To: SiouxPal who wrote (74691 ) 7/31/2006 10:45:11 AM From: Elmer Flugum Respond to of 361954 I would say that when Thomas is speaking of Isra'El he is not focused on "Jews" per se, but the political/military arm of Zionism. Many try to hide behind Judaism to escape and censor criticism of Zionism. You know..playing on the history of persecution in Europe of Jews and making it their shield to do whatever they want in the name of Judaism. Zionism is not Judaism. Read this:The Difference Between Judaism and Zionism jewsnotzionists.org "Neither the founder of political Zionism nor any of the prime ministers of the Zionist state believed in the divine origin of the Torah nor even in the existence of G-d. All prime ministers were members of a party that opposed religion in principle and that considered the Bible a document of ancient folklore, devoid of any religious meaning. And yet these same Zionists base their claim to the Holy Land on this same Bible, the divine origin of which they deny. At the same time they conveniently forget the Jewish holiday prayer "and for our sins have we been exiled from our land," and ignore the fact that the present exile of the Jewish people is divinely decreed and that the Jewish people are neither commanded nor permitted to conquer or rule the Holy Land before the coming of the Messiah. The Jewish people do, of course, recognize special spiritual ties to that land they call it Eretz Yisrael. Every morning, afternoon, and evening, and night they mention it and Zion and Jerusalem in their prayers, and indeed a Jew does not sit down to a meal without doing likewise. To the Jew, the very soil of the Holy Land is different from that of any other spot on this globe, and wherever he is he turns his face toward Jerusalem during prayers. To live in the Holy Land or even to be buried there was always considered to be of high merit. This love of the land and the Jewish longing for a return to it and for the coming of the Messiah have been exploited innumerable times during the past 2,000 years. Zionism has had many precursors and each has been a curse for the Jews. Individuals who proclaimed themselves the Messiah and messianic movements have sprung up from time to time, from the Roman era through the Middle Ages and down to the modern Zionists. Many of these pseudo-Messiahs posed as rabbis or as national leaders, though some of them eventually professed other faiths; many temporarily - some for longer periods - succeeded in misleading Jews, rabbis, and entire Jewish communities. All were in due course exposed and recognized as frauds, and those who had set their hope on them found only disappointment and all too often disaster. In the early stages of the development of modern Zionism, the Mizrachi was founded, an organization of so-called religious Zionists who tried to combine their faith with political Zionism. This led to constant conflict between the dictates of divine law and the demands of Jewish nationalism. Most of the time, the Mizrachi was outvoted at Zionist congresses and served only to give the Zionist movement a false religious aura. Whenever expediency called for it, these "religious" Zionist fellow-travelers have been used by the Zionist government to underpin national claims with "religious" authority. The National Religious Party in the Zionist state has been well rewarded for giving its stamp of approval to nationalistic measures and enactments, whether these rewards were of financial nature or in the form of cabinet or other government posts. The chauvinism of these religious Zionists frequently exceeded that of other Zionists, and it was always couched in religious terms - a prime example of the abuse of religion. The fraudulence of these "religious" Zionists was demonstrated during the past year when it was revealed that two of their world leaders had committed million-dollar thefts."Jews against Israel dir.salon.com len