@raprap,
I'm going to bow out of this one mate. I've got no problem debating with right wingers, but these people aren't right wingers, they're hate merchants pure and simple. Engaging them in debate just legitimises their repulsive bigotry and twisted ideology. It also makes me grateful that I live in the least religious country on Earth. I feel sorry for you having to rub shoulders with such people on a day to day basis. At least over here such opinions are sidelined and marginalised to the far right BNP.
I used to work at quite a rough boys school with a significant proportion of ethnic minorities, Sikhs, Hindus, Moslems, Christians, Jews, Atheists and Agnostics, and they were all a bunch of little bastards like most teenage boys. And if I'm honest like I was when I was that age.
There is a brilliant 4 part Drama series called 'The Promise.' It was first shown on Channel 4 in the UK. It is meticulously researched and deals with the situation in Israel from the viewpoint of two members of the same family. The first is a British sergeant in the paratroop regiment who after liberating Belsen concentration camp, finds himself at part of the British Mandate in Palestine. His granddaughter finds his diary just before she flies out to Israel in the 1990's to stay with a childood friend who is doing her military service in Israel just before the Intifada. It's worth checking out, and I'm sorry to bow out like this, but talking to these people leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.