Answer this!

A very good article attacking the current trend of blaming everything on the eeevil, "Zionist" conspiracy against the poor, hapless Palestinians. I know it is easy to say what do the poor Palestinians have except their bodies to blow up in the faces of children, women, elderly and the teenagers in discos, pizza parlors, Passover feasts and ice cream shops, but I wish for once people stopped repeating stuff they read around. I wish people would just sit down and think for a little while and make up their minds for themselves, without falling for propaganda.

Is it anti-Semitic to criticise Israel?

This begs the question: how does one distinguish between anti-Semitism and political comment?

The distinction: Ask yourself, is it fair political comment to single out Israel for a divestment campaign, to call it a pariah state and have it permanently denied a seat on the UN Security Council, but ignore the occupation by Syria (which currently chairs the Security Council) of Lebanon, Tibet by China, Northern Cyprus by Turkey, and Chechnya by Russia?

How many signs have you seen calling for freedom for these occupied lands, or indeed for independent Kurdish or Armenian states, in the recent anti-war marches?

Even drawing parallels with these occupations fails to recognise that Israel acquired the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and the West Bank from Jordan - not through aggressive expansionism, but when it was attacked by those and other Arab states in 1967.

(That is why, contrary to popular belief, there is no UN Security Council resolution requiring Israel to unilaterally withdraw from these lands.)