I think my house is bigger than Palestine.

The mass murder of Berbers was perpetrated about two centuries later by the Shi’a Fatimid dynasty, which hated the Berbers for being Sunni.

Which I think has certainly become too proscriptive…. and politicised… as a means of overpowing anyone else whom doesn’t agree.

Was this what their prophet had in mind at the start…

I think you mean polygyny (one man, several wives). Polyandry (one woman, several husbands) is not permitted in Islam (or in the vast majority of other human cultures).

Thersites: One reason why the conquest of Spain failed was internecine warfare between the arabs and berbers.

I’d suggest that dependence on ‘barbarian’ mercenaries was the downfall of many a Middle Eastern empire.

As you rightly mention, al-Andalus was torn apart by its Berber mercenaries, but did you also know that the Umayyad caliphate in Damascus was largely destroyed by Persian heavy cavalry (who were little changed from their Sassanid predecessors), and that once the Abbasids lost the old Persian cavalry country they resorted to Turkish mercenaries, and were ultimately puppetized by them.

Firstly, the English-speaking peoples in North America and in Australia pursued essentially genocidal policies against the indigenous peoples in those regions. However it didn’t stop Aboriginal words entering the English language (mostly relating to flora and fauna, or to Aboriginal life).

Secondly, the Arabic influence isn’t the only reason why Spanish is different from French. French was also influenced by non-Latin languages – the ancient Gauls counted in twenties, and this is still reflected in modern French “soixante, soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, quatre-vingt-dix”. French was also influenced by the Germanic languages, this is why French (alone among modern major Romance languages) requires explicit subject pronouns.

In addition, Vulgar Latin (the predecessor of the modern Romance languages spoken by ordinary Romans, as opposed to literary Classical Latin – think of the difference between dialectal Arabic and Qur’anic Arabic for a comparison) was not uniform throughout the Empire. In Italia and Gaul the people used plus for “more” and habere for “to have” (which ultimately became più and avere in Italian and plus and avoir in French), while in Hispania they used magis for “more” and tenere for “to have” (leading to modern más and tener).

In addition, all modern Romance languages smashed the Latin case system, but Italian based its plurals on the Latin nominative case changing -o (Latin -us) to -i and -a to -e (Latin -ae), while the others based its plurals on the Latin accusative case, ultimately simplifying to the addition of an -s (or -es for Spanish words ending in a consonant). Also, the Latin terminals were more thoroughly smashed in French than in the other Romance languages – Latin lupus and luna became lupo and luna in Italian, lobo and luna in Spanish, but loup and lune (silent “e”) in French.

John Palubiski: Every heard the expression “tete de ble”? It’s french for “head of wheat”. It’s a term of endearment Berbers often use among themselves to desgintate those in the community who’ve blond hair. “Blondie”.

I can’t believe that in such a sunny region that the indigenous population would be blonde. It is far more likely that blonde “Berbers” are actually the descendents of Europeans who were enslaved by the Barbary Pirates.

The treatment of the conquered by Europeans in the Americas shows that moral considerations didn’t count for much there either.

No, I think the main legitimator for Israel in the West runs along the lines that “The Jews are a nation, and therefore deserve their own state as do any other nation”.

Anti-Zionists are either anti-Semites (Jew-haters), or they are people who are ideologically hostile to the entire nation-state idea (eg Communists, some Islamists)