The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a controversial
one. Many regard criticizing Israel's policies, laws,
and treatment of Palestinians as anti-Semitic. Yet
there are many Jews living in Israel and around the world
who strongly disagree with the Israeli government's
policies and treatment of the Palestinian people. Which
is something we need to remember.

Freedom of speech is for everyone - as long as it doesn't
become abusive.

Yes Foxy they even have demos on the street. It is called democracy.

Yuyutsu, you are right of course many Jews stayed when the Islamic
Arabs invaded Mesopotamia but also many left for Nth Africa and Europe.
Probably many of the Palestinians might well be of Jewish decent
because the technique is covered by the Koran if they turn their back
on Allah strike them on the neck, or words to that effect.
Mohammad introduced that "offer" into the Koran and it is still effective.
Especially in Africa on a daily basis.
So the Arabs are the occupiers not the Jews, they were there some
thousands of years before the Arabs invaded so as to convert the people to Islam.
While they were at it they diverted to Persia and made the same "offer"
to the Persians and then went onto India and made the same "offer" there.
We can still see the same war going on in Iran and India especially.
Europe is next in line to receive an "Offer".

No one seems to accept that there is no solution to their problem.
The only offer available is;
The Jews MUST be removed or killed from "The River to the Sea" !

Hi Bazz,

"Elie Wiesel's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech made on
the 10th December 1986 at the Oslo City Hall in Norway,
Today - 3 decades later, his words ring with
discomforting timeliness as we are jolted out of our
generational hubris, out of illusion of progress, and
forced to confront the contemporary realities of racism,
torture, and other injustice against the human experience".

"There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for
our attention. Victims of hunger, of racism and political
persecution, writers, poets, prisoners in so many lands
governed by the Left and the Right. Human Rights are being
violated in every continent. More people are oppressed than
free".

" But alongside the reminder of how tragically we have
failed Wiesel's vision is also the promise of possibility
reminding us what soaring heights of the human spirit
we are capable of reaching if we choose to feed not our
lowest impulses but our most exalted . Above all Wiesel
issues an assurance that these choices are not grandiose
and reserved for those in power but daily and deeply personal
found in the quality of intention with which we each live our lives".

"With the hard-earned wisdom of his own experience as a
Holocaust survivor, memorably recounted in his iconic memoir
"Night" Wiesel extols our duty to speak up against injustice
even when the world retreats into the hide-out of silence".

http://dailygood.org/pdf/dg.php?sid=1329

Hi Bazz,

Regarding the reasons for the prejudice and discrimination
against Jews - its based
on stereotypes and myths that target Jews as a people, their
religious practices and beliefs.

Historically what began as a conflict over religious beliefs
evolved into a systematic policy of political, economic, and
social isolation, exclusion, degradation, and attempted
annihilation.

It did not begin in the Nazi era, nor did it end with the end of
WWII. Its continuance over the millennia speaks to the power
of scape-goating a group that is different and defined as the
"other".

If people don't want to be seen as different then they shouldn't make so many points of being different !

Dear Foxy,

I will look up Wadsworth's poem.