* israel as a theocracy? - sauer-thompson wonders about secularity in israel (his links also worth checking out - 1/2):

"It was a European settler-state that was founded on driving 700,000 Palestinians out of their villages by the Zionist army in 1948. This process can be called 'ethnic cleansing'. Ethnic cleansing is usually defended on the grounds that it is okay (morally right) if carried out by a superior civilization. We can compare this to the killing of indigenous Aborigines by the European settlers in Australia. That policy by a British settler-state is also justified as morally right.

Zionism holds that a Jewish state could never have been established without force, coercion and ethnic cleansing; that its survival depends on superior power to crush all Arabic opposition; the creation of the Israeli state was fired by a conviction of its moral rightness which accorded Jews a special place over others; and because of this, everything is instrumental to its goal."


* on a similar note - this post by the same led to some interesting accusations of "anti-semitism". evidently the veil between criticism and anti-semitism is invisible for some.

gary's collaborator on philosophical conversations writes an engaging piece in response to this. all worth a look. what is mostly telling in the responses to gary's post, is the reactionary use of "anti-semitism" - as if the radical left's newest strategy was some kind of conspiracy against world jewry, let alone the notion of such a thing. everytime somebody points out the u.s.-israeli veto club, israel's nuclear weapons arsenal, hell, even u.s. policy in the region, you can be sure some spineless idiot will cry "anti-semitism".

as trevor sums up quite nicely:

"In my book, the people who attack Gary are the true anti-Semites, because criticism lies at the very essence of Judaism, for it is forbidden to speak of God but only of the ungodly. Pharisees rule! No thanks."