Darn right it's sobering, tunesmith, although I don't consider it to be all based on fiction. It's also very sobering to note that the Jews' own sense of having been persecuted has led to them doing much the same thing to a great many other people in the Middle East. Clearly, they have much to learn about tolerance and humility (as do those who are fighting them).

Anyone has good reason to fear a religious group who have assured themselves that they are morally superior to everyone else around them, and have the right to assert that superiority through violent force.

That is why most of the World fears the USA, which has invented its own myth-based cultural religion of "liberty, freedom, and the American Way", which amounts to nothing more than grand imperialism in search of material profit.

One last comment. Christ didn't set people free. He demonstrated to them how they could set themselves (and others) free. Most of them would rather leave the job to him, because they are essentially too lazy to do the spiritual work required to free themselves. It's much easier to just make a ritualistic statement of blind faith ("I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ"), and dump all the work on "the Lord"...

You don't get to the top of a mountain without moving your own feet and shedding your own blood, tears and sweat (if I may paraphrase Churchill).

- LH