Shops ban Israeli produce in Palestine protest (From Asian Image)

This is excellent news, but why has it taken so long for it to happen?
We shoppers must now in our turn support the principled stand taken by these shopkeepers by using their shops and services.
We must also write to other shops and stores who continue to sell Israeli goods - and thereby help to promote Israeli terrorism against the people of Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan - and encourage them to also join this boycott.

This is an excellent idea. "Voting with your wallet" can send a powerful message. Skeptics of this will argue that the Palestinians will actually really suffer by the boycott because most of them are employed in the farming industry. However, I disagree, most of Israel's cheap labour lives and works on kibbutzes and are mainly supporters of the zionists.

Such a good idea! Can we all play?
Well then, how about boycotting Sri Lankan goods because of its slaughter of Tamils? Or Chinese goods because of its invasiona and oppression of Tibet (amongst many other good reasons? Or Indian because of Kashmir? Or Turkish because of its treatment of Kurds? Or Iranian because of its treatment of its Sunni Arab tribes? Or Egyptian because its treatement of its Koptic Christians? And so on and so on and so on.

We'd soon have a buy only British campaign going in no time.

To esther121,

Your logic is fundamentally flawed, as I think you know.
Just because crimes are committed by one country, it doesn't excuse the crimes committed by others.
Furthermore none of the countries you mention have committed so many crimes, of such appalling brutality, and over such a long period of time as Israel has. Also none of these countries have ignored International laws, several UN resolutions, used chemical weapons against unarmed women and children or reneged on so many pacts and agreements as Israel has.
On top of all that none of the examples you give receive the billions upon billions of dollars and euros of aid that Israel annually demands from American and European tax payers.
The examples you give may well be good candidates for an economic boycott, but none of them are deserving of the boycott as Israel is.

To twisted,
You are deluded in believing that "none of the countries you mention have committed so many crimes, of such appalling brutality, and over such a long period of time as Israel has".
We live in a very wicked World and Israel is a very, very small player within it. Only yesterday, a suicide bomber struck at a rally in the Pakistani city of Quetta yesterday, killing around 40 people. They were killed at a Shia rally in support of an independent Palestine (which almost all Israelis would also support, provided they could also get secure peace) by the Sunni Taleban.
Pakistan, India and Israel gained independence at the same time as each other, around 62 years ago. At the time of Partition, around one million people were reckoned to have died from inter-religious strife. The death toll in the whole Arab-Israeli conflict hasn't reached one percent of that number - i.e not 10,000 dead, from both sides combined.

To esther121,

Again you are using crimes committed by one party as an excuse for crimes committed by another party. A bizzarre and inexplicable logic.
The world is indeed a wicked place, but that is no reason not to confront injustice and terrorism where we find it. Israel is certainly a small player in the world, but only in terms of it's population. In terms of the brutality, injustice, terror and mayhem it heaps on those whose land it continues to illegally occupy, Israel is a giant. It has the largest, most powerful, best equipped and trained armed forces in the region. It deploys tanks, helicopter gunships, F16 warplanes, satelites and chemical weapons against civilians - even unarmed women and children. The only defence Israel's victims has against all this is home made rockets, improvised explosives and - ultimately - their own bodies as suicide bombers.
You give some examples of other countries which also have been guilty of atrocities against civilians - to that list you may add Britain and the United States - well if their actions offend you, you would be right to be offended, so why not do something about it?
The people who have chosen to boycott Israeli goods are normal people like you and me who see their brothers and sisters murdered, imprisoned and tortured on a daily basis by a nation and a people that seems to have lost it's humanity, decency and any respect for international laws and the mores and practices of civilised peoples. It is not enough to say that 'well such and such a country also behaves like this so we should turn a blind eye'
If you love Israel, and I hope you do, than I invite you to join in this boycott, and to let the israeli's know that their behaviour cannot be allowed to continue.
Ultimately this is not just for the Palestinians, the Lebanese, the Jordanians, the Syrians etc. It is also for Israel. Because a people who visit such brutality and injustice upon their fellow humans, ultimately will brutalise and destroy themselves.
Israeli's will never be able to wake up in the morning feeling safe and secure on their land as long as they continue to deny their neighbours the same safety and security on their land.

Twisted:
All I have asked is that you apply some perspective. At some points, above, you seem to concede the need for this but then you indulge in hyperbole, repeating that (Israel is) "a nation and a people that seems to have lost it's humanity, decency and any respect for international laws and the mores and practices of civilised peoples." No it isn't. Israel is a nation and a people that is terrified of the explicit threat (by Iran with its clients Hezbollah and Hamas), of being "wiped off the face of the map". Israel is in Peace Talks with the Palestinian Authority - and these are viciously opposed by Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas constantly tell wicked lies and black propaganda about Israel and Jews and you should not believe all you might hear from biased sources such as PressTV or Saudi funded media.
That is not to say that Israelis are angels - obviously thay are not. Nor are they all the same there anyway. But the Middle East is a very tough neighbourhood in which to survive for anyone - and it is especially hard as a member of a minority religion. This has beeen going on for longer than the existence of the State of Israel. There were anti-Jewish riots in Palestine in the 1920s.

esther121,
I do not listen to black propaganda or wicked lies about Jews and Israel. I do not get my information from PressTV or Saudi Funded media. Nor for that for that matter do I listen to the lies, half truths and propaganda that is daily supplied in the guise of news by much of the western media - in particular CNN, Fox, Sky and the BBC.
I do learn from AlJazeera, Amnesty International, The UN and through Haaretz.
If you read Haaretz, you would find a video there showing the Prime Minister of Israel boasting that while Israel was negotiating with the Palestinians during the Oslo Peace talks, his government were already making plans to scupper the talks. On that video you will hear him saying that while the Palestinians did everything they were required to do under the agreement, he was proud that Israel had managed to avoid their obligations. On this video, you will see Benjamin Netenyahu proudly proclaiming that - contrary to your assertion that Israel is terrified of the explicit threat of being 'wiped off the face of the earth by Iran' etc. - Israel fears no one. He also says that he will never make any peace with the Palestinians, but that he will make them suffer.
Israel is now having more peace talks with the Palestinians, after having promised to halt the building of illegal settlements on occupied land. Yet even as the talks go on, the settlements continue to be built and more land is stolen and more innocent Palestinians are being murdered.
On Haaretz you will also find evidence of Israeli soldiers who deliberately shoot pregnant Palestinian women and then boast that they got 2 kills for one bullet. You will find Israelis who are proud that they abduct Palestinian children and then threaten them with sexual abuse if they will not act as spies against their parents.
Haaretz also reports that the leaders of Shas - a far right Israeli party that commands significant support amongst Israelis - has consistently called for the annihilation of Palestinians and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians lands. The leaders of Shas have gone on record as saying that an Arab is not worth one Jewish fingernail and that it is therefore no crime to kill them
A Swedish newspaper - Aftonblat - reported that Israelis murdered many innocent Palestinians - a lot of them children - so that they could harvest their organs. A claim that was initially denied by the Israelis, but later proven to be true.
None of this I have read in PressTV or on any Saudi Funded media. This has all come from Haaretz - an Israeli newspaper - and has been corroborated by AlJazeera, Amnesty and the UN.
As for the Iranians, Hezbollah, Hamas or anyone else wanting to 'wipe Israel of the face of the earth'. I have searched long and hard for evidence as to who said that, when and where. Although much of the western media has reported this, not one of them has provided any evidence to prove that these words were in fact spoken by anyone. If you can provide the evidence, please do so. What the Iranians, Hezbollah and Hamas have all said is no more and no less then what The United States, The European Union, The UN and the rest of the world says - that Israel must return the stolen land to the Palestinians and must stop terrorising it's neighbours.
All this taken along with Israel's massacres of innocents at Sabra and Shatilla, Bourg El-Barajné, Jenin, Qilqilya and countless other atrocities committed by the Israelis over 6 decades does not speak of a nation that wants peace with it's neighbours. Rather it shows a country and a people that thrive on murder, mayhem and the theft of the property of others. A people who have lost any sense of morality, justice and humanity.
For those who remember their history, the words and actions of the leaders of Shas and the Israeli Prime Minister have a particular significance, because this is the very rhetoric that the Nazis used against the Jews in the early days of the Third Reich - and nobody needs reminding what that lead to.
It is a matter of great concern that some holocaust survivors and their descendants are the very ones who seem to have learned least from the past.
The world turned a blind eye to the suffering of innocents then, must it do so again?

To swisted:
It seems that that you do not so much listen to black propaganda as broadcast it yourself.
I do not recognise any of the key statements that you quote as sourced from the newspaper Ha'artetz. Please supply references for these or I and all your readers here should conclude that they are simply black libels.

Please show me where there is a "video showing the Prime Minister of Israel boasting that while Israel was negotiating with the Palestinians during the Oslo Peace talks, his government were already making plans to scupper the talks."

Contrary to what you say, you don't need to look "long and hard" to find reference to the Iranian, Hezbollah and Hamas threats to wipe Israel off the face of the map. For just one of thousands of reference, try the Guardian at: http://www.guardian.
co.uk/world/2005/oct
/27/israel.iran
Or have a look at the "Hamas Charter" at: http://www.thejerusa
lemfund.org/www.thej
erusalemfund.org/car
ryover/documents/cha
rter.html

Find an inflammatory speech by Hezbollah's Nasrallah about Israel on Youtube - it's not hard.

Your repetition of the blood libel that Jews harvest the organs of Gentiles is one of the oldest Anti-Semitic tropes in existence. It was also repeated when Israel send medical teams to help at the Haiti earthquake. It is wicked.

The Israelis did not massacre the Palestinians in the Lebanon, but the Christian Falangist Militia did. The Israeli army found itself guilty of just looking on without helping the innocent - and people, were punished for this lesser crime.

The Shas party are extremely right wing religious nutters and do not represent anything but a tiny minority. Most Israelis are secular and also most a peace agreement on the basis of an independent Palestine alongside Israel.

Over a million of Israelis come from other Middle Eastern countries - from which they were expelled without compensation. They do not whine about this but get on with their lives. In living memory, Jews played an important part in the cultures of Cairo, Alexandria, Baghdad, Aleppo, Algiers, Aden, Tehran, etc. etc. Why do think that their Jewish Quarters are now empty - apart from a few old men?

Oh dear, it seems that whoever has the temerity to criticise Israel or attempts to tell the truth will sooner or later be branded either a liar or an anti-semite. Well now that I've more or less been branded a liar, I wonder how long it will be before I am also an anti-semite - well we're nearly there.
The Netanyahu video that you seek is available on numerous websites, and has been for some time. It's surprising that you are unable to find it yourself. The trouble with looking for things is that you have got to want to find them. If you search for things that you really don't want to find then you will never find them - even if they are under your very nose. Try looking here -
http://www.themarkne
ws.com/articles/1956
-the-netanyahu-video
-fallout
Or even here -
http://www.boomantri
bune.com/story/2010/
7/25/134210/129.
When you have viewed the video go the Haaretz site here -
http://www.haaretz.c
om/print-edition/opi
nion/tricky-bibi-1.3
02053
and read what Gideon Levy has to say about the video. I warn you, you may not like what you read.
If it is a blood libel to accuse Israelis of harvesting the organs of people they have murdered for that purpose, then you should be telling that to Dr. Yehuda Hiss, the the director and chief pathologist at Israel's Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine. Dr. Hiss not only admits to that horrible practice, but also describes how it was done. He further tells how he gave the stolen organs to the Tel Hashomer hospital "because the doctors there were his friends" and received a microscope as a present in return.
You will find this on the AlArabiya webstite here -
http://www.alarabiya
.net/articles/2009/1
2/20/94757.html#002
AlArabiya, as you are doubtless aware, gets considerable support from the United States and is the station to which Barack Obama gave his first formal interview as president.
While you are accusing Dr. Hiss and the Tel Hashomer hospital of blood libel, you might as well do the same to the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, which first broke this story of Israeli barbarism.
Since you talk of lies and black propaganda, perhaps we should also mention the often repeated lie about Jews being expelled from other Middle Eastern countries without compensation. That particular lie will come as something of a surprise to the many large populations of Jews who currently live in Arab and Muslim countries.
it will certainly come as a shock to the very many Jews who live in Iran - as they have done for more than 2 millennia. Other than Israel itself, Iran has more Jews living there than anywhere else in the Middle East. These Iranian Jews do not stay there because they are shackled to the stones. They remain in Iran because it is their home and they love it, and also because they prefer it to living elsewhere - yes, they even prefer living in Iran to living in Israel. Iranian Jews have guaranteed representation in parliament, their rights as equal citizens are guaranteed under the constitution, and they enjoy freedoms and prosperity that Israel denies it's minorities and those whose land it occupies. Indeed such is the love that Iranian Jews have for their homeland that many Jews fought for and gave their lives for Iran during the Iraq / Iran conflict - which was instigated and sponsored largely by the United States and Britain.
Instead of getting your information second or third hand from whatever dubious sources you use, why not go to Iran or Palestine and Gaza and see for yourself (that's assuming the Israelis will actually let you see what they are up to in the occupied lands). Why not talk to Iranian jews and ask them yourself why they don't want to move to Israel? You could go and talk to the Tehran Jewish Committee which represents Jewish Organisations in Iran, and which has been in existence for far longer than modern day Israel.
While you are in Iran, you could go and visit the tomb or your namesake Esther and Mordechai in Hamedan, and you could ask yourself why Jewish tombs and shrines are maintained and cared for in Iran, whilst Muslim and Christian tombs and shrines in Israel and Palestine are often defaced and desecrated by Jewish settlers.

To twisted:
Trying to take your points in the order you make them.
1. The report on the Netanyahu video you refer to came to light - from Ha'aretz - only in July this year, so I had indeed missed it. It shows that the government of Israel is led by a man who doesn't believe the Palestinians and doesn't believe in the chance of an agreement with them, and who thinks that he can pull the wool over Washington's eyes. If I were an Israeli I would have always voted for the Labour Party.
But in Arafat also, the Palestians were led by a man who didn't believe the Israelis and didn't believe in the chance of an agreement with them, and who thought that he could pull the wool over Washington's eyes. So Netanyahu and Arafat had a lot in common. No-one deserved either of them.

2. I had to look up your story about Dr Yehuda Hiss - and how you have twisted that one! It seems that Dr. Hiss was involved in controversies related to allegations that his institute systematically removed organs from corpses for medical research, without permission from the families. These were random bodies and so almost all Jewish families, but the issue is enormously sensitive because of Judaism's emphasis on burying the whole body. You will find that similar controversies break out frequently in the UK and all over the World - because that's what goes on in Teaching Hospitals. Ask anyone who has been a UK medical student. Have a look here about "organs 'removed for transplant without consent' in the UK": http://news.bbc.co.u
k/1/hi/uk/8613791.st
m

However, what you said - and the way you said it and why - is a blood libel and so is anti-Semitic.

3. I happen to have been to Iran twice and I had a Iranian-Jewish flatmate, Jamshid, some years ago in London. When I went to Iran, just before the Revolution, there were over 100,000 Jews there. Now there are said to be 25,000. My friend's family suffered terribly from discrimination as did all the Jews (and other religious minorities including, especially, the Bahai who were terrified). Most of his family escaped from Iran by being smuggled by camels and landrovers across an Afghanistan route. Jamshid himself fell in love and married a Moslem girl and is still there. When I was last able to talk to him, your picture of happy Jews in Iran was a long way from the truth. If you believe what very frightened people have to say in public in Iran then I presume that you believe in the public "confession" of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani - she who is sentenced to being stoned to death for alleged 'adultery'.

4. I take it from your silence on the issue that you now accept that Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas aim to wipe Israel off the map. No other country in the World is faced with such a murderous threat.

One more thing 'twisted', Muslim and Christian tombs and shrines in Israel and Palestine are NOT 'defaced and desecrated' (as you assert above). On the extreme contrary, in Jerusalem for instance, the beautiful Al Aqsa mosque stands on the very ancient site of the Jewish Temple and the whole of the Temple Mount is reserved only for Moslems. It is like a Christian cathedral or a synagogue on the Ka'ba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia! But the Israelis are OK with it.

On computers around the world, Israeli sponsored dis-informationists sit ready to pounce at anyone who writes against Israel. Their remit is to twist words, respond to questions with other questions instead of answers, ridicule and jeer people into silence and have been told that they "must have the last world always". I present to you North West England's representative of this dis-information service; esther121.

esther121,
So now I'm officially an anti-semite, and that for the heinous crime of telling the truth. I wonder what that makes the Israelis who regularly murder, terrorise and steal from their semitic brothers - the Arabs?
The Israelis are a people who have freely elected to their highest office, a man whose avowed aim is not only to avoid making peace with their neighbours, but to cause them as much misery and hardship as he can. And they have elected this unprincipled thug not once, but twice. This is a country which chooses as it's leaders people who go to negotiate peace while taking every opportunity to stab their negotiating partners in the back.
One of us is certainly twisting the story of organ theft by Israelis, and it isn't me. Dr. Hiss has gone on record as saying that he knew the organs in question had been removed from Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers, and that neither the Palestinians nor their families were told about the removal of their organs. (in fact Israeli law permits the removal of organs for transplant without the donor's consent).
This is not the only time Israelis have been involved in the theft and trafficking of human organs.
In July 2009 the FBI broke up an international organ trafficking ring operating between the United States and Israel. An organ trafficking ring which originated in Israel.
In April this year six Israelis ( one of whom was an ex Israeli army Brigadier General), were arrested in the District of Nazareth for this very crime.
None of this information is secret. Like the Netanyahu video, it is all available on numerous sites online from reliable sources. You will even find the names of some of the Palestinians who were the victims of this particularly nasty crime.
But, as I've said before, you will never find something that you do not want to find.
I'm glad you've been to Iran. I hope you found that they are not the bloodthirsty, crazed lunatics that the Israelis would have us believe.
You may also have learned some things about Iran
That Iran has never invaded it's neighbours, while Israel has invaded and continues to occupy the land of every one of it's neighbours.
That Iran has never used chemical weapons - although Iranians have had American supplied chemical weapons used against them. Yet Israel not only uses chemical weapons, but uses them on children.
That Iran has no nuclear weapons nor, according to the IAEA, are they likely to aquire any. Israel, on the other hand has enough nuclear weapons to blow up the whole world several times over - and given the mindset of the Israeli public and their politicians, that is not something to be taken lightly.
No I don't accept that Iran, Hezbollah or Hamas want to wipe Israel of the face of the earth, but given Israel's appalling record of terrorism, barbarism and inhumanity to it's neighbours, few could blame them if they did feel that way.
One more thing, Muslim and Christian tombs and shrines ARE often desecrated and defaced by Israeli settlers. I have seen this myself, and I have seen the settlers boasting about and celebrating the fact that they have caused the damage. Again there is plenty of evidence online if you want to find it. You will also find evidence of Israeli soldiers using mosques and churches for target practice.

To twisted:
1. You are not "officially" an anti-Semite, you just seem to be one to me. You start from the position of hating Israel and then go on to invent stories about the objects of your hatred as being devilish. Like all good fairy stories some of these stories have a tiny germs of fact because of some reported incident somewhere by someone - and some don't.
Blood libels and stories - like yours- about Jews desecrating Moslem and Christian places of worship are designed to stir up a mob reaction of anger amongst the Muslim faithful- but are they are wicked and untrue. For example, hospitals that take organs from dead patients without consent for teaching, research or transfers to save life is an issue all over the World. Orthodox Jews and Muslims make a big fuss about this and their positions must be respected. But the secular majority are not so much bothered as they can see the life-saving benefits.
2. Let's talk about Netanyahu. I have already agreed that he is a two-faced politician. I knew that - and you have produced evidence for it that came to light this past July, which was about 18 months after his election. In that Election, his party Likud got 27 seats out of the total 120. So he is in power only because of a fragile coalition of parties. (As a matter of interest, in the same Knesset election, three Arab parties, Balad, Hadash and United Arab List got 11 seats.)
So we agree that Netanyahu is a duplicitous politician? But I asked you at the beginning of these discussions to consider Israel relative to other Countries in the World. Ask yourself who of the following (taken from a potentially much longer list) could not be described as easily more duplicitous a politician than even Netanyahu:
Assad of Syria (father and son); Mubarak (and son) of Egypt; a clutch of Saudi Princes; Abdul Nasser; Saddam Hussein (and his psychopathic two sons); Nasrallah of Hezbollah; Haniyeh of Gaza; Musharraf, Bhutto (father and daughter), "Mr 10%" Zadari of Pakistan; Mrs Ghandi and son of India; Karzai of Afghanistan and the Taleban before him. Looking further away, lets not forget: Berlesconi of Italy and Putin of Russia - or the whole faceless Chinese Politbureau - who most likely be the real future rulers of our World. You don't hear so much of Chinese repressions of their minorities because they are too damned good at it.

3. So lets' get onto Iran. Let me point you to a relevant new interview with Fidel Castro, which you will find here:

http://www.theatlant
ic.com/international
/archive/2010/09/fid
el-to-ahmadinejad-st
op-slandering-the-je
ws/62566/

Here is an extract:
"Castro opened our initial meeting by telling me that he read the recent Atlantic article carefully, and that it confirmed his view that Israel and America were moving precipitously and gratuitously toward confrontation with Iran. This interpretation was not surprising, of course: Castro is the grandfather of global anti-Americanism, and he has been a severe critic of Israel. His message to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, he said, was simple: Israel will only have security if it gives up its nuclear arsenal, and the rest of the world's nuclear powers will only have security if they, too, give up their weapons.
Castro's message to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, was not so abstract, however. Castro repeatedly returned to his excoriation of anti-Semitism. He criticized Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust and explained why the Iranian government would better serve the cause of peace by acknowledging the "unique" history of anti-Semitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence."

But please read the whole thing and not just the bits that you like - of which there will be plenty. Nobody is really in any doubt that Ahmadinejad is an unbalanced and dangerous warmonger. It is of no help for you to quote Iranian history or the niceness of most Iranian people - they are all irrelevant to a militant theocratic regime that only listens to what, it thinks, God is telling them to do. In their heads, God might well tell Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader to lead their people to mass suicide (i.e. Shia Martyrdom) and take the rest of the Middle East with them.

You will recall that only a couple of weeks ago Ahmadinejad unveiled a new Iranian Cruise missile, (strewn with rose petals) saying that it was “the messenger of salvation and dignity for humanity”. What a frightening nutcase.

esther121,
So I'm not only a liar, an anti-semite and someone who has committed a blood-libel, but now I am also an Israel hater. What next, I wonder?
I make light of these accusations of yours, but I cannot deny that I find your words offensive and deeply hurtful.
I do have an intense dislike, not for Israel, but what Israelis have turned that country into. And I'm not the only one. There are very many, and a growing number, of us - and not all of us are gentiles.
Many jews see what Israelis are doing in their name and are deeply unhappy. Many Jews who move to Israel move out again when they find how that country has developed into the belligerent, war mongering society that it is now.
Israel is a country which should have been a beacon of light, truth and justice, but the Israelis have turned it into a monster that is feared by it's neighbours and detested by a growing number of people around the world. It could have been a nation that promotes harmony, love and freedom, yet it has been made into a country that sows distrust, misery and mayhem.
What really upsets me about Israel is the way it feeds like a leech on the memory of the pain and suffering of previous generations of jews, and uses their history to justify a level of mass murder, theft and savagery that the world has rarely seen since the second world war. I also despise the lies, misinformation and, quite frankly, **** that Israelis and their supporters spout to excuse their crimes,
The fact that you do not believe what you read and hear about Israeli brutality does not mean it isn't true. The fact that you can't find evidence of Israel's terrorism, lies and barbarism doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. You couldn't find the Netanyahu video, in spite of the fact that it's all over the web like a nasty rash, and has been for months. The evidence against Israel is right under your nose, you simply choose to ignore it. You choose to see, hear and read only whatever accords with your perverted view of this blighted land.
That's your prerogative.
But understand this, by ignoring the truth you are a far worse anti-semite than I could ever be. Because it is people like you, who support Israel - right or wrong - and who choose to ignore the many crimes of it's people, who will hasten that country's demise. And it is people like you with your closed minds and your closed hearts who will tear apart world jewry.

No, Twisted, it is YOU who "chooses to see hear and read only whatever accords with your perverted views".
I have engaged with your stories (and one was even true!) but you have not engaged with my arguments at all. You have not listened or even noticed that I am also critical and disappointed in the way that Israel has developed.
I liked Israel best when - in the 30 years up to the mid 1970s, it was striving to be a Utopian Socialist State. Its political elite then were drawn from Kibbutzniks and Trades Union Leaders. They were idealists who could return to modest Kibbutz lives in the intervals during and after their political lives. Farms and factories were more often run as worker's co-operatives. In those times the USA and the UK were very unpopular there and Israel's main friend in the West was France (remember the Mirage Jets that took out the Egyptians in the 1967 War). Lots of reasons have caused this - I think the main one has been demographics. A million 'conservative' refugees from Arab countries were not very interested in Socialism. Nor were Russian Jews coming after the fall of the USSR - they hated the smell of Communism, having lived under it. Finally, the ultra-Orthodox Jews have been producing babies at three times the rate of the socialist-leaning secular Jews and so are a growing proportion of the population.

I am more than willing to criticise Netanyahu and Israel and have already done so in previous posts and here. I do not "support Israel right or wrong" as you allege.

What you have not done is engage with my point that so very many of the rest of the politicians and countries in the region and elsewhere are worse, or much worse. So, on moral grounds, why advocate boycotting just Israel?

As regards the Holocaust and Israel, it's simply unavoidably true that after the systematic industrial killing of 6 million Jews in WW2, the key phrase for Israel is "Never Again". That has two parts to it:
A. In future to always take your enemy's threat to wipe you out as fully intended, and
B. Never to trust that the Western Powers of the USA and Europe will risk their necks to rescue you in time. Therefore, to be prepared to act militarily without them.
Israel behaves mentally scarred by the holocaust because it IS mentally scarred by the holocaust.

You seem to have taken from a quote in Bible: “And I Will Establish you (Israel) as a Covenant of the people, for a Light unto the nations”. After a promising start in 1948, this is not happening – although the Religious Right may disagree with me. But nor is Israel the Devilish place that you portray. More prosaically, it has become a cross between a typical Middle Eastern country and a West European one – perhaps like the Lebanon used to be before its Civil War and more recently, before Hezbollah and Iran took over the Southern half of that Country.

The real "crime" of Jewish Israelis for Militant Islamists is that they are still breathing. To them, a Jewish State in the Holy Land is an "insult to Islam". That is the beginning and end of it - and the real reason for all hostilities since the 1920s. It is better to understand and recognise that than to make up or believe hysterical stories about Jewish blood crimes and vandalism against Gentiles and their holy sites as you have done.

So the main reason for Israeli terrorism is that other people also do it, and because of what the Nazis did.
Well that's ok then. That makes me feel so much better.
And I'm sure all the Palestinians and Lebanese whose land has been stolen, and whose children have been burned with phosphor bombs or had their organs stolen, will be able to sleep a lot better for knowing that.
Thank you for enlightening me.

twisted wrote:
So the main reason for Israeli terrorism is that other people also do it, and because of what the Nazis did. Well that's ok then. That makes me feel so much better. And I'm sure all the Palestinians and Lebanese whose land has been stolen, and whose children have been burned with phosphor bombs or had their organs stolen, will be able to sleep a lot better for knowing that. Thank you for enlightening me.

To twisted:
Once again you fail to engage with points that I have argued. You seem completely unable to address my actual points and so instead just babble incoherent sentences of hatred of Israel and the Jews. You also kid yourself by posing with “principled” opposition to stupid ideas that I have not – and would not - put forward.
And there you go again with your "Jews steal Muslims' Organs" blood-libel. That is truly despicable of you.

I am despicable? How despicable?
As despicable as those who steal from others, or who murder defenceless civilians, or who use tanks and helicopter gunships against people whose only crime is they own the land Israel wants to steal. Or am I as despicable as those who burn children with phosphor bombs or steal their organs after having killed them?

By the way, how do you the Palestinians whose organs were stolen were Muslims?
I have no such information. As far I know these unfortunate victims of Israel's barbarism may be Christians, Muslims or even Jews. All I know is that they were Palestinians and that they were innocent victims.
How do you know that the people whose organs were stolen were Muslims?

To 'twisted':
It was you that was going on about "organ theft". It's not my obsession (as it seems to be for you) or even interest and I can't see its relevance to any of the actual Israel-Palestine political or historical conflict issues.

It was just another one your despicable efforts to libel Jews rather than argue a proper case with truthful and relevant discussion points.

In any event, the only reference that you link posted on this site was mainly about Ultra-Orthodox Jews complaining about a particular doctor's practice - at one time and before he was stopped by the Israeli authorities - of removing some organs of some dead family members, apparently without their consent - but most probably with the good intent, I would guess, to save lives.

By applying similar "logic", you could raise the case of the British GP Dr Shipman and from this imply that all white Anglo-Saxon doctors, or maybe Englishmen, are tainted with being serial murderers of old ladies for money? You just don't seem to cope with business of employing the basic logical tools of causality and relevance to the subject that you are trying to address.