Anti-muslim e-mail going around

I just got this very anti-Muslim, pro-Israel e-mail going around. It starts by listing all the Nobel prizes won by Muslims (not too many) and compares that to the many won by Jews. OK. But then it goes on. My friend actually prefaced the forwarded mail with an admonition to turn everything in the middle east besides Israel into volcanic glass.

Well, that was too much for me:

More than ever we need to back Israel and make volcanic glass of the rest of that miserable area.....

Did you just advocate dropping nuclear bombs on everyone in the middle east besides Israel (which is in violation of all kinds of UN resolutions - Bush's reasoning behind invading Iraq)? Aside from the fact that Muslims have been kept in the dark ages by the very regimes Bush is cozy with (like Saudi Arabia), which would explain their lack of Nobel prizes, I'd like to comment on a few of the other inflammatory comments in this mail.

The Jews are not demonstrating with their dead on the streets, yelling and chanting and asking for revenge.

Yes they are. The Israelis elected the most right-wing, vengeful party they have, the Likud. They chant for revenge every time a suicide bomber kills some of their citizens.

The Jews are not promoting brain washing the children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims.

Yes they are. Military service in Israel is compulsory. Many reports have shown that the Israeli military teaches their teenage soldiers that Palestinians are animals to be shot without remorse.

The Jews don't highjack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics.

They don't have to. They have one of the world's best air forces (thanks to the US), equipped with some of the best weapons (thanks to the US). If they want to kill a lot of people, they just use F-16s and missiles. They do it all the time. Sometimes they hit their target. Sometimes they kill civilians.

The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

Uh, well, yes they do. While it's wrong to say ALL jews do one thing or another, just as it is wrong to say ALL muslims do, it's very well documented that the Palestinian people are used for cheap labor by greedy Israeli corporations who are complicit with the Israeli government to wall off the Palestinians, keep them fenced in substandard housing, and fed rations, since the Israeli government has taken most of their viable farm land. Not unlike what greedy American corporations have done to Mexicans.

The Jews don't have the economical strength of the Petroleum, nor the possibilities to force the world's media to see "their side" of the question.

Huh? They have the economic strength of using cheap loans and billions in grants from the US every year. The media sees their side of practically everything. Hell, there are many people, and I'm not one of them, who are very upset that the media is "owned" by Jews.

Perhaps if the world's Muslims could invest more in normal education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems, we could all live in a better world.

Same goes for the Jews, eh? Blaming all their problems on the Muslims is the same kind of scapegoating.

THINK ABOUT IT!

OK. Now you think about it. I'm sure I'll feel the wrath of any Jews [in this newsgroup] - especially the ones who voted for Bush because 100,000 dead Muslim civilians at the feet of this administration is just a good start to them, but I really don't care. I think all these extremist religions, from Arial Sharon's to Osama Bin Laden's, are nuts. But when I hear them arguing among themselves, and I see otherwise reasonable people like you spreading this kind of crap (really, advocating the nuking of an entire region...), I've got to step in and say, hey, why not be fair here? There is a very large peace movement in both Israel and Palestine. We used to elect US presidents who tried to help those sides. Now we elect one who, the first time he set foot in Israel, was asked what he wanted to say to all the Jews. He said, "You're all going to hell." See, GW thinks if you don't believe like him, you go to hell. He believes in the literal translation of Revelations (written by a madman) that only a few Jews will accept Jesus at the end, and the rest will burn in a lake of fire.

So, please, don't go down that road with [a freakish right wing Christian zealot in the newsgroup]. Jews and Muslims can have peace with each other. Armageddon is a lie so Bush's Robber Barons can destroy the environment, foreign relations, and anything else they can get away with for profit.