The major problem in Israel is that, despite their shellacking at the polls, the morally, ideologically and intellectually bankrupt post Zionist left is still running our nation. There can be no real improvements till they are removed from power. In order to be strong, Israel must make a virtually complete u turn. We must outlaw all that weakens us such as retreat, concessions, the fraudulent "peace process", freeing terrorists etc. Instead we must massively build and defend every square inch of our tiny land. We must execute terrorists expeditiously. And of course, no more gestures, concessions and retreats. We must also promptly destroy Iran's nukes. Virtually all of Israel wants to do all these things. The key question: Are we going to let the disastrous post Zionist left stop us?

This old Jew is ashamed that such racist venom is being uttered and propagated by a fellow Jew. Yes, Mohammed imposed his authority by means of his military strength, just as you say, but to insult about 1.5 billion Muslims because of that is like blaming all the Jews alive today for the horrible crimes committed by our Bronze Age ancestors as described in the Torah, like the genocide of the Canaanites (Deuteronomy, 20:16-17) whose main crime was just living in the land the Israelites later conquered. After all, Islam is an offshoot of Judaism, and our Jewish ancestors were the first in recorded history to institutionalize religious intolerance with the first of the 10 commandments. Of course, the Torah cannot justify antisemitism. Anti-Islamism is just as despicable. And if you want to focus on the Jews and Muslims of modern times, it is a Jewish state, alas, that is forcibly occupying other peoples' lands and subjugating their population. If God exists, Ettinger, may She have mercy on your soul.

Did you bother looking up Sharanksy's 3D benchmark of the new antisemitism? While not all anti-zionists are traditional anti-semities, many of them are indeed anti-semites. Also, you are not criticizing a specific Israeli policy, which many fair people inside and outside Israel do. Instead, you are attacking the identity of the state and discriminating against the majority of the Jews' wish for self-determination. This is the new antisemitism. The fact that half the Jews don't want to live in Israel is meaningless to your argument. During the Second Temple period, while the Swiss were still swinging from the trees, half the Jews lived outside the Kingdom.

Sarah, your evasive logorrhoea (probably highly paid) doesn’t make disappear the fact that the Zionist ideology is based on founding myths distorting the historic truth, and that it makes it’s advocates blind and insensible to it’s destructive consequences for other people and the rest of the world, and, as you very well know, that it is shared by far less than all Jews world-wide. Calling opponents either self-hating Jews, antisemites or nazi doesn’t make it truer and more acceptable, on the contrary!

Except you forget to mention that Jihad in its violent form has existing for 1000 years before the modern birth of Israel. Infact, a whole 28 years before the birth of Israel, Arabs were massacring Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tzfat. Why? Certainly not because of Israel, but rather because of racist ideology that saw Muslims as supremacists and Jews and underlings. Much like the Nazis did during WWII, to the rest of Europe. Your claim that dismantling Zionism - a human right of Jewish self-determination - will stop Jihad is wishful, blind thinking which the world's liberals push in order to appease a much larger ignorant, racist agenda going on here that even liberal Muslims admit to. It's not surprising you spout such defeatist propaganda from a city where more "palestinians" live in Suisse and which houses some of the most useless, subjective global organizations of the UN.

Is it the part that Jews really want self-determination in their ancient homeland, and their religious center? Is it the part that Zionism not once claimed to replace a population but to populate a region that was for 3000 years in the hearts of Jews (like Mecca is for Muslims, and Vatican for Catholics)? Or is it that Jews paid for land (which we have the deeds for) while Arabs claim seller's remorse and want it all back (without giving the money back, of course). Or perhaps you disagree with the claim that Palestine was hardly populated, despite the testimony of many writers, archeologists, British and Turkish Statesmen in the 17th-19th centuries, and that Jews just came in and threw people from their homes. With all of the writers, journalists, diplomats, and soldiers around, you'd think atleast one eye-witness would have written about it. Pan-Arabism has brought more violence, more destruction, and more anti-reform and rise of despotic regimes than any other ideology in recent history, except for Nazism. Zionism is simple - Jews deserve a State where we will tend to our own affairs without permission nor acceptance from hate-mongers like yourself. Considering 19th century Europe (which includes your ilk) is it any wonder Zionism took off quickly.

It's interested and heartening to hear of reform in the Islamic world, especially of the Muslim Scholars conference in Turkey. My question to both of you is: what will the future of Islam look like? In your mind, will Islam lose some foundations or character through this reform and create a watered down version and a radical off-shoots, or a more modern open version? When I hear Imams preach violence against Jews, women, gays, young people, etc. and demand submission to strict rule (as in Gaza, Iran, and Saudi Arabia), I wonder if such a reform is possible. Could you reformists become a target for these hardliners who claim you are more wicked than the Western infidels, and must be wiped out? I wouldn't be surprised if it were a "yes" seeing how a minor squabble over succession has caused a violent rift in Islam for hundreds of years, leading to sectarian killing in places like Iraq.

Evasive? You fool. Here's a link which I hope will educate you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism You are the one that suggests that Zionism is rejected by Jews world-wide. Oh, are you ever in for a really nasty surprise! Tell me: Was American nationalism destructive for the native American tribes that populated the Americas? Was Soviet nationalism destructive for the various indigenous populations in Siberia and the Caucuses (to name but two)? Please. Grow up. You do not come from a particularly enlightened country (when did women in Switzerland get the right to vote? What is it, 20 years, less? And not in all the cantons, either, now, have they?) And you have not addressed the issues of Swiss collaboration with the Nazis. How about the bank accounts? How about the insurance scams? Got anything to report about that, or are you just interesting in preaching what you consider to be "lofty" philosophies (but which most of us recognize to be little more than immoral evasions)? Theft of Jewish Swiss bank accounts is true. Calumny on the part of Swiss insurance companies is equally true. Swiss collaboration with Nazi Germany is also true. Poor, poor, pitiful you. You still want to see yourself as a "neutral." You're not. You're worse than the Nazis. A good place to prove me wrong (although you cannot) is to answer my questions to you about the Jewish bank accounts and the insurance frauds. We'll move on from there, okay? I eagerly await your response. Make sure it contains facts. I'm getting a little tired of your unsupported blather.

what does zionism, which is the jewish national spirit of self determination have to do with millions of muslims killing millions of other muslims in darfur, somalia, south africa, iraq, iran, lebanon, yemen, afghanistan, pakistan???? don't give israel such power. israel HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS VIOLENCE AND YOU KNOW IT. hameed aboughaze, iranian

bernard lewis history of jews chapter 8 page 211. got it now???? just becaise you would like to change the text to satisfy your hateful agenda, doesn't erase the truth of what lewis wrote. word for word, by the way. hameed aboughaze, iranian

Arafat himself cited Muhammed's great trickery of Jews by first making a pact with them, then gaining strength enough to break the pact and kill them all. Arafat cited this as an Islamic right, in the after-math of signing the Oslo Accords, claiming his actions were a tiered plan of Israel's destruction. Today, Muslim terrorists hold up the Koran on specific suras, and cite other suras giving them justification to kill people, rape women, steal, and basically subjugate. Iranian Mullahs cite Koranic verses giving dungeon masters the right to marry a woman prisoner, before raping her the night before her execution. Though such brutal things can be seen in ancient Jewish texts if searched hard enough, the Jews of today neither condone such things nor use them as justification for heinous acts. Muslims just live in the 7th century while the rest of the world moved on. If you want to be G-d-like, you must first be open to the truth. All facts point to Arabs not even owning the land you claim Israel is occupying - Turkish and British records attest to that....while British and Turkish records also recorded thousands of land purchases by Jews who emigrated. Not to mention the thousands and thousands of Arabs who followed the money trail into the British Mandate, cited by the British who couldn't stop them from entering. By every legal aspect, Israel is 100% legal and allowed to exist on all its land, including that it occupies as a buffer to 89 years of Arab racist terror. These are the same terrorists who try to claim that Jews never used the Temple Mount, when just a few decades ago ALL Muslims believed the Temple Mount was holy to Jews and never questioned it. You do no one justice by parroting dis-information.

PLEASE!!!! do not confuse the torah with the quran. you will be making a grave injustice to the jewish belief in peace, in harmony and in the love of mankind. the torah as we know it has not different interpretations at all. we all believe in its word. the rabbis interpret it not having to do with war and killing, like the kuran. they interpret it for the meaning of life in the jewish sphere. the kuran is FULL OF VIOLENCE. THERE IS NO ROOM FOR MISINTERPRETATION AT ALL. all surah, all edicts coming from muhammad are full of violence against the infidel should he not succumb, should he not adopt islam, should he not be a muslim, if he is an indfidel, not to befriend infidels, not to trust infidels, to kill the jew wherever you find him. how can one interpret these above things to mean what they are suppose to mean. it is black and white. do you say that you are more knowleagiable than bernard lewis and other eminent interpreters of the kuran and other scholrs much more advamced and learnede than you??? what imbecilic arrogance. no matter how one interprets the kuran, look around you. most arabs believe word for word about muhammad's teachings and it is all violence against the non believers, vile things written about jews and infidels, etc.. the imams, the clerics and all of these arab scholars practice jihad each day. have you been to mosques? i have. the message is violence, war, jihad, etc.. the torah is a book of love, of acceptance. jews do not force others to convert and do not kill them if they chose to leave judaism. jews do not kill their daughters if they shame them. jews do not cut limbs and do not fight against those of the non jewish religion. jews do not want to conquer the world and establish a jewish caliphate. wherever jews live around the world, believing in their torah and its messages of tollerance and peacefullness, they have advanced all the societies in which they live in and contributed many many gifts to other countries in which they reside. none of this caqn be said about muslims living outside of muslim lands. on the contrary, wherever they are, there is terror, bombings, riots, violence, demonstrations, etc.. against that country and also against jews living in that country. one has to look at france and britain to realize this. not every muslim is a terrorist, but every terrorist is jews integrate into the socisties in which they live. muslims do not. they view them as hostile to islam. jews contribute, advance and integrate. muslims do not. they demand preferential treatment and sharia law. they do not pledge alligience to the countries in which they live. they want to turn them into islamic states. jews do not do this. the torah can never ever be compared to the islamic kuran, a vile, violent and primitive book.

muhammad unfortunatelly, while muslims kill the infidels, they also kill each other in much larger numbers. muhammad was a warrior, pure and simple. he liked wars and liked subjugating and killing others, not in the name of religion, but in the name of power. your kuran is muhammad's lesson to all muslims in the world. what lessons should muslims draw from the kuran if they can't even be allowed to interpret it by law??? if you can't legally interpret the kuran, how do you really expect the muslims to enter the 21st century when they are in fact stuck in the 7th? most people regardless of their religions advanced in all aspects of life. islam didn't let its people advance. hence, the poverty, illiteracy, misery, etc... that the muslims find convenient to blame the west for their misery. once muslims look at themselves and not at the imagined wrongs they claim the west has done to them, onlt then, can muslims start realizing that it is their fault and onlt their fault and they should accept responsibility for the midserable situation they find themselves in today. most muslims refuse to do this. it is more convenient to blame and kill those that they hate and those that they imagine wronged them. reform comes from the ability and thinking of the individual, not from his religion. if you read the torah, you will realize that it is because of it that jews today are so successful, so integrated, so tollerant and so advanced. they torah lays a way of life, of thinking, of values that can never be found in the kuran. arabs need to reform. but reformation will never come if a lot of arabs do not stand up and condemn loudly what their brothers are doing. will not come if arab despotic regimes repress thought, modernity, pump vitriol and religion into the masses, rule by repression and by religion so that they can keep the dissent down and continue rulling over ignorant, religious and fanatic subjects. this way, it is easier for them to continue their regimes where no one dares question them.

Regarding your question about the future of Islam, it will be the same as the future of Christianty and Judaism, which is: Annihilation. Science is advancing very fast and modernism is an unstoppable process, and common sense started to prevail. Consequesntly, all religions are in the (ICU) already and it wont take long before they all disappear. Remember that Nietzsche declared G*d dead more than 120 years ago. With all due respect, i feel that you see what you want to see and you turn a blinded eye on things that you prefer not to see! Its not only some muslim imams who breach killing and hatered, have a good look at most of the talkbacks on Ynet for instance, try to be neutral and you will find out that the situation in your state is not that better. Its also worth mentioning that the threat of terrorism is a way overstated! Do you know that the chance that you got killed by a car accident is a way higher than getting killed by a terrorist attack? You might argue that this is because of the security measures Israel and western countries apply, but dont you also agree that we take a lot of measures to reduce car accidents(imposing fines on reckless drivers, seat belts and other safty measurments), but still, no one is scared of driving a car while everyone is talking about Islam and the threat of terror. I have no choice but to mention this again: Radicale muslims are a very small minority. There are more than 1.3 billion muslims all over the world, probably less than 1% of them are terrorists (1% is 13 million!!) if you add up all terrosit fighters in all over the world you would get much less the 13 million i am telling you about. Do you know how can you be sure that terrorism is something abnormal and very unusual? Simply because you hear about it in the news, i noticed that the vast majority of Israelis believe that what they see in the news is the common everyday stuff. However, have you asked yourself why dont you hear about car accident in the news??!! Well the answer is because its very frequent, very normal, something happen all the time, so no need to add it to the news. The fact that there is a concentration in the media about terrorism will show you that its very unusual and infrequent. Finally, just try to see things as they are, and not to be taken too much by the media. I think many people in the world misunderstand Israelis and the Jews for the very same reason.

As Europeans do, they choose to ignore the reality that Muslims loathe them as much as they do Americans & Israelis. The man from Geneva, and other spooked Europeans, are soon going to have to confront, head-on, their ever- growing, parasite Muslim populations, and they dread that day.

What will happen, simply put, is that the more peaceful parts f the Quran will be emphasised over the more violents parts; the same that happened with the Torah and the Bible. The impetus for that will be the relaisation that the Arab world is lagging too far behind in the sciences and the humanities for Muslims to concentrate on continued violence, and the stifling of debate on the meaning of Islam. The first steps have been taken in the form of the Arab Knowledge Report 2009. The next steps are to support imams who preach a more open and tolerant version of Islam and silence the more hateful and violent preachers (who, by the way, don't go out and blow themselves even though htye encourage others to do so) Some form of agreement on the whole Palestinian-Israeli issue will help generate the courage and the will of the Arab world to begin its reform. The Arabs are stuck in war mode and are unwilling to let go until they see some sort of result of their efforts. Whether you agree or not, that's how I see it.

Mohammad, thank you for your very nuanced comment and intelligent analysis! I couldn't agree with you more; confronting violence merley with even more violence, justified on the 'inherently violent essence' of Islam, might serve as a temporal deterrence for extremists, but can impossibly diminish the roots of, and the motivation for, terrorism. Just as you are saying, there is no basis for arguing that Islam is fundamentally different from other religion in a way that it is intrinsically bound to violence; every religion, as history has proven innumerable times, can provide reason for horrific crimes as well as it serves as a source for ethics, moral and humanity. To dismiss Islam, and all of its 1.3 billions adherents, right away is not only a sign for ignorance and naivety - how can 1.3 billions, spread through the entire planet, be assumed to share just the same attitudes? -, but, maybe more importantly, it is also extremely counter-productive, as it is the liberal, well-educated Muslims like you and so many others which are the key for reforming and bringing forward the Muslim world. They are the natural allies of the liberal West; by dissmissing them the West is only creating the very civilizational gap it is so afraid of.

The doctrines of Freud and Marx, both Jewish thinkers, were amalgamated by another group of Jewish thinkers (Adorno, Marcuse and their Frankfurt school of sociology) and then inspired the 68 cultural revolution, which became the main foundation of today's Euro-left thinking. Even if I don't really adhere to these teachings, I find them much more palatable than the unbearable arrogance of the Zionist ideology

You claimed one thing, which has been proven to be obviously false. When is the Muslim world going to address the fact that your religion is xenophobic and genocidial? This is what is promoted and admired.

correction, said. THE BIBLE HAS NEVER BEEN REVISED AT ALL, NOT EVEN ONCE. the christian bible has been revised to exclude jews as the killers of christ which contributed to much of the antiselitism and jewish persecution in europe. THE KURAN NEEDS A TOTAL REVISION FROM SENTENCE ONE TO SENTENCE MILLION. HAMEED ABOUGHAZE, IRANIAN

correction again. THE PALESTINIAN ISRAELI ISSUE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE LACK OF REFIRMATION IN THE ARAB WORLD, HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ABYSMAL ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL AND EDUCATIONAL ASPECTS OF ARAB SOCIETY. NOTHING TO DO WITH THESE ABOVE AT ALL. however, arabs and their leaders, particularly, use this conflict to avoid modernization. they use the hate for israel to avoid democracy, to avoid aknowledging a jewish entity in what they consider muslim lands. they use this conflict to never start moderation and to never move forward culturally, educationally and use this conflict always, to stay in power. what is true is that most if not all arab regimes do not give a shit about the palestinians. they just can;t stand looking at israel being so succesful right under their nose and surviving against the arab wishes. this conflict, even if it was no longer a conflict would leave the arabs empty and without a reason to go on hating. you know this and i know this and millions ofd people have already realized this all too well. arab regimes and people have always used the jewish excuse as stopping them from developing, which is a bull shit tactic. do you really think that if there was no israel, the arabs would have been better off today???? i doubt it highly because their situation HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ISRAEL AT ALL. look at yemen, at sudan, at all other arab countries that don't even border israel and the violence that goes on there. how does that have to do with the palestinian issue???? how does the situation in all muslim countries have to do with israel, please explain???? hameed aboughaze, iranian

You are asking me why i have not addressed your question???!!! Well, to be quite polite, because your question is wrong, and it shows that have not read *or maybe understood) all of my previous comments. Your question was " If poverty and illiteracy are the perfect conditions for terorism to spread, why are MOST of your terrorists have college degrees and come from upper-middle class to wealthy families?" Guess what, MOST terrorists are poor and illiterate, and there are quite few who are well educated and wealthy (mostly high ranks). By the way, by believing that you are well educated and rich you are repeating Al Qaeda propagnda as they try to show the world that they are not a group of hopeless morons if you understand what i mean. Maybe its easy for you to understand if you have a quick look at Hamas followers for instance and see how educated and wealthy they are.lol, or why dont you look at the Taliban fighters in Afghanstan and Pakistan? How about the fighters in Yemen and Iraq? Do you understand now why i have not addressed your question?

before one week we listened to a lecture about the nature disastors of the global heat and the foods and so .. my friend say why we must be afraid about the coming 100 year . sure we will be not on the earth .. we must deal with the disastor of to day the wars .... iam not compleatly with my friend but sure these conflicts becouse of the disasters falling on head of the people in iraq in afghanistanin pakistan and also in israil ..it is the day not the after 2o years or 100 years .. so lift your feet from my chest before to know how i can stand or what i will say

Lewis never wrote a book called 'History of Jews'

If you neither adhere to Marx nor Freud (both quite different, incidentally) nor to their successors, and you despise this "abomidable Zionist" philosphy, just where do you, personally, stand? Perhaps you adhere to Piaget or Jung, both formidable Swiss thinkers who, like the Swiss themselves, maintained their broad apolitical stances in their professional guises. The point is, in all your high IQ critiques on Talkback, you have not yet contributed anything about where you yourself stand and why you take the position you do (if, indeed, you take one). Personally, I'd be interested as you do sound like a marvellously educated person probably fluent in a multiplicity of languages. And incidentally, while you roundly critique the state of Israel, could you share your concerns (undoubtedly you have some) about your own country, Switzerland, with respect to criticisms which other Talkbackers have published. It just that I'm sure you don't wish to be considered "morally superior" in any way but there is some indication that you do come across that way on Ynet and therefore the power and focus of your writing might therefore be confused with arrogance.

I don’t think that talkbacks are there to develop solutions, but rather to provoke discussions. Who I am is of no importance. I’m observing the situation of oppressed and exploited populations in three different world regions I’m familiar with, trying to help them (within the frame of my very humble possibilities) to resist against their oppressor and exploiter. One of these underdog populations are the local inhabitants who lived in your region before the massive arrival of Jewish immigrants, but I’m also really worried about the future fate of the latter and their descendants, which to me seems very bleak inspite of the present bully position of Zionist Israel.

Actually, the Bible HAs been revised numerous times over the centuries. There are currently 200 different version of the Bible. The Protestant and the Catholic Bibles are widely different, containing both different wordings and different numbers of chapters. Furthermore, the King James Bible was born out of a council of Christians who wanted to use the Bible to support royal rule in England. Interestingly enough, by the time of Omar al-Khattab, there were 11 versions of the Quran which he ordered to be destroyed and 1 to be preserved, a little known fact among Muslims, who think that it has never changed since the times of the Prophet. Furthermore, the vast majority of of Arabs and Muslims don't need to wake up hating Israel every day to get on with their lives, their main concerns are those of any other person anywhere else: how to feed their families and their childrens' education. Also, your point in 51 strengthens mine: If the Palestinian issue is resolved (I never mentioned wiping Israel out) then the Arab governments can no longer use the issue to distract the attention of their subjects, who can begin demanding the kinds of reforms that will lead to a better future for them. Lastly, TYPING IN CAPITALS DOESN'T MAKE YOUR POINTS TRUER!!! They just make you sound a bit hysterical.