Dear Bezza,

«You say they are Jews, well that might have been so 1400 years ago but it is not so now.»

You raise a serious question here which the best scholars have not been able to answer: "What is a Jew?"!

If Judaism is measured by religious observance, then the majority of Israelis cannot be counted as Jews: Even Israel's prime-minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was recently caught eating non-kosher sea-food in a London restaurant when he went there to visit King Charles.

If Judaism is measured by race then most Ashkenazi Jews are not of Middle-Eastern ancestry.

If Judaism is measured by Hitler's ideas then many faithful Christians who believe in Jesus but have Jewish ancestry should be sent along to the gas chambers, while Aryans who converted to Judaism should be allowed to live.

If Judaism is measured by the Rabbis' Jewish law (Halacha) then what counts is maternal lineage, and so most of those who now identify as "Palestinian" are actually proper Jews, whether or not they know it, whether or not they like it.

Secondly, it was not 1400 years ago, but a gradual process that took many centuries. Initially all conquered Israeli Jews paid the Jizya, but then one by one, all except one family, they said "what the hack" and converted to Islam. Can you say with hand on heart that finding yourself in their difficult situation you would not have done the same?

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«Yuyutsu, you say it is an internal Israeli problem.
Then why do the "people" in Gaza fire rockets at Israel ?»

I stayed on the topic of this article, which is the disastrous social effects of Israel's 1967 occupation on its citizens. Not even any occupation, past or future, just that particular one of 1967. That is an internal Israeli problem, that is what now threatens to break Israel apart from within.

As for the Arabs/Muslims, yes you are right, they have many problems and pain they inflict on themselves and on others, but that is outside the scope of this article.

As for the rockets, here in Australia we have fires and floods, other countries have severe earthquakes and cyclones, others yet have debilitating heat, cold and viruses, Ukraine has invading Russians and Taiwan is under constant threat from China. There is no place on earth without severe troubles and the surface of Mars is not any better - so Israel has these rockets from Gaza, OK, nobody likes it but life goes on!

The only flaw in this partisan homily about the downtrodden Arabs is the multiple and ongoing attempts at the genocide of Jews by these "victims" that created this situation and their rejection of every peace initiative.

That Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews and the Palestinian authorities pay a bounty for every Jewish man woman or child murdered leads to a level of distrust by the Israelis.

While the Israelis are not without blame, the Palestinians have to lie in the bed that they built and are continuing to build.