Re: the accusation that people who protest what the government of Israel is doing but are not particularly vocal about the situation in Darfur... first of all, I note that the person making the accusation is particularly vocal about human rights abuses in conflicts in which the government of Israel has a political reason to push a certain stand (such as Darfur), but is totally silent about similar and sometimes even worse atrocities committed in other countries (such as the situation in the Congo). So that person is very cynically using human rights as a smoke screen for their own anti-human rights agenda.

However, for my part, since my tax money is being used by the government of Israel to kill Palestinians, I have an obligation to speak out against that, and I would even if Israel was the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster state, and not the Jewish state. The poster who keeps saying that it's just because Israel is a Jewish state that people are protesting is very cynically using this accusation as a way to cover up their own particular bigotry against people who are not Jewish.

Furthermore, the situation in Darfur is not as cut and dried as that poster is trying to suggest. Since the conflict is not between the victims and one set of aggressors, but is, in fact a conflict between super powers who are using two different factions as proxies in a resource war in which innocent civilians are caught in the middle, the person who habitually and recklessly throws around accusations that people are discriminating against Jews is, themself covering for one of the super powers that is backing one of the factions that is victimizing the civilians.

Now that Bush is out of office, I hold somewhat more hope that the US will stop backing one of the sides in the conflict that is victimizing innocent civilians, and the war will wind down on its own.