Keith,
A little “more matter, with less art” would have been helped your argument.

In case you haven’t noticed, Israel is not a closed society.
Unlike many Moslem societies, or "states within a state" like Hezbollah.
-Anyone can openly criticize Israeli govt policy.
-Anyone can openly criticize Judaism, or change their religion
Try doing that in most Islamic countries!

And Keith, you may like to take on board the (for you, no doubt ) distressing news that;not all Arabs are Moslem, & not all Moslems subscribe to Hezbollah & its ilk.

And I’d dare say even fewer would subscribe to it, if its true colours were analyses and exposed in a critical media & academia.

Drooge & Marilyn,
I wish all the best for the future
(talk about a match made in heaven).

Horus I'd have to disagree with your assertion "anyone can openly criticise Israeli government policy (or)Judaism".

Every such argument I've read recently is quickly followed by a rebuttal from the Jewish lobby suggesting anti-semitism or religious persecution, invariably including reference to the holocaust.

Drooge

Israel did not attack indescriminately and did not "destroy" Lebanon.

Marilyn

If you look at the "graphic" in the Age you will see clearly that Israel did not attack anything like almost every town or village from one end of Lebanon to the other. Nor did they occupy Lebanon in the past three weeks.

If you look at satellite pictures of Beirut you would see that only a small part of that city had been attacked. If you saw a recent ABC documentary you would have seen burly men preventing the cameramen filming any of Beirut which was untouched. No doubt that is why reportage of the war was so inaccurate.

As to your argument about Jews not needing Israel because 61% of the world's Jews don't want to live there I wonder where you get this statistic. Would you say that there is no need for the Vatican State because perhaps 99% of the world's Catholics don't want to live there?

And your statistic that support for Hezbollah is running at nearly 90% in Lebanon Where did you find that? Under the elephant?

I am sorry I cannot comment on the last part of your piece as I could not figure out any of it.

Logic

Marilyns boderline coherancy... please don't worry about not being able to relate to it.

MY FIRST DEMONSTRATION. Today I attended the Socialist Alliance/Palestinian Solidarity Network demo in Melbourne. What a dismal fizzer it turned out to be. The police had warned me that any contrary message would probably result in me being 'torn apart' by a couple of thousand "emotionally disturbed" people who attend these rallies.(His words) It was nice to actually meet the Seargent with whom I spoke on the phone at the demo, a nice bloke.

I reckon they scraped up 100 people max, with probably 50% of them at least being Lebanese/Arab/Palestinian.

The bloke doing the yelling into the PA system went hoarse within a 100 meters, and that after fumbling his lines.. and apologizing over the PA. His replacement became incoherant and slurring and hoarse by the 2nd hundred meters... and in all, I felt as threatened as Muhamad Ali would be by a feather duster.

I chatted with a few of them, surprisingly approachable, but they kind of went glazed eyed when history and some balanced information was presented. I even found it quite easy to share about Christ, and 'proto socialism' in Acts 2....
So rather than confront these cheery souls I wanted instead to FATHER them...so lost.. misguided, sad..

They shouted and had signage that we should change the 'Terrorist' rating of Hezbollah etc etc.. but all in all, pretty ineffective and irrelevant to all but themselves.

Hezbollah, and the PLO militants indeed will never be destroyed, they can only be moved far away and dispersed as I've repeatedly said.
I'm hoping that by NOW...people are tweaking to this truth.

The rally ended in a total anti climax at Federation Square where they addressed the 'masses' i.e. themselves, by this time about 60 max.
I drifted over to a performance of Islanders from NZ and Samoa etc, at the little ampitheatre -what a pleasant and uplifting change and stark contrast.

"I love a sunburnt Country, a land of sweeping plains
of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains"
D.McKellar

BD,

Good on you for going along to that protest, you are right, those guys are clueless. Don't get me wrong, my politics are probably more closely alligned to theirs than to yours but there methods are all wrong. They think they can change peoples view by screaming at the top of their lungs, you have to engage people whose view of the world is different to yours, not cram it down their throats. I think this is one thing me and you can agree on.

Redneck on the other hand, I have nothing in common with. He is essentially advocating genocide. A 'clash of civilisations' is not inevitable, but its becoming more and more likely because people like him refuse to accept that Muslims are human, flesh and blood people that bleed red.

If a new world war does happen redneck, I hope that you'll be happy to go along, and to send any brothers/sons/cousins as well, because you have done NOTHING to prevent it. You have simply spread the hate and exacerbated it.

Horus

I recently quoted the Anglican Archbishop of Jersuelem. His views would be criticised by you. By the way he is an Arab, a Palestinian and a pacifist. That would be remarkable to you no doubt. He'd forgive you your racism and bigotry...as do I.

Keith