, especially after Israel hit a United Nations post, killing four United Nations observers. Israel denied the accusation by Secretary General Kofi Annan that the post was deliberately hit, but with the death toll in Lebanon reported by officials there to be nearing 450 people, mostly civilians, pressure on the United States has been growing to give Mr. Olmert an earlier deadline.

Christine Hauser contributed reporting from New York for this article.

Yes. No-one here condones that, I don't think. Whereas once we in Britain thought of it as fanciful raving, a collection of mad ideas, some of our citizens now seem unfortunately to have their sympathies in that camp, and so rather belatedly we are having to take it seriously.

I think, though, that we can contrast the fact that while the fundamentalist muslims are quite open about their aims, the Israelis are not.
(I am aware that this thread is entitled "The Jews" and I am arguing mainly about the policy of the State of Israel...the relationship is close enough, I hope) The Israelis are not open about their de facto land grab, their activity in depopulating Palestinian areas by removal of olive groves, buildings and wells, and cruelty towards and murder of non-combatant neighbours. All of this activity is explained away under the blanket excuse of "security". It is extremely dishonest, and it is crass hypocrisy in my view to complain about arab terrorists while this state-sponsored activity is inexorably going on.

Were Reyn to allow me to discuss Jewish issues today, I would ask McT if he didn't think Israel's return of the overwhelming majority of 67 War spoils was an attempt to make that right.

Yep. That's what I'd do.

What, they return the desert, and build fortified villages on the West Bank? Are you kidding me?

from 'the missing peace' by dennis ross , u.s. envoy to the middle-east under president bush - father and president clinton:
president roosevelt tried to persuade king ibn saud in 1945 to agree to the israelis taking land in palestine .
the king was unmoved and said : " make the enemy and oppresssor pay .amends should be made by the enemy (the germans - hbg) ... not by the innocent bystanders . what injury have the arabs done to the jews of europe ?".
hbg

good point. Maybe even by 1945 the Americans realised it would be useful to have a client state in the Middle East.

I'm not so sure Israel is "useful" by any stretch of the imagination. We give them a largess of over three billion dollars every year, and in return we share the blame for all the problems in Israel.

From the column of Neil Steinberg in Sunday Sun Times-July 30, 2000- P. 18A

quote

"Thirty years ago Israel was locked in an existential death struggle against ACTUAL NATIONS like Egypt and Jordan. Now it's in a border skirmish with a puppet state's semi-pro army....There are 200 other nations, half of which dropped out of the ass of some king. Noone sits around and wonders whether they have a right to exist. It's exceptionalism. The excuse that Israel was created in living memory doesn't wash either..RED CHINA WAS CREATED IN LIVING MEMORY AFTER ISRAEL. WE SEEM TO BE COMFORTABLE WITH THEIR RIGHT TO EXIST..."

May I make clear, I am not one of those (are there any here?) who would deny Israel's right to exist. It's their behaviour and policy towards their neighbours I take issue with.

For what it's worth, this is the kind of day that I appreciate you making that clear.

McT wrote:
May I make clear, I am not one of those (are there any here?) who would deny Israel's right to exist. It's their behaviour and policy towards their neighbours I take issue with.

For me, it's also how the Israelis treat the Arab-Israelis and Palestnianns in Israel.