Endless Hatred

I never saw a happy antisemite. This is because, as I mentioned before, the hater himself is the main victim of hatred

The Plishtim deserve a brief explanation. They are not one of the seven nations of Canaan. They are not from the original inhabitants of the Land of Israel. It is believed they came from Caphtor, commonly identified as Crete, though there is some scholarly dispute about this. Descended from a sea-faring people, the "Peleset," from the Aegean area, they were much like what the Vikings were later, in the ninth and tenth centuries. They came to the shores of Canaan and settled in Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron and Gath.

Judaism always believes in a division of powers. The Kohanim are the administrators the Temple; somebody else is the king or ruler of the country. In other words, the temporal and the religious are separate

The nature of religious societies is that they fracture. The only question is how deeply they fracture and the reactions to the fracture

The Shiites interpret the Koran literally. They have very few leniencies and they are intolerant in all respects to non-Muslims. Today's Iran is Shiite. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world today and 85% of them are Sunni. The Sunnis have, so to speak, a type of oral law that interprets the Koran for them. The Saudis are Sunnis. Over the long history of Islam, the Sunnis and the Shiites have fought, often violently, one against the other. Part of the naivete of the West (and especially of current Western diplomats) is that they don't realize what the arguments are about. It is not about territory. In regard to Israel, it is not about "two states." It is about the interpretation of the Koran

Judaism is founded on the principle that all men are not created equal in every way, but that each person has a particular role to play and should have equal opportunity to fulfill that role. There is a concept of a Chosen People - of a nation having a special mission unlike other nations. And there is a concept of Divinity, that there is a Divine standard of good and evil in the world. The goal, therefore should be to try and create a more diverse and just society - one in which every individual will thrive given the particular resources granted to him or her - rather than to force everyone into a dismal equality