There are Arabs who live in Israel proper (i.e. not in the West Bank or Gaza), by the way.

Some hippy girl at university who is a member of the "Friends of Palestine Society" assured me that ALL Arabs in Israel lived in the West Bank or Gaza and under no circumstances were permitted to enter the main part of Israel. That's funny, because as well as the many thousands of Arabs living in Israel proper, I read an article on the BBC news site which had a Palestinian man saying Israeli road blocks were making it take him hours and hours to get to Tel-Aviv where he often did business. I.e., people are allowed to travel from the Palestinian territories out into Israel. Also, how does she think these suicide bombers manage to target places like Tel-Aviv?

Of course there are strict regulations governing where Arabs can live and such and also governing the movements of residents from the Palestinian territories into Israel.

And I hear and read lots of talk about the Arabs living in Gaza and West Bank being those who were kicked off their land by the Jews when Israel was formed. Yes probably most of them are. But there was also a large influx of Arabs from neighboring countries under the British mandate. The modern term Palestinian does not refer to a specific ethnicity. It is just an Arab who lives in Palestine. So, an Egyptian family who moved to Palestine in say 1940, and then after the formation of Israel moved into the Gaza strip, would be called Palestinian, and there descendants would be too.

But also, I am quite uncomfortable with certain people's blatant Islamophobia. I must say I sort of agree with the points raised, but it isn't done in the most sensitive way. If you are born into a religion it is very difficult to see any fault in it. I believe all religion is a load of crap, but I wouldn't go up to a Christian and shout "JESUS WAS JUST A CARPENTER WHO TALKED TO MUCH AND WASN'T EVEN THE SON OF GOD AND YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR OWN MIND AND DO WHATEVER SOME INACCURATE ANCIENT BOOK TELLS YOU".

ALSO!

I saw an interesting piece on the BBC news yesterday (the BBC was criticised a couple of years ago, by the way, for being too pro-Israel), about how it is not the Jewish lobby in America that drives the country's support for Israel, it is in fact crazy evangelical Christians who believe in something called "End time theology". Basically in the Bible it says for Jesus to return to Earth the Jews must be gathered in Israel, and also that when he returns he will judge the gentiles (non-Jews) treatment of the Jews. Thus, these evangelical Christians (who there are a lot of, and in very high places) are very pro-Israel. Couple with that they are likely to be very pro-American and therefore hate Muslims because of 9/11.