This is one of the reasons why any sort of peace or compromise in the Middle East will be long delayed - attempts to thwart real debate by using the religious discrimination argument.

It is usually those that are quick to deride Islam (it is also a religion) that will argue anti-semitism when Israel is criticised - it is hypocritical.

If religious victimhood on both sides of this debate continues to be the fallback position, then there will be no progress and the region will always remain crippled - any attempts at a resolution will be impotent. Religious victimhood is inward focussed and while it remains there will be no hope of looking outward or the idea of what 'we' can do better.

Religious victimhood gives the green light to the status quo ie. doing nothing.

eileen fleming,

"vanish from the pages of time"
We don't often see that version of the translation from Zionists, it wouldn't suit their purposes would it?

Passy,

I agree with your comments about the poor quality of the Zionists arguments.However I don't share your optimism in regard to the fate of the Palestinians, unless the Americans develop a conscience, which seems unlikely.

Horus, FYI
the term 'settler state" has a specific meaning,it refers to those nations populated by Europeans during the Age of Imperialism.

Mac& Passy,
Forget your neat little boxes and arbitrary lines-in-the-sand.

“Imperialism” did not start and end with the European nations.
Nor, did the settlement/colonisation of other regions begin and end with the European nations.


The European nations were merely replicating what the Arabs & Turks’ had done in an earlier age.
If anything, European imperialism/colonisation in the middle east, was feeble, when compared to the antics of the Arabs & Turks
Arab & Turkish imperialism & colonisation extinguished many formerly proud and independent cultures and peoples

Horus,

I wasn't denying the fact that Moslems have an appalling record of imperialism, I was merely indicating that the term "settler societies" has a specifc meaning. I'm certainly not an apologist for Islam and I don't disagree with your comments that Moslems invaded and occupied other societies, however they didn't displace the indigenous people on the scale of Europeans in the New World and Australia.

Birobidjan
the original Jewish homeland

http://www.tellingfilms.netne.net/birobidjan.htm
During May 2008 Israelis celebrated the 60th anniversary of their Jewish state,while Palestinians marked six decades of catastrophe or Nakba.

Among all the column inches devoted by the British press to this dual anniversary there was no mention of Birobidjan, the original Jewish homeland, whose 70th anniversary fell in 2004..
http://www.presstv.com/pop/wmp.aspx?id=55153
..regardless of their differing evaluations of the Classical vs Christian pillars of Western civilisation,..
http://www.tellingfilms.netne.net/barnesreviewnote.html
Lady Renouf told viewers that:

European Jewry,..to promote their powerful imposture of a"Promised Land",..demanded their right to pirate Palestine as a Jewish"homeland".

This was the sly euphemism Zionist founding father Max Nordau used instead of State "to deceive by its mildness".

Zionists chose not to acknowledge Birobidjan,..the voluntary Jewish homeland supported by American Jewry since 1928)..of the Jewish Autonomous Region (on the border of Russia and China).

To this day this is a flourishing Jewish homeland - a largely unsung region Lady Renouf makes public on both PRESS TV programmes,which can be viewed by clicking on the programme names
http://www.presstv.com/pop/wmp.aspx?id=55153
http://www.presstv.com/pop/wmp.aspx?id=55971
An extensive photographic history of the Birobidjan project is online at the Swarthmore College website.
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Home/News/biro/
The 1939 booklet about Birobidjan
http://www.archive.org/download/TheJewishAutonomousRegion/JAO2.pdf
by the Jewish author David Bergelson is online here.

http://www.archive.org/download/TheJewishAutonomousRegion/JAO2.pdf
(This is a 12MB PDF file.)

why is this important?
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/04/30/the-lobby-wants-war/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/may/13/aipac-iran-us-obama
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=94980&sectionid=351020202
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/may/13/aipac-iran-us-obama
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/occupied-jerusalem-is-being-suffocated/
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1085872.html
http://www.alternativenews.org/english/1915-the-us-to-raise-military-aid-to-israel.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6301606.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2008/sep/11/israelandthepalestinians
or join together these two pr pieces
http://www.alternet.org/environment/140060/the_case_of_the_missing_h-bomb%3A_the_pentagon_has_lost_the_mother_of_all_weapons/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/5335620/Obama-to-warn-Israels-PM-Benjamin-Netanyahu-No-more-blank-cheques.html
plus this red flag propaganda piece
[prepotory to a black swan event?]
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1242212398670&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
recall sadams smoking gun?[rummy with his drawings?][sad-damms wepons of mass destraction?
it will make a neat destraction while they bed down the co2 tax[also a debait we never had]

Passy

"The dispossession of the Palestinians, driving them off their land, and then continuing the logic of that process for 61 years, is genocide."

If that is your view then I presume you also accuse the Arabs in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Algeria and Jordan of genocide against the Jews.

If not, why not?

Mac,

There are many things worth critising Israel for - including the illegal settlements, the use of heavy militarism in civilian areas etc. etc. However, such criticism must be made within the context of a nation living in fear for its survival. It is inappropriate to compare the actions of Israel with those of a country such as Australia which faces no such fears. The question is not whether I'd rather be a Jew living in Autralia than a Palestinian living in Israel; it is whether I'd rather be a Palestinian living in Israel than a Jew living in any of its neighbouring countries.