The 'language' of human rights, forsooth! Is he being disingenuous, or is he naive?

Or put another way if it's a model, it isn't a very good model.

Viruses are embedded in people and God loves every person in this world, actually. I think it's wrong to abuse the conditions sick people endure in this manner.

Why do we still have to make a silly bloody issue out of everything?

Israel with between 80 and 200 nukes will not again walk quietly into your gas-chambers.. This time they will take many of you anti-Semitics into the furnaces with them.. That is scary... Why don't you just leave the Jewish people along and get on with your own lives...

"In terms of the condemnation of Israel by the Security Council, Israel has been condemned out of all proportions to all other states put together. That's a documented phenomenon."

And of course, that must be antisemitism or anti-zionism...
Tt certainly wouldn't be because of anything Israel has done or is doing.

Those who throw around the Antisemite slurs at anyone vaguely critical of Israeli policy towards it's arab population are doing the country and its people no favours.

I'm not an antisemite, but I still think Israel deserves condemnation of it's treatment of the palestinians and Israeli arabs.

In the interview, the Chief Rabbi gives every impression of honestly seeking to inform himself before offering an answer. Yet on Camp David he seeks information only from those who will give him one side of the story. Is this in fact honest? Would the Chief Rabbi recommend his co-religionists in Israel/Palestine accept such scraps of land as are offered to the Palestinians? Recall that in 1947, the Zionists considered the 54% of the land for 33% of the population recommended by UNSCOP too little for their requirements. Why is 14% now considered sufficient for a majority of the population of Palestine? (And anyone who reads the Mandate will understand that the standard Zionist trope about the "Arabs" being given Transjordan is incorrect and irrelevant.) Recall also that the scraps are but a small part of the land of Palestine acquired by military conquest since 1947. Military conquest has been deemed impermissable since the founding of the UN. Perhaps this might require some revision to the Chief Rabbi's comments on Israel's "right" to exist. No state has such a "right". Israel has been recognized by other states, which is enough (despite such recognition constituting a betrayal of the responsibilities those states had appropriated to themselves). The government of the state of Israel is the legitimate government of the state of Israel. Again, that is enough. There is no excuse for using the accusation of anti-Semitism to smother criticism of Israel (which is not, of course, to deny that anti-Semites will also criticise Israel). And, as a footnote, could those who insist on using the Mandate to justify the Zionists' actions over the last century please read the document, the attendant travaux, and the large body of legal and diplomatic scholarship that makes it very clear that the now standard Zionist interpretation is untenable. (Anyone who wants to see the quite extraordinary lengths Zionists must go to justify their interpretation should read the works of Howard Grief.)

Tussant and co. You guys seem to take a fast food approach to history and politics, ready made and easily accessible but not very wholesome. Anti Semitism, primarily a European disease, is no way near the level of 19th and 20th century when it was institutionalised. so in fact there isn't a rise there is actually a fall, depends on your historical spectrum.

In the worst case of Anti Semitism, Islam had nothing to do with it, there was no islamism on the political scence, what explains that in your view. Isn't it just possible that there are other factors.

The idea that anti zionism is really a mutated form of anti semitism is also preposterous and rabbi sacks should be ashamed of making such a ridiculous claim.

He too is afflicted by the notion that the Jewish "people", some how have a special role and place in history. Hatred for Jews, according to this narrative, is uniquely different to all other prejudices, it is a timeless, irrational hatred, which, like a virus, mutates depending on the political climate.

Rabbi Sacks would like us all to believe that any resentment towards Israel is an inherent prejudice on our part, its the primordial hatred for Jews which we are inflicted with. It cant be because Israel is a brutal occupying regime, it cant be because Israel has bombed seiged and killed thousands of Palestinian civilians. It cant be because Israel continues to ethnically cleanse Palestinians and confiscate their land. It cant be because, Israel runs an apartheid regime in the occupied territory and denies Palestinians rights to their own, which Israel steals to provide swimming pools for settler communities.

No No No. it cant be because of that its our chronic hatred for Jews. It is us, we have a pathological problem not Israel.

Tell that to that International Criminal Court and its 16 judges who all unanimously condemned Israel as an occupying, colonial force. I guess you also want us to think that they too, including two Jews amongst them, are afflicted by Jewish hatred.

Maybe, you rabbi sacs, have pathological need to blame the rest of the world for Israels occupation, Israels crimes and its failures.

I love the way that those like Jehudah Ben-Israel can simultaneously argue that there was never any such place as Palestine, but that all of it belongs to them.

Singling out a race, a people, the Jewish people in this case is by definition an act of racism. And, when the Jewish people is singled out, it is by definition an act of anti-Jewish racism.

Israel, it must be noted, is the nation-state of the Jewish people, thus the obsessive need by some to demonize Israel, to delegitimize it, to dehumanize its leaders and institutions implies obsessively demonize, delegitimize and dehumanize the people whose nation-state Israel is: The Jewish people.

This form of anti-Jewish racism must cease!!

@Jehudah Ben-Israel. So tell me, as you have the pretence of someone legally versed, By what right/authority did the British hand over parts of Palestine. There is a massive difference between having a mandate over a region, which is what the Brits had over Palestine, and a legal right of ownership. Britain had no such right.

Your face of a legal appeal is extremely duplicitous as you totally ignored the legitimate legal position as agreed by the UN, including the Arab league, which comprises all Arab countries and the countries of the Islamic conference, which is all Muslim countries as well.

So rankly speaking the legal position is that Palestine, as it exists West of the Jordan river, should be divided into two states.The case of Jordan does not come into it.

It is all the legal position that every single settlement is illegal,the wall is illegal, that West Bank and Jeruselum are occupied territory. That the Wall was built with colonial intent. Dont take my word take the word of the International Court of Justice, who are the legitimate interpreters of international law, not you.

That said, why do you appeal to some obscure legal argument not accepted by anybody except some right wing, Jewish supremacists, who believe all of Palestine is theirs.

Your desire to show sincerity by making a legal case is so utterly phony its laughable.If you believe in law then adhere to the right and proper position and statements of law. you cant invent an imaginary legal authority.

If you really accepted the position of law, and the international consensus, which as i said includes even Arab and Muslim countries, you will call for Israel to end its apartheid regime in the West Bank, dismantle the wall, end its occupation including East Jerusalem, Allow Palestinian refugees to return to their land.

I wish i had time to write more about your specious and desperate attempt to make this into an Islamic versus Jewish issue. Just in case you missed the last Sixty years of European History, I just wanted to remind you that it was not Muslims who masterminded the final solution.

A racist/stolen state does not/cannot have/enjoy legitimacy

The usual rabildly anti-Semitic comments...no surprise to see these in the swere that is the NS...

"...you totally ignored the legitimate legal position as agreed by the UN..."

The most fundamental UN agreement with regard to the Arab Israeli conflict has been the UN's acceptance of the League of Nations resolution of 1922 to view western "Palestine", i.e. present day Israel-WestBank-Gaza, as the "national home for the Jewish people". This UN acceptance was written into the UN Charter of 1945, Article 80 to be precise, stating that the League of Nations' decisions related to this question can't be changed by the UN but with the explicit agreement of the people for whom the territory was to serve as "the national home", that is the Jewish people.

All subsequent decisions by the UN, if passed without the explicit consent of the Jewish people, i.e. the Zionist movement and/or the nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel, are contrary to the UN Charter and therefore not legal by 'international law'.

@Jehudah Ben-Israel. I haven't totally ignored it, there were more important things to be said about your comment.

I know what you are referring to but its nothing like your interpretation or commentary on the subject.

WHERE ON EARTH DID YOU GET THE NOTION "All subsequent decisions by the UN, if passed without the explicit consent of the Jewish people, i.e. the Zionist movement and/or the nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel, are contrary to the UN Charter and therefore not legal by 'international law'.". THATS TOTAL RUBBISH.

so you're interpretation of this issue is that the authorities of international law have failed to interpret law properly by dividing Palestine into two states. The same authorities who have denounced Israel for many breaches of international law which I cited in my previous post.

Lest you forget, there was a people along with the Jews who were living there, THE PALESTINIANS. They comprised the majority population, it was their rights which was promised would not be compromised by creating a a homeland for Jews. Again homeland not state.

I guess the crux of your point is that you wanted a Jewish State in the whole of Palestine. That would have been OK if Jews were the majority in Palestine but they weren't. So how does a Zionist, maybe like yourself, I don't know, resolve this dilemma? How do you create a Jewish state in an area where Jews are a minority? The only solution was to violate exactly what the Balfour declaration and the promises of the mandate sought to protect,that is not compromise the rights of the indigenous people.

It was only by expelling the indigenous Palestinians that Zionism managed to square the circle of creating a Jewish state in an area where Jews were a minority.

I would be all for a one secular Democracy West of Jordan river, even if its called Israel.The only problem, which you and I, and all the Israelis know is that, it wont be a state that privileges the Jews, it wont be a Jewish state.its for that very reason, its because Israel is obsessed with racial and religious purity that it does what it does. Just to cite one example, how else do you explain the fact that a Jew from Brooklyn, who most probably never set foot in Israel, whose grandparents most likely converted to Judaism, can be granted rights and privileges to Israel and including the occupied territory on the basis of a right of return and Palestinian refugees who have been expelled from their land are not allowed to return to their homes. Is this not racist. Does Israel not distinguish its policies on the basis of race. Don't you see that.

Cant you see that this has been Israels gretest dilemma since its creation, HOW DO I I(ISRAEL) CREATE AN ETHNICALLY PURE JEWISH STATE WITHOUT THE PALESTINIANS and call our ourselves a democracy and all other nice sounding words.

History proves this kind of political engineering cant be done and israel is railing against history, morality and law through sheer might.

stop defending this nonsense.

I think the Chief Rabbi is brilliant and I'm not a Jew. He makes a lot more sense than the islamofascist nutter imams who justify wife-beating, hanging Gays, murdering non-Moslems and Moslem apostates.