i believe if israel stands up for justice then we will earn the world’s respect. if we defend the downtrodden, then the downtrodden will support us.

You are correct about Israel earning the world’s respect but in addition to intervening when a sufficient number are being killed so as to qualify it as genocide – Israel must regain its self respect by intervening for those who risked life and limb for the Jewish State and were abandoned by both Israel and those who usually champion Israel’s downtrodden friends and neighbors. These are:
1) Jonathan Pollard. Israel’s refusal to take the steps to gain his release make it undeniably obvious that it is the Jewish State who has abandoned Jonathan Pollard (with a little help from American Jewry’s exceedingly polite behavior), not the US.
2) The Southern Lebanese Army. In return for short-term publicity gains Israel fled Southern Lebanon, abandoning their allies to be butchered and driven from their homes. In return we got an Arab population that smelled the sweet smell of Jewish exile waft through the mountains and valleys of the Land of Israel and we got the Temple Mount War (al-aksa intifada, if you will).
3) So-called ‘collaberators’ – Arabs who have turned in bombers, passed on intelligence information, and literally saved thousands of Jewish lives. We let them swing from tall poles in the town squares of Ramallah and Shechem while thousands cheer in glee and shout about how their idol they call a god is great.
4) There are more, and I don’t mean to do that thing where someone goes: “Why bother with the Sudan – we have so many problem of our own to deal with,” I just mean to let you know that even us settler-types lust after Justice and distrubute consolement to those who have been abandoned by the world.
If the activist, truth-seeking Jews of the hilltops could get together with the activist, truth-seeking Jews of Pardes, Hartman, Shenkin, Emek Refaim and all the other places – we can truly bring on the Great Shabbat.

I feel it’s necessary to call you on this “their idol they call a god” business, Ezra. I’m surprised Mobius let that stand.
Idolatry is a serious charge. In fact, for both Jews and Muslims, it is perhaps the most serious of all charges. Why is that? Because you are saying that instead of worshipping and following God and bringing glory to his Name, the accused are doing the complete opposite of that.
Now, I’m not saying it is justified to stand in the street and cheer a public execution (though I should mention this is something with a long history in Western, as well as Islamic, society). But to generalize from such a spectacle to the idea that Muslims do not worship the same God we do is going too far, in my opinion. In fact, if I were a Muslim, I would perhaps accuse those who engage in such acts as engaging in a sort of Muslim chillul Hashem, since they have clearly made Islam and their way of following God look evil to you, Ezra.

Avi, what the fuck is your problem? The Darfur issue is intimately fused with the ongoing Arab-Muslim establishment’s rejection of Israel and Zionism, as well as the consistently sordid history of Arab rejectionist posture against the national self-determination of any non-Arab peoples — be they Jews, Kurds, Berbers, etc. Do you have to be a simplistic contrarian every waking moment of your life?

zionista, you are of course, factually correct. but if we as jews and/or israelis raise those issues, we are imediately discounted as vile destroyers of the palestinians, and our views are not taken into account by: the arab and muslims states and people(thats about 40 or 50 countries, and about 1 billion people); the vast majority of the eu, paticularly the political and intellectual elite (another 25 countries and 450 million people)…need i go on? we as jews and israel as a nation have been marginalized, the work of the various mideast studies programs, the bbc, the guardian, npr, the left in general, have suceeded (in all but a small number of countries) in making jews and israel pariah entities. we have ifluence as jews only in america. sorry to be so pessimistic, but that the reality. and i guess thats why im so adament about the lethalness of the mobys, browns and arafs of the world – we have enought antipathy and downright hatred directed at us by way too many; jews who lend themselves to israeli and/or jew bashing merely provide the moral fig leaf that emboldens those who would otherwise hesitate to harm us. wish i were wrong, but dont think so.