That was perfect... I may print that out for if I ever have to respond to an antisemitic rant. (I don't usually respond to other posters, just state my piece and leave, but I couldn't resist.)

I would only correct that you state "Jews are much less missionary than other religions popular in the USA." I'd posit that they are completely non-missionary, the opposite in fact. Jews don't try to convert people on policy, and if someone wants to become a Jew, there are some pretty high hoops to jump through.

Because this is entirely about religion. 60 years ago things were a little more complicated. But today it’s pretty hard to ignore all the crazy going on.

I lived in Texas for many years. And what I see is Evangelical America being convinced that the existence of Israel is the path to Armageddon and Salvation. I don’t care what Bush says on TV – this is what his supporters believe. In the eyes of these people all the Jews and Muslims are just the means to an end who will ALL burn in a fiery lake. Seriously. That’s what all those crazy Mega Churches and lots of more mainstream evangelical churches are up to. You can’t rationalize involvement with people who are that crazy. It’s impossible for me to understand how getting into bed with that and creating a religious state is the cool way to go.

And I haven’t even stated talking about Palestine and all the injustice going on there.

I’ve known lots of open minded Jews who have said what ‘J Street’ is saying and none of it has convinced me of anything but that I like Jews right here and that (maybe) ‘home’ is where the heart is.

My parents unwillingly fled the horrible partition of India in 1947 into the newly created state of Pakistan. To this day, they regret that terrible bloody chapter in human history when the fires of religious and ethnic hatred consumed millions of people. Gandhi's vision of a unified and diverse land was thwarted by separatism and religious chauvinism on both sides. My parents think what a different world it would have been if India had remained as one country, how much social and economic progress it could have made since 1947 if all those resources had not been diverted to war and defense. How many lives would have been spared, how much anguish?

There was a tragic failure of imagination, a constriction of the human heart and spirit that led to the partition. In the same way, the creation of Israel was based on ethnic/religious separatism, fear of the other, and a failure to summon the better angels of our nature. Both sides failed, the Jews and the Muslims/Christians, to try to live together as equals and as neighbors.

The only true solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies in a spiritual awakening on both sides of the divide. All the political and military solutions you can think of will ultimately fall apart without this transformation of the heart which understands and puts into practice the essential unity of mankind.

I actually just wrote a lengthy post on open.salon.com about how I could work both for Gore 2000 and then for AIPAC, and why Democrats in congress (and those running for president) are right to agree with AIPAC's positions.

Check it out: http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=744 and maybe ask Ms. Walsh to post my entry on salon.com to 'balance' Mr. Gary Kamiya?

I hope they succeed. I am not a Jew and I am neither a friend nor an enemy of Israel. I can fully understand and appreciate peoples desire to have a place to live where they are not discriminated against, marginalized, and/or persecuted as the Jews were in Europe (which stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals). It seems to me this is THE fundamental human right (...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...).

That said, let me make a few observations.

1. The present State of Israel was created by foreign invaders by force of arms. After clearing the land of its indigenous population, a veritable flood of foreigners came to take over the land stolen from the original occupants. This was not a propitious start and explains Palestinian/Arab anger.

2. The Jews do not have a "right" to a kingdom in the Levant. The Jewish tribe lost their kingdom to the Romans 2,000 years ago and then they left. Other tribes took their place - notably the Philistines (whom you've heard of from the Bible, I'm sure). A personal revelation moment came when an Iranian friend of mine, speaking to me in English, in Iran, used the Farsi word for Palestinian instead of the English word - it's Philistine.

3. Israel currently treats the Palestinians in much the same way that the Jews were treated in Europe with all the discrimination, marginalization, and persecution that implies. I guess that merely demonstrates that all members of humanity can exhibit the inability to learn the lessons of their own history.

Nonetheless, I'm hopeful that things can work out if everybody recognizes a few concepts.

1. Israel cannot be the theocratic state it is now. If you doubt that statement, the recent NYT article about the Israeli law banning either the production or the display (depending on who is reading the law) of leavened bread during Passover should remove all doubt. Such an edict (however you read it) is the product of a theocracy, not a secular state. If the state of Israel insists on being a theocracy, it will go the way of the Christian kingdoms carved out of the Levant during the Crusades a 1,000 years ago - it will survive a hundred years or so before being overwhelmed by the indigenous population.

2. Any resolution will have to respect the sensibilities of the indigenous Palestinians. It will also have to respect the existence of Israel (which everybody focuses on) but the original occupants seem to get short shrift in this whole discussion.

The Jews may not want this, I don't know. But I do know that continuing to follow the path they have for the last 60 years will not work forever.