1) The Ashkenazi Zionist movement was created long before the Holocaust, so to invoke the Holocaust as the cause Of Zionism is to ignore history.

2) The Zionists represented by such as Avraham Stern (Irgun Stern gang) were Nazi collaborators who saw the expulsion of Jews as an impetus towards a Zionistic future:



3) Again I continue to be amazed at Woland's invoking of the Anti-Arab Christian sentiment of those who he thinks Helen Thomas supports, when Israel has killed thousands of those very same Arab Christians. Do you really not know there are Arab Christians in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine?

4) To say that Helen Thomas is asking for ethnic cleansing is again to turn the facts around. She is asking the ethnic cleansers to leave.

What utter rot.

The snap creation of a Jewish State was not the result of long term campaigning by anyone. Part of the Seder is "next year in Jerusalem". Given that they got chucked out in the 1st Century, it was a slow burning lobby. Then, all of a sudden, in 1947, the constant peaceful lobbying paid off, just like that!

Incredible. I love it.

Oh, and there are some, very frum, sects who are anti-Zionist, based on their interpretation of the Torah.

It takes all sorts.

I do hate those settlements, and much else besides.

The settlements, unfortunately, are logically consistent outcomes of the premises of Israeli Zionism. How could there not be settlements?

The Holocaust was certainly an impetus for the recognition of the State of Israel, but the intellectual and political underpinnings of Zionism came long before. And the essence is this--that as a persecuted minority, Jews deserved a homeland. As I'm sure you're aware, that homeland was not always focused on the Middle East--some thought Uganda would be the Paradise. But the founders of the State of Israel chose a place that was already occupied with real people with real homes who were uprooted and chased from their homes with the worst kind of terror tactics. The Israeli historian Lenni Brenner is quite articulate about this. Ben-Gurion and Begin, at least at first, did not try to hide their intention to cleanse the area of Arabs.


The British media is very very different from the US media in this respect. There were and are no mainstream media reporters or personalities who highlight the plight of the Palestinian people. Indeed, that's what the firing of the old lady was about, to send a message, you can't step out of the received line.

And of course, as I assume you know, given your comment about the frum sects, the meaning of "next year in Jerusalem," as my religious school rabbi told us, was the hope that if enough Jews acted in a holy enough manner, then when the Messiah comes Jews will be praying in the restored Temple in Jerusalem.

If I'm not mistaken Israel is the only country in the world who was and then was not and then is again. Then of course there is that famous bible scripture that predicted just that!

Good magic to all,


Eric