Apparently, it is not a done deal if Ché Pasa is calling into question why Israel is still a Jewish state. The goal of Zionism was indeed to establish Israel as a Jewish state. Right now, the main thing that is left over from that is Israel's explicit invitation to all Jews of the world to come and live in Israel. There is also a religious zionist movement, to which you are probably referring to as radical zionism. However, they were not mentioned in Ché Pasa's post -- it was just 'abolish zionism', period.

As far as the other stuff. Of course, if you on your own declare Israel as the murderer state and an apartheid, it is pretty clear what you think Israel deserves. However, you can only make these judgments if you concentrate on some limited set of facts and ignore everything else. In that way, you can argue for almost any kind of conclusion you want -- just choose what facts you want to consider and exclude everything else.

And as far as taxpayer money supporting Israel... Why does US support Egypt in that case? They receive almost as much as Israel. Saudi Arabia also recently got some nice military package deal. Why do they deserve US support?

Yeah, right. As if the destiny of the mighty state of Israel is up to some poster on salon.com. It is to laugh.

Indeed. Thankfully, it is not up to you either. But if it was, what would that be? If you proclaim Israel a murderous state, what is it you want to happen?

That's exactly my point about the kind of discussions going on here.

As far as all your UN resolutions you cite for support -- please, save it. UN is so blatantly biased that they're useless as far as supporting your argument, unless you preaching to someone who agrees with you. If it was up to the Arab countries that dominate those resolutions, Israel would be pushed into the sea. Their main agenda is the desire to punish Israel as much as they can -- or as much as US and European countries would allow.

Did I proclaim Israel a 'murderous state'? Of course not. You're attempting to portray me as someone desiring the destruction of Israel, when in fact I have argued that its heinous abuses need to be reasonably curtailed in the interest of simple justice.

Here's what you said earlier:

Israel murders peace activists with bulldozers and reporters with snipers

I believe that's pretty close to calling Israel 'murderous state'. And I'd be interested to know what -- an who -- should be "curtailing" Israel's "heinous abuses"? From what I understand, Israel already has a mechanism for investigating its own abuses -- that's actually why you know about them.

I'm not impressed with your ability to say anything worthwhile. All you do is call me names and imagine yourself as some kind of authority.

Get back to us when you're ready to stop lying, little man

who's us, you jerk?

I think the article is fine, but clearly not appropriate for Salon. The writer regularly writes for Haaretz, and has in mind the audience that primarily consists of those who care a lot about Israel and for whom "is he good for Israel" does not evoke consternation or high blood pressure as it does for most salon readers. So the question is, why does Salon want to throw this article in here, where it mostly draws laments of "who cares"?

On the first page, I read (in reference to "gut feelings" and Eureca moments):

The evidence is substantial that these feelings do not correlate with the accuracy or quality of the thought.

I re-read the article on certainty that this article links and nowhere did I see any evidence that these "gut feelings" are useless. Instead, it was suggested that they are a biological mechanism outside of rational thinking that is somehow linked to the "subconscious." So which is it?

The second claim, about difficulty of catching someone lying, actually links with a study that shows that highly trained people (in law enforcement and psychologists studying lying) can in fact accurately predict if someone is lying. It is the untrained, average people who have difficulty distinguishing if someone is lying or not. But it is not impossible.

Yeah, and to deflect charge of anti-semitism people like gandhi want to preempt it. Not going to work. That dithering of whether or not Rupert Murdoch is Jewish or not is very telling. It also goes hand-in-hand with the previous line of how many neo-cons were Jewish. And calling Israel a murderous apartheid state is also anti-semitic. It is the new, improved, modern anti-semitism where it is ok to be viciously anti-Israeli while rejecting the charge of being personally anti-semitic. I especially like that line of defense, "I have many Jewish friends." Yeah, that's what a typical anti-semite would say -- they always like the "good Jews" who they know, it's the Jews in general who are evil. It used to be that Jews had all the money and controlled the world. Now it's the powerful Jewish lobby that controls all the politicians in the US. This is just as irrational as before, but somehow it passes as a legitimate statement.

There was an article in Jerusalem Post that states my argument much more cogently: "Kosher Anti-Semitism in Germany":

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1218710366461&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Personally, I don't really care about Martin or Hannnity or Fox News, because they're so far from what I would want to watch or consider useful to argue with. It is these new "kosher" anti-semites, who I see on salon so frequently that get my blood boiling.