Well said! And it's "moderate" lunatics the like of Mahathir who make us far-too-close-for-comfort Aussies very worried about the prospect of some "less moderate" radical Islamic taking his place.

I saw that article in The Spectator online. It did strike me as strange, especially the reference to Amos Oz and Shimon Peres as non-Zionists. I've seen that sort of thing before, where Jews who support justice for the Palestinians are seen as by definition non-Zionist, even if they're also for a Jewish homeland. It's as if "Zionism" is now meant to mean only hatred for the Palestinians, and that, therefore, no decent Jews could be a "Zionist."

It might be a good idea if Ms. Phillips were to write a letter to the editor of The Spectator. I'm sure they'd welcome her letter.

Oops....I meant to say "...no decent Jew could be a Zionist." My grammar is usually excellent (I'm an editor). Sorry for the embarrassing typo.

The Head Heeb did a good series of articles about the (mis)use of language in the Israel Palestine conflict, noting how Zionism seems to be turning into a synonym for "Jewish Nazi". You can still find the articles in his archive.

Mahathir's disparaging comments about Jewish World domination were in fact rather complimentary towards Jews. His absurd contention that the Jewish People actually control all the world's media, finances, politics, and diplomacy actually attribute almost god like powers to a people who are numerically and statistically insignificant in terms of world populations. Indeed by "accusing" the Jewish People of having invented human rights and democracy, Mahathir is far from repellant, since these concepts are inherently worthwhile to most civilized people. Mahathir actually saved his most bitter insults for his Islamic audience, plainly telling them that they and their peoples are at once stupid, naive, ignorant, and docile since they are and have been for decades, so easily fooled and cheated by apparently any Jew who so desires to manipulate them. Indeed, Mahathir openly and brazenly proclaimed that the Jews are so clever and cunning(and the non Jews so retarded and foolish) that the Jews are even able to use the non Jews to fight their wars by proxy. Of course the rants and raves of Mahathir were meant to create a climate of antagonism towards Jews, and in this he was successful, but apart from that he just heaped insults Islam. The Islamic world doesn't need any more hate mongering or wars, not within itself or with the Jews. All this sort of dangerous and hatefilled Islamic speech has done is to create dictators like Saddam Hussein, an Arab Moslem who has probably caused the deaths and maiming of more Moslems than any other single individual in the world. His war with Iran almost certainly cost the lives of up to four million Persian and Iraqi Moslems, his death factories in Iraq probably took the lives of well over two million Iraqi Moslems, almost all civilians, and one can hardly forget the cost of the First Gulf War, where perhaps as many as 750,000 Kuwaiti, Iraqi, and Saudi Arabian Moslems were killed, generally by each other. Is Mahathir a danger to the Jews? I would suppose so, but his danger to the Moslems is an absolute certainty!

We did a lot about this at http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/ , because the BBC were so wet they couldn't report the speech and comments afterwards in their entirety, or be bothered to put up a correspondent to explain his defects. In fact, what he said was nothing less then advocate a Jihad by less obvious means. The BBC saw nothing wrong with what he said though, and couldn't be bothered to editorialise against him.

I don't know Ken.

Mahathir's comments were in some ways flattering to Jews, by attributing intelligence and the creation of democracy to them.

But more importantly, they were utterly divisive and identified Jews as "the enemy". You can definately understand why Jews would be terrified and outraged by this speech. As far as Jews are concerned, almost any attention from the Islamic world counts as bad news.

Mahathir had the attention of world leaders and it would have been fantastic if he didn't waste the opportunity by talking about some Jewish-zionist cabal conspiracy, but rather discuss human rights, peace negotiations and to commit to end terrorism.

Thats about as likely as him conceding that Jews are unfairly persecuted and don't really have such a great influence on world affairs, and that 21 Arab states should find better things to do than demonize Israel.

Those whose paths are not the same do not consult one another.