Wes, you mean which side is killing the most babies, or which side is winning the PR war?

Irwin, you are right, the statement as I made it made it sound like I was saying all Jews are responsible for the atrocities committed by the state of Israel, and I'm sorry about that -- of course I realize this is not the case.

I don't think I'm anti-Semitic. I won't say "some of my best friends are Jews" because it's trite and racist and also because it's not true -- I don't know very many Jews at this point in my life (except one of the kids my teenage boy hangs with). In general I try not to assign qualities to people based on their race or ethnicity or religion. Near as I can tell, most people are an awful lot like most other people, current company included.

However I'm not at all certain I'm a Zionist, if that means favoring an explicitly Jewish state within the borders of ancient Israel. I realize the current situation is not one that was calculated or designed by the current population of the modern state of Israel, but largely the results of circumstances beyond their control. But not entirely beyond their control. They didn't force Britain to do what she did in 1948, nor did they force the Arab world to react to the creation of the state of Israel in the way that it did. But regardless of all these things, the fact remains that millions of Palestinians were forced from their homes in 1948, and afterwards, in an act which, if it occurred today in Serbia, would be called Ethnic Cleansing. You are right that the Arab world has a lot to answer for, in the way that these refugees were received (or not received) into the neighboring Arab countries. But I would say the state of Israel has a lot to answer for in the way that they were made refugees in the first place, and have been treated since then.

Racism (or discrimination on the basis of religion, which as far as I know has no simple one-word title in English) of any kind is an ugly thing, and the way Jewish people in the surrounding Arab states were treated after the founding of the modern state of Israel is deplorable. The situation in that part of the world (as you of course are well aware) is a very complex and ugly one, a legacy of over 2000 years of racism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other horrible human rights abuses at the hands of Pagan, Muslim, Christian, and now Jewish, powers.

I realize there are no easy answers to all these questions, and am very pleased that people like yourself are working for peaceful and equitable solutions. May the God of Abraham guide us toward those solutions.

Alex