To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (3153 ) 9/5/2001 10:55:03 AM From: LV Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 23908 <<most Jews who've fled to Israel because they were "oppressed" are actually petty criminals or mafyia big-shots with a dozen passports>> Most of 5 millions Israeli Jews are petty criminals??? That is a very very very sweeping statement. Anything to support it? Or did they pass a resolution to that effect in Durban? <<I think that the very notion of a geographic safe heaven for some oppressed minority --be it Jews or any other one-- is fundamentally flawed and somehow perverse>> Gus, what I like about people like you is your willingness to test your pet theories on the Jews. How about you suggest to Flemings that they should leave their ancestral lands and disperse among others. I’m not aware of much anti-Flemish sentiment anywhere in the world (maybe a bit in South Africa - stay away from there). I just don’t think Vaals Blok will like it much, and once in my life I may agree with them. Or perhaps you should tell 100 million Indians and Pakistanis and their descendants to move back to where they lived in 1946. Why don’t you first eliminate all ethnic and religious prejudice and persecution from the world, and then we will talk about eliminating safe havens for minorities. Then we can all live as one big happy family. You see, despite wide-held beliefs that all Jews are world-class scientists and violinists held in high esteem anywhere they live, some of us are regular people who just want to be left alone to live our lives free of anti-semitism. And with UN doing its best to stir it up, I don’t know if there are many places in the world outside of Israel and western liberal democracies where Jews can live free of maltreatment, where they are not defenseless in face of persecution. Yes, most Jews from the US and Western Europe will probably never move to Israel – they are comfortable where they are - but Israel has already proven its worth by providing safe haven for millions of persecuted Jews throughout the world. And I didn’t see Belgium (or for that matter just about anyone else in the world) offering sanctuary to Jews escaping persecutions in Iraq or Russia. Just the opposite, during WW2 Belgians, together with many others, did their best to solve their Jewish problem by working with Nazis to ship their Jews to Auschwitz. As for Jews fleeing Russia and Islamic countries, yes, a few were allowed to settle in the US and a few other places, but vast majority had nowhere to go but to Israel.