There's a similarity here with a recent artificial media brouhaha about Cherie Blair's comments about the Palestinians. If you say that you can understand how someone from a Palestinian background might feel driven to suicide bombing, and you will be instantly castigated for condoning their actions.   I can understand the basic principles of an atom bomb, but it doesn't mean I think they should be used.

But if we don't discuss these things freely, and we don't at least try to understand why "the enemy" hates us, the enmity will persist. We have freedom of speech under law, but the media and many of the general population don't respect it when someone says something controversial.

Question: If we accept for the moment that there was a "Christ", and that "The Christ" was executed, then was He killed by the Jews?

Answer: Some Jews actively promoted His death; some stood by and silently condoned it; some stood by and silently condemned it; many probably didn't give a monkeys one way or another - they lived in brutal times; some few tried to stop it; and MOST Jews never knew a thing about it.

Many anti-Zionist Jews held a vigil outside the hospital as Arafat was dying, partly to show their repugnance for the actions of Israel, the state, despite their allegiance to their understanding of the Jewish religion.

If people can't discuss the circumstances of Jesus's death, 2,000 years after the event, without falling out, then He wasted his time! And I'm writing as an atheist with no particular axe to grind for or against any particular one of the various Christian sects or the various Jewish sects.