Sarab Nihal Singh wrote:
>
> I would prefer to go to the root cause of this chronic problem mentioned in
> Bob’s email and sign a petition against Prophet Mohamed for his war crimes
> against humanity. He has caused the most ideological and ethnic cleansing in
> known history. The psychotic freaks (Aurangzeb, Ghazni, et al) in his
> tradition have done worst damage than Israel or US can do in all of Islam’s
> pathetic, enslaved and oppressive colonies.
>

I did not respond to Bob's email because at least once before on this
list he has confused Jews witrh Zionists -- and that is unacceptable for
several reasons. First, though of secondary concern, is that a group of
Pound lovers (which I assume most of us are) should be quite careful
around the subject of anti-semitism But of greater, and more politically
relevant concern, is that the chief, perhaps the _only_ serious weapon
in the hands of criminal Zionism (the phrase is really, now, redundant)
is precisely the identification of anti-zionism with anti-semitism.
Without this protection, Israel would stand revealed clearly to all for
what it is and has been -- a criminal state, an ally of tyrannical and
racist regimes around the world (e.g., it was, next to the United
States, the warmest friend of apartheid South Africa, and it was the
conduit for a good deal of U.S. aid to the murderous thugs known as
Contras in Nicaragua).

Israel's very existence is a crime, and the bloodshed now going on in
Palestine is _wholly_ the fault of the Israeli state. Israeli terrorism
(the state was born in terrorism and has been a perpetrator of terrorism
fever since) is not the only but it is a major element in the conditions
that have given Al Quaida terrorists the popular support (or illusion of
popular support) that any terrorist organization needs, to maintain its
morale if for no other reason: men who could have relatively peaceful
and prosperous lives do not lightly throw away those lives as did the
perpetrators of 9/11.

As for Islam and Muhamed. The post I am responding to is ridiculous, but
I'll just focus on a couple of points here.

First of all, one might say that Islam was virtually the inventor of
religious tolerance, and for a thousand years while Jews were being
persecuted in Europe the Islamic countries provided a place of refuge
not only for Jews but for "hetetical" Christians. Most of whatever
culture medieval Europe possessed they owed to the Arabs and Islamic
culture. (Arabic numbers came from India, but it was the Arabs who
introduced them to europe.)

Secondly, for 50 years the United States has pursued an unrelenting
savagery (often using "fundamentalist Muslims as its tool) against every
democratic or secular movement in the Middle East and South Asia. It was
the U.S. that destroyed Iran's best hope for democracy, Mossedegh. It
was the U.S., under Carter, that deliberately interfered in Afghanistan
for no other reason that to provoke Soviet interference, and it was the
U.S. that was responsible for the virtual wiping out of all secular or
democratic forces in Afghanistan.

And it is the U.S. and Israel that have been the unrelenting foes of any
secular left forces among the Palestinians and have deliberately and
with consciously bloody intent encouraged the flourishing of religious
fanaticism among the Palestinians.

Freedom for the Palestinians will not by itself bring peace to the
middle east, but nothing else will either until the rogue state of
Israel is brought under control.

Carrol Cox