The ~20 percent of non-Jewish Israeli citizens have the same set of rights as the Jewish citizens. Israel is the only nation in the Middle East that grants full rights to every citizen, male and female, regardless of religious belief. Two other points:

Israel is a Jewish state, but it is not a theocracy in the way that some Christian and Muslim states are. The early Zionists were mostly atheists or agnostics. What they had in mind for a Jewish state was a state with a Jewish majority because they knew all too well what happened to Jews in every nation where they were a minority.

There are good reasons for people to oppose settlements. A lot of Israelis do, because settlements run the risk of creating a "Greater Israel" in which Jews would be a minority; and because settlements are often the pet cause of the religious lunatics, who are just as much a plague in Israel as they are in Islamic countries. But what's most irritating is why Israel is singled out for criticism, while no one says a word about the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Indian occupation of Goa, the Ethiopians in Eritrea, the Russian troops in Estonia--and the US occupation of Guantanamo.


Ntra la porta tua lu sangu � sparsu,
E nun me mporta si ce muoru accisu...
E s'iddu muoru e vaju mparadisu
Si nun ce truovo a ttia, mancu ce trasu.