Not Long ago, during a debate that took place on Facebook, I experienced my first death threat. It went something like this:

“Roi, i know what i am talking about…Islam will win at the last, u r the brother of begs and monkeys u r masters u r full of hatred for us. god will help us to fight u, i will look for u in the war and kill u, u r going to hell, promise me if we live tell this moment to find me and i will show u i will cut u 1000 pieces.”

This Muslim man was responding to a series of comments I made about how Jews and Israelis are not evil. It seems that just pointing out that Jews are not monsters, that they don’t enjoy killing children, and that there are not bent on fanatically destroying the Muslim world can get a brother killed.

The blog entry that provoked the death threat read:

“Asem, as I showed you below, you really do not know what you are talking about. You are ignorant, irrational, fanatical and full of hate. There is no point in our conversations - they are a waste of time. I can respect and learn from a position that is different from mine own when I think the person talking with me is knowledgeable and smart. You, however, are neither. So lets end here.”

Now I am not sure if it was the death threat, or just my need to...

Whither you believe that the Holocaust was a myth, or that Israel is a Nazi state (perhaps both), this was the week for you.

Exhibit A: Lauded Holocaust memoir turns out to be a fabrication.

In her book, Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years, author Misha Defonseca tells the heart- wrenching story of how, as a young girl, she survived the Nazi era: How she tracked across Europe in search of her parents, lived with a pack of wolves, and knifed a Nazi solider in the Warsaw Ghetto. Defonseca's book, which Eli Wiesel called “very moving”, has been translated into 18 languages and made into a film in France.

The Problem: Last week Defonseca admitted that her memoir was a fabrication. The author, who is not Jewish, and whose real name is Monique De Wael, claims that since her factual parents died as Belgian partisans during WII, she has always identified with and imagined herself to be a Jewish victim of Nazism.

In a statement released by Defonseca’s lawyers to AP, she states: "This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving…I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed. I beg you to put yourself in my place, of a 4-year-old girl who was very lost."

A Personal Note: Dear Misha, It is really hard to forgive what you have done. You have walked around us pretending to be a Jew. Pretending to be a survivor no less. You have spoken...

Israel: Bookworm or Maggot?

By Roi Ben-Yehuda

Israel is a bookish country. Its historical roots are traced in a book; its people have been called the “people of the book”; and its founding father, Theodore Herzl, a playwright, liked to write books.

There is something literary, even fantastical, about the existence of Israel. Who else but a playwright would have thought it possible to bring to life a 2000-year-old wish? To revive a people and their disused language? And to transform a barren landscape and make a desert bloom?

One of my favorite facts about Israel is that it leads the world in per-capita new book titles per year. Over 4000 titles a year. Not just any book titles – works by such literary luminaries as Amos Oz, David Grossman, Abraham Yehoshua, Etgar Keret, Aharon Appelfeld, Anton Shammas and Sayed Kashua.

By any measurable criteria, Israel is a bookworm’s fantasy. Yet, to an increasing number of persons around the world, Israel is, metaphorically speaking, more like a maggot than it is a bookworm.

The ‘Israel is a maggot’ crowd has recently come out in protest over Italy’s decision to honor Israel’s cultural achievements at this year’s Turin International Book Fair. Lead by theologian Tariq Ramadan and pundit Tariq Ali, left-wing Italian intellectuals, and Muslim authors in the Diaspora and Arab world have called for a boycott of the event.

The justifications given in favor of the boycott are of two kinds: The first unequivocally rejects the celebration of...

Say "No!" to the Sharia Proposal, but "Yes!" to Islam.

By Roi Ben-Yehuda

In an interview that raised many eyebrows, Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury (a man with formidable eyebrows of his own) announced that the partial introduction of sharia into the British legal system was both unavoidable and desirable.

t was unavoidable because under the British Arbitration Act – which allows civil disputes to be arbitrated by a third party - faith-based adjudication of family law already takes place (the Jewish court, or beit din, being the clearest example). It was desirable because according to the Archbishop allowing Muslims to use state-sanctioned religious courts would aid the process of social cohesion.

The archbishop’s comments set off a firestorm of debate. While there have been some voices of support, most of the reactions, from the office of the Prime Minster to the local pub, have been decidedly negative.

The main argument employed against the proposal is based on the principle that there should be one law for all without exception. That the very identity of a nation is bound up in the law, and that by allowing a plurality of legal systems the thread which unites all British citizens will be lost.

Muslim reaction to the Sharia proposal has been interesting as well. Some civic organizations, such as the Muslim Council of Britain , have issued a statement in support of the sharia proposal. Yet many others, especially in the world of the blogosphere, have come out...