Well Strewthy, I guess its my kind of sense of justice coming out.
If you read history, Medina had a lot of hardworking Jewish farmers,
old Muhammed slaughtered the lot, apart from those he took as slaves.

IMHO Islam is a bit like the Catholics, they always wants more,
until they have the whole earth conquered, facing Mecca five times
a day. One or two holy sites is not enough, they want more more more.

At least the Jews don't want to force the world to face Jerusalem
5 times a day, and arn't really into converting the world. There
are a mere umm about 8 million of them. Most secular Jews would in
fact get on fine with everyone else ( I admit the Jews have a few
fanatics too). Most secular jews probably would not have a problem
with a secular state. But of course they are fully aware that
given half a chance, their country would soon be converted to an
Islamic state and they would be kicked out, as they have everywhere
else, including from Medina. So why not leave them their little
patch of dirt? It will eventually most likely become a secular state, which is unlikely to happen to Saudi Arabia and other
Islamic republics.

Hypocrite!

Put it this way Strewthy, a secular State by stealth is better then
yet another Islamic republic!

And delusional.

Er Yabby,

You are aware that the reason Israel gets so much of its support from the USA is because of all the right wing evangelists who believe in the second coming? And that Israel bases its claim to exist on the bible?

What makes you think it will remain secular? I'm not so sure it really is, given the zionism underpinning much of its policies. Seems you're just picking sides, as in choosing the lesser of two evils:

Judeo/christianity = bad versus Islam = really bad.

Therefore, I can understand why Strewth has accused you of a certain hypocrisy here.

Just an observation, my friend.

Scout, I know what you are saying, but I have at times also
followed the debate going on within Israel over time, usually
as reported in the Economist.

What became apparent is then when Israel is not fighting with
people who want to turn it into an Islamic republic and drive
them into the sea, within Israel there are quite large tensions
between the orthodox religious and the secular. The majority
of Israelis seem to support the secular model, just a small
% are religious fanatics.

My conclusion is that if you moved all secular Israelis and
Arabs into one country and all religious fanatics somewhere
else, the secular types would most likely get on just fine!

Religious fundamentalism is the real problem, no matter which
religion it seems.