You say “But I think almost everyone who takes their religion seriously today, in any religion, understands the context of human understanding in which those texts were produced”. Almost everyone? Consider (in a less emotive issue) the proportion of US Christians who reject Darwin: almost 50%.

If individuals (whether a minority or not) can be charged for hate speech, or inciting violence, (and Ruddock was trying to change these laws so that the “reasonable listener” test was irrelevant, the speaker/publisher needing to take into account the resulting actions of irrational audiences) then quoting texts like Joshua with approval, the slaughter of people because they are not Jewish, and implying that this is the will of a deity and therefore a good thing, is not different to the mad mullahs (who ARE charged) claiming that it is ok to kill unbelievers.

Further, as Zionists (whether Israeli or US christians) demand that leaders in the moslem world to explicitly reject violence and the so-called “sword verses” of the Q’ran, then Zionists cannot object to any demand that Israeli leaders explicitly and publicly reject Joshua.

Without explicit rejections of the “genocide verses” of Jewish and Christian texts, Zionist attitudes will continue to be fostered. Such rejections won’t solve the problem, but they will help to moderate it.