Electro Robot: what is there about Judaism as more an ethnic identity than a religion you don't understand?

It's about time there was a balance within the Jewish community. I wonder how much time, energy, and money the United States has spend thus far defending the indefensible anyway? It reminds me of how a small percentage of Cuban-Americans in Florida continue to hold an entire national foreign policy hostage long after the victim died of natural causes from old age.

No religious content in Judaism? Uh...what do aspiring rabbis study in seminary? What are people doing in synagogue? Do the Torah and other Jewish sacred texts have nothing to say about religion? None of the holidays have any religious content? No talk about atonement, sacrifice, gratitude?

Israel once was a good place. Then they began to over-react, and they began to bull-doze the houses of Palestinians, and they began to build a wall.

The wall is truly horrible. The wall is a DIRECT extension from Warsaw. There, the wall kept the Jews in. Now, the wall keeps the Palestinians in.

When you build a wall, you win for a time. But you grant the walled-in people a legitimacy, and lose your own.

The wall will lead to the victory of the Palestinians over the jews. Too bad, but walls are evil.

You guys go to Iran, give a try at negotiating with the Muslims and they'll cut your G-D heads off. But then we'd have a a few less liberals, always a good thing.

Hunthorse; bigotry drips from your posting.

I am no fan of the Iranian Government but Iran has not invaded any other country in modern times. Would that we could say that about Israel and the U.S.

Take it from a goy, it is not just progressive Jews who view J Street as a godsend. The same is true of any American who detests both anit-semitism and the program of the right-wing Jews.

The truest statement in the admirable article is: "...the only thing we can do to drive America away from Israel is to press our luck too far."

pancho Baby although I was all for it, that is the destruction of Nazi Germany and the solid defeat of facist Italy, where I have enjoyably lived they didn't invade us either, Righto pancho?

Talking about relativism( Iran never invaded another country but we have)whew!

I am a bigot as you commented, I dislike liberals, social progressive liberals and socialists and the Blessed Osama-Obama or whatever name he goes by.

Nothing you've mentioned is a real life chunk of evidence or fact. It's a wonderful thing, I guess to preach from the unassailable platitudes of one's convictions, but that's all they are. Liberals and Progressives were entirely happy to watch intra-Palestinian violence in 2006 in the wake of these Hamas 'elections' claim the lives of more than 900 people in Gaza. Well you know how THOSE people are, cluck cluck nothing to do about that.

Is there violence? Yes there is, fancy that. Everyone was promised that Gaza pullout would suddenly and magically end attacks on Israelis. Do you know how long that lasted, fewer than 30 hours. So now Israel essentially supports the infrastructure of Gaza, for free, under fire while Egypt sits on its hands and shoots anyone who comes across into Sinai. And despite the infusion of billions upon billions of Euros (approx 8 billion of which seems to have vanished with Arafat into the next life and the EU is still angry about that) into PLO coffers to bolster them and despite they were offered with zero preconditions 98% of Yesha in 2000 and turned it down because it would require them to write on a piece of paper "We recognize Israel" they seem to have made a success of nothing but failure itself. They were even offered negotiations on cash reparations. The PA's response was "1 Trillion dollars or nothing" (Dr. Evil pinky optional).

So yes, the Hamas is largely to blame for most of the mess in Gaza, since 1994. Even the Hamas claims that responsibility, they simply call it the resistance (jihad as a political term was coined by the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood after reading "Mein Kampf") and they justify it by asserting it will eventually, in'sh'allah lead to a new Shoah.

Palestinians have been offered and have rejected independent states on as much, or more than the land they started with in the following years:

1948

1949

1967

1970

1983

1992

1994

2000

2002

Why? It's hard to tell apart from the obvious guess that their leaders don't want one. Killing people is a LOT easier than running a country. A lot more romantic too. Who wants to pick up the trash, pave the streets, issue credit, run the water company, issue stamps, collect taxes and such when you can wrap a flag around your head, hoist an RPG and shoot at civilian buses and such?

I think they're a rather nice crop of people. Once you ignore the 300,000 executed in the wake of the Shah, the million children killed in their human wave attacks against Iraq in the 1980's, their persistent and some would say culturally quaint habit of executing women in children from cranes in public w/o trial for the crimes of being gay, raped, or often, just mouthy. And oh their constant calls for genocide coupled with the implementation of several nuclear reactors for 'peaceful purposes' that have zero electrical turbine equipment installed with them to produce electricity. And oh yes, their President, trained as a blacksmith who sees glowing hazes of light around himself, talks about himself in the third person and claims a direct conduit to Allah to hasten the arrival of the 12th Madi.

Yes yes nothing to concern our liberal brows about that one.

Imagine you woke up tomorrow to find Hamas and Israel magically changed places. Israel's Jewish population was crammed into Gaza and Hamas had Israel's weapons, its tanks, its rifles, its missiles, its airplanes. Now, predict the events of the next two weeks, and guess how many living Jews are left at the end of a month.

The obvious answer to that hypothetical scenario is that the positions of Hamas and Israel did not develop in a vacuum. They developed over the past fifty years. I generally consider myself a supporter of Israel and dread Hamas and its allies, but the argument you present is disingenuous and wrong.