Many progressive Jews believe that Jews should not support a group that wishes to impose religion onto the state, which would marginalize Jewish Americans, people of other faiths and the secular community. In addition to supporting Israel, Evangelicals want to put prayer in school, the Ten Commandments on public display, and creationism – rather “intelligent design” – to be taught alongside Darwinism in science classes. They want America to cease being a secular democracy and become a Christian nation.

“We are particularly offended by the suggestion that the opposite of the Religious Right is the voice of atheism,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, at a conference in Houston last year. “We are appalled when ‘people of faith’ is used in such a way that it excludes us, as well as most Jews, Catholics, and Muslims.”

When Jewish leaders talk like this it scares some hardcore Zionists. When Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who has always expressed appreciation for Evangelicals’ support for Israel, voiced concern about Evangelicals’ desire to impose Christian religion in the public sphere, Jewish author and fellow at the conservative Discovery Institute David Klinghoffer claimed Foxman’s concern was “ludicrous” and part of a ploy to raise money for the ADL in an article in the National Review.

“It almost seems to verge on insanity,” Klinghoffer said in a recent interview. “[Evangelicals] are better friends of Israel than we are.”

For Klinghoffer, Evangelical support for Israel trumps whatever plans they have to break the barrier between Church and State, even if that support based on a Biblical prophecy that ends with unconverted Jews going to Hell.

“If there is a dark conspiracy, who cares?” said Klinghoffer. “The practical outcome is that they support a president that supports Israel’s right to defend itself.”

And Klinghoffer isn’t alone. In the state of Washington, Rabbi Daniel Lapin’s Toward Tradition works with Christian organizations to fight what the group calls “secular fundamentalism.” Rabbi Yechiel Z. Eckstein’s Jerusalem and Chicago-based International Fellowship of Christian and Jews fights many battles in order to encourage Christian support for Israel. Last December, Eckstein wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that replacing ‘Merry Christmas’ with ‘Happy Holidays’ was unhealthy. Perhaps reluctantly, Eckstein, a religious rabbi, bought into the myth that secular America is fighting what one Fox News commentator calls the “War on Christmas.”

It is as if some religious Jewish and Zionist organizations are fighting Evangelicals’ battles in America so that the Evangelicals will remain Zionist allies.

“From my perspective, the effect on the U.S. can only be harmful,” said Noam Chomsky, the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor and critic of American foreign policy. “And harmful to Israel as well. The most fervent self-described ‘supporters of Israel’ are often its worst enemies.”

To whom might Chomsky be referring? For example, Meir Kahane, the radical Brooklyn-born rabbi who argued for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel, was one such ‘supporter of Israel’ and his political party was banned from the Israeli government because it was so extreme. Yigal Amir, who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, may have acted out of a nationalist spirit, but that spirit turned him into an enemy of the state.

While it is not reasonable to state that Christianity is inherently anti-Semitic, the history of this religion from the Spanish Inquisition to Martin Luther to Father Coughlin is marred with unabashed Jew-hatred. And in today’s circles of Evangelical Protestants, one can find where its prominent leaders have used Jew-baiting to rile up its people. Jerry Falwell speculated publicly that the Antichrist might be Jewish. Pat Robertson reminded his readers that German-Jewish intellectuals were responsible for communism.

More than that, some sects of Christianity will surely cite the New Testament’s blaming Christ’s death on the Jews. “But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles,” reads Acts 14:2, “and made their minds evil affected against the brethren.”

But people like Klinghoffer believe that Jews should align with Evangelicals no matter what their motives and that criticism of Evangelicals’ domestic agenda is unnecessary and should be kept silent. But Jews should not give in so easily. If Jewish leaders do not speak out against the Evangelical right’s plans that blur the division of Church and State, it will aid the Christian right’s plan to impose religion into the public sphere. And it grants the Evangelicals an influence over Israel. This is a group that does not lend its support to Israel for altruism, but for religious self-interest.

This over-prioritization of Israel is dangerous. Those involved in the Christian-Zionist alliance say to the world that the Jews are so desperate for support for Israel they will forfeit equality in the States by aiding the agenda to abolish the separation of Church and State. Surely, it is time for Jewish-America to realize and resist this intellectual deficit.

“Belief in Rapture seems to me anti-Semitic,” said Chomsky. “What happens to the Jews?”

The president of the Palestinian Authority and the leader of the defeated Fatah party in last month's election, Mahmoud Abbas, said the authority faced a financial crisis after Israel's decision not to pay $US50 million ($67 million) in monthly customs revenue which it owes the authority under its 1993 Oslo Accords commitments.

The money is used to pay the salaries of 130,000 Palestinian Authority employees, the biggest source of income in the territories under Israeli military occupation.

"[The election] should not be used to justify further aggression against our people, or as a pretext for blackmailing it," Mr Abbas said. "The Palestinian people should not be punished for its democratic choice that was expressed through the ballot box."

Hamas is casting around for alternative sources of funding. The head of its political wing, Khaled Mashaal, was expected in Tehran yesterday to meet the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a move that will further infuriate Israel.

Mr Abbas told the Palestinian parliament he required Hamas to respect the Oslo Accords with Israel that recognise the Jewish state. "From the hour the accords were endorsed, they became a political reality to which we remain committed," he said.

The Israeli cabinet, which faces its own election on March 28, voted to adopt a range of punitive measures on Sunday, a day after the swearing in of the new Palestinian parliament, in which Hamas holds 74 of the 132 seats.

"Israel views the rise of Hamas as a dangerous milestone that turns the Palestinian Authority into a terrorist authority," the acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said. "Israel will not hold contacts with the administration in which Hamas plays any part."

Israel's diplomatic boycott is a largely symbolic gesture, Palestinians said, since Israel has for several years rejected talks with the previous, more moderate Fatah government. However, since the surprising victory by Hamas in the January 25 election, the so-called quartet of would-be Middle East peace brokers - the US, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia - also threatened to cut funding of and ties with the Palestinian Authority if Hamas does not abandon its armed struggle, recognise Israel's right to exist and endorse all previous agreements between the Fatah-led authority and Israel.

Already the US has blocked the accounts of an Islamic charity KindHearts, citing links to Hamas. The Treasury Department said on Sunday it had frozen the accounts of the Ohio-based non-profit group "pending investigation."

Hamas has repeatedly rejected demands for it to moderate its charter, which calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and the institution of Islamic rule in all of the former British mandate of Palestine.

However, the party's moderate faction, led by its nominee for prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, has said it might be willing to extend its present one-sided ceasefire against Israel and to negotiate peace, provided Israel withdraws from the territories it seized in 1967.

â–  Israeli forces killed six Palestinians at the weekend. In Gaza, two militants were killed by an Israeli air strike after Israel said they were seen acting suspiciously near the border fence. In the West Bank city of Nablus, troops killed two members of the Islamic Jihad militant group and two 17-year-old boys. The Israeli army said the youths were laying explosive devices when they were shot dead.

Palestinians said they were among a group of boys throwing stones at the invading forces.

The chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, is right. His reaction to the Anglican synod's call for sanctions against Israel is understandable. Hatred of Judaism - now commonly called anti-semitism - is a virus that has infected Christendom for two millennia. It continues to stalk the world despite its most virulent outbreak in Nazi Germany. It should not be left untreated. For too many it remains the unlearned lesson of the Holocaust. It should haunt decent Christians for generations to come.

The German pope knows that particularly well and is on the battle lines against it. On this issue, nothing divides him from the Archbishop of Canterbury and most other church leaders. If, as some now think, today's Jews are the Muslims - hatred transferred - that simply means there is a battle to maintain our common humanity on more than one front. All collective hatreds poison the body politic.

I say this as the child of a German Jewish-born father who escaped in time. His mother did not. I say it as a half-Jewish German child chased around a British playground in the second world war and taunted with "he's not just a German, he's a Jew". A double insult. But I say this too as a Christian priest who shares the historic guilt of all the churches. All Christians share a bloody inheritance.

If I feel all that in my guts and know it in my head, I cannot stand by and watch the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - one of the world's most dangerous outbreaks of collective hatred - as a dispassionate onlooker. I cannot listen calmly when an Iranian president talks of wiping out Israel. Jewish fears go deep. They are not irrational. But I cannot listen calmly either when a great many citizens of Israel think and speak of Palestinians in the way a great many Germans thought and spoke about Jews when I was one of them and had to flee.

If the Christian in me has good reason to be ashamed, so now does the Jew in me. I passionately believe that Israel has the right, and its people have the right, to live in peace and in secure borders. But I know too that modern Israel was born in terror and made possible in its present Zionist form by killing and a measure of ethnic cleansing. That is history. Tell me of a nation with an innocent history. But the Zionism at the heart of Israeli politics is about the present and the future. It makes me fear for the soul of Israel today and the survival of its children tomorrow.

The Israel characterised by the words of Golda Meir that "there was no such thing as Palestinians ... they did not exist" is an Israel that is inevitably surrounded by enemies and that can only survive militarily and economically as a client state of the world's only superpower, for now. Nor can its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East last for ever. Peace cannot be made by building a wall on Palestinian land that makes the life of the miserably conquered more miserable still. A Palestinian bantustan will be a source of unrest and violence for ever.

I say all this despairing of the Israel I love. Its people are my people. The Palestinians are my neighbours. I wish they had stronger and better leaders. I wish their despairing young people had not been driven to violence. Just as I understand Jewish fears, I understand their despair. Only an Israel that understands that too can change it. And there are Jews in Israel and in the diaspora who know it. Most of them, out of a fear of being thought disloyal, are afraid to say what they know to be true. The state of Israel has become a cruel occupying power. Occupations, when they are resisted, are never benevolent. They morally corrupt the occupier. The brave body of Israeli conscientious objectors are the true inheritors of the prophets of Israel. They are the true patriots. What nation has ever loved its prophets?

But the main objective of my writing today, is to nail the lie that to reject Zionism as it practised today is in effect to be anti-semitic, to be an inheritor of Hitler's racism. That argument, with the Holocaust in the background, is nothing other than moral blackmail. It is highly effective. It condemns many to silence who fear to be thought anti-semitic. They are often the very opposite. They are often people whose heart bleeds at Israel's betrayal of its true heritage.

I began with the recognition that the cancer of anti-semitism has not been cured. Tragically, Israel's policies feed it - and when world Jewry defends Israeli policies right or wrong, then anger turns not only against Israel, but against all Jews. I wish it were mere rhetoric to say that Israeli politics today make a holocaust the day after tomorrow credible. If the whole Muslim world hates Israel, that is no idle speculation. To count on Arab disunity and Muslim sectarian conflict and a permanent American shield is no recipe for long-term security.

There are Israelis who know all that, and there are Jews around the world who know it. In Britain, Jews for Justice for Palestinians organises to give Jewishness a human face. Tell them they are anti-semites and they will laugh bitterly, for the charge hurts deeply and is a lie. Prophets such as Uri Avnery give all this eloquent expression, but are heard by only a few. The media are afraid of a lobby that is quite prepared to do them serious damage.

Yes, of course, there are many who express their solidarity with the Palestinian people. Some are Christians. They deserve respect. If, whether wisely or not, they call for sanctions, that does not make them Jew-haters - not in theory and not in practice. My concern, however, is to express solidarity with the Israel that is not represented by its leaders or popular opinion. Once, in the days of Hitler, there was another Germany represented by those in concentration camps alongside Jews and Gypsies, the martyrs who are celebrated today. There is such an Israel too. Its voices are still free to speak, though often reviled and misunderstood. That Israel has my solidarity, as all Jews have my love and prayers.

Paul Oestreicher was a member of the Church of England's general synod and director of the Centre for International Reconciliation, Coventry Cathedral; he is now a chaplain at the University of Sussex

This is the most basic democratic concept of all. And it's clearly gained a foothold among Palestinian Arabs, who last month exercised their democratic rights by rejecting a corrupt government that had failed to advance the peace process, and electing the militant Hamas party.

Obviously the Palestinians failed to understand the subtle nuances of Western "democratic concepts." Just because the West urges them to elect a government doesn't mean they're free to elect a government the West considers unacceptable.

The New York Times reported last week that the "United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again."

If only the Palestinians would get it right the first time, it wouldn't be necessary for the West to intervene in their democratic process.

Ottawa also made clear last week that Canada would withdraw financial support — unless Hamas renounced violence, recognized Israel and accepted previous Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements.

At first glance, this seems reasonable. But why are these demands placed only on Palestinians? Shouldn't Israel also have to renounce violence? As the World Council of Churches recently argued: "If violence is incompatible with democracy and with peace, it is incompatible for both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities."

As for recognizing Israel, Hamas has implicitly indicated a willingness do this — if Israel ends its occupation. Hamas official Khaled Mishaal told a Russian journal last week that Hamas would halt its armed struggle if Israel withdrew from Palestinian land it has occupied since 1967.

The lopsided nature of Ottawa's demands is striking, particularly since Israel already exists as a country, with secure borders and the unwavering support of the most powerful nation on Earth. Meanwhile, Palestinians, after 40 years living under military occupation, are essentially powerless.

This context is so often missing from mainstream commentaries like Bell's.

Bell purports to be urging moderation on both sides, but his notion of moderation consists of demanding the Palestinians renounce their resistance to Israeli occupation, while making no demand that Israel end its occupation.

He doesn't even mention that Israel continues to build settlements on Palestinian land and to construct a massive wall incorporating large chunks of Palestinian territory inside Israel.

Aren't these aggressive actions part of the problem?

If Palestinians are going to be required to renounce violence — as they should be — shouldn't Israel also be required to renounce violence, and to stop building settlements and walls on Palestinian territory?

Rather than belittling others for allegedly failing to grasp our "democratic concepts," we could begin by showing we grasp these concepts ourselves.

"These are monies that belong to the Palestinians and should not be withheld," de Soto told Reuters one day after Israel's cabinet announced a permanent halt to the monthly transfer of about $50 million in tax revenues Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians.

Israel's government made the decision after Washington, the Jewish state's biggest ally, asked the Palestinian Authority to return $50 million of its own aid to ensure it does not reach Hamas. The Islamic group is sworn to Israel's destruction.

But de Soto said Israel's decision to withhold the money ran counter to the position taken last month by the so-called Quartet of major peace mediators — the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia.

"It follows that the formation of a new government and the approval of its program should be awaited and that actions prior to that would be premature," de Soto said.

In its January 30 statement, the quartet said Hamas would risk losing vital aid — when it formed a government — unless it rejected violence and recognized Israel.

Commenting on Israel's decision, White House spokesman Scott McClellan appeared to focus on the quartet's demands of Hamas rather than on the timing of the Israeli move.

"We'll stay in touch with Israel on these issues," McClellan said.

"I think that our view has been spelled out very clearly, not only from our government but in the statement of the quartet. This is really about Hamas and the choice that Hamas has before it," McClellan added.

One of the Palestinians, shot in the chest and stomach, was hospitalised after he and the two others were fired on as they threw stones at soldiers.

On Monday, the second day of the Israeli incursion into Balata, 17 Palestinians were wounded.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops found overnight a "laboratory containing materials and explosives for making bombs" and blew it up.

Also on Tuesday, Israeli forces arrested 11 militants, including six from Hamas, which won last month's Palestinian elections, and four from its smaller rival, Islamic Jihad.

The system has already been tested in the north of the country, and on Monday southern police carried out their first trial under blue skies and unremitting sunshine just outside Lehavim, north of Beersheba. The UAV, which is equipped with a camera, flew at a height of 6,000 feet and was impossible to see or hear despite the fine weather.

So when police stopped a number of offenders, their first reaction was to deny they had committed any traffic violations and to wonder how they had been seen.

Ch.-Supt. Ze'ev Guttman, the commander of the southern traffic police, explained that a policeman in a command center controls the UAV and its camera and informs the policemen on the ground of any violations.

"It gives us the opportunity to operate another, hidden dimension of enforcement," he said.

The patrolmen also have a screen with them, and there are systems that allow them to control the UAV and its camera from their car, and to replay video footage.

"The driver sometimes asks how he was spotted and the policeman can show him," said Guttman.

When asked if the police were becoming like Big Brother, he said, "No, we are just enforcing the law."

Elad Menashe of Yavne-based Aeronautics Defense Systems, which developed the system, said, "You photographed him. You can see him the whole way, show him where he carried out the violation, and then he has nothing to say."

The offenders who were stopped were let off with a warning, as the police were only testing the equipment and cannot use the pictures as evidence in court, said Guttman. Nevertheless, he was satisfied with the morning's work.

"We see that there is potential," he said. "Here we have seen that it does serve our purposes."

Menashe said the system, which has night vision, can also track stolen vehicles and provide traffic reports.

"A helicopter costs a lot of money. Its time in the air is limited because its fuel is limited. The UAV can be in the air for 12 hours and some can be in the air twice as long," he said.

The product has attracted interest from law-enforcement agencies in Europe and Africa, and the company also sells its products to militaries around the world, including the IDF, said Menashe.

However, the UAV's camera doesn't measure speed, although it can measure the time it takes for a car to travel a particular distance and provide its average speed, said Menashe.

It would add to the use of speed cameras, which could cut the high number of road deaths in the US if deployed extensively, a new report shows. The study, which was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, also recommended reducing speed limits, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said Monday.

The research was headed by the university's Prof. Elihu Richter and was carried out by teams from Hadassah and the University of Illinois School of Public Health.

Speed cameras are barely used in the US, where death tolls rose 15 percent on interstate highways following small increases in speed limits in the 1990s, the report said. This resulted in 450 to 500 more deaths each year. In Israel, road deaths increased 15% after speed limits were raised from 90 to 100 kph on three interurban highways in 1993.