[Abcdxxxx]

Burbank - Just a quick response to your last post - Rorschach's right. Israel grows more and more secular every year, both in lifestyle and lawmaking. Some are so sensitive to Israel's Jewishness that their flag alone offends them. Even agnostic Israeli's tend to have great love for the religious sites, but it's not like the entire nation is filled with Sunday school snobbery. Maybe your friend experienced some of the more hyprocritical fucked upness that does occur out there....like how people used to line the streets on Yom Kippur and throw rocks at anyone trying to drive on the holiday....mind you these people aren't religious themselves or they'd be in Temple praying, right? ... so it's obscene.... but it's one day a year.... it's not the normal climate there...and it's not government sanctioned. Think Detroit's Devils Night mixed with Boston's blue laws... and I'm not even sure that still goes on.

What impression do you actually have of the role religion plays in Israel's goverment anyway? Sharon's Likud, and the religious party are not one in the same....and when the Religious party walked out last summer not much changed at all. Their influence is minimal...and dropping rapidly.