Why does everything have to be God vs Dawkins?

Well said. Tolerance is a key value, and one too often neglected in the current debate. Dialogue rather than diatribes should rule the day.

Finally, a realistic view on the situation in both the Middle East confliict and Barenboim's attempt to "save" the people from annihilating each other. Indeed, a balance needs to be struck between reconciliation and promoting one people's interest at the expense of the other's. The answer is not to bash the Israeli people for any mistakes they have made in the past with respect to their Paliestian neighbors. Both people have the right to maintain their respective cultures and religions, without one ceding to the other.

I'd better post this for your earlier review for the Divan, but, as far as I know, no one except I have pointed out that Prom's 'Fidelio' had changed Edward Said original narrations.

Worth cheking them out.

Yoshiyuki Mukudai
http://www.youtube.com/user/MukudaiYoshiyuki

Oh, come on. Israel is a secular society in which the vast majority don't practice Judaism in any structured or organized way. That is where the religious conflict lies between the two cultures, not between the two religions (insofar as religion is an issue in the conflict at all -- it's certainly not at the "root" of it). Religious observance (not necessarily belief) is a part of Palestinian identity to a far greater extent than it is to most Israelis. Fiona Maddocks mistakenly assumes a symmetry of religions, and of the respective religious conditions of the two groups -- and you don't appear to have given that any consideration.