you forget several things, the jews are from the middle east and left largely because of poor treatment (beheading, rapings, assorted thuggery at the hands of the muslims) then they were dhimmi, paying extra tax to the bully of the area. Lest we not forget the muslims are fighting the Hindus even more intensely and keep on a trashing Christianity.

They will have to admit that a government can exist within a thousand miles of them and have a different religion being in power. This is a problem unlikely to be solved until muslims can have a frank discussion on who runs their religion and stop the armed thugs from breaking into that meeting and shooting everyone. If Israel put down its guns there would be no Israel, if the arabs (palestinians just being a hybrid of a shifting nomadic community enticed by the economy of Israel and UN blind benevolence more carefully crafted than the jewish lobby) put donw their guns there would be peace.

I think you greatly over-estimate the innate desire to fight on the part of the jews, they really would rather have peace, they have been having their school buses and olympic athletes slaughtered by a certain group of people, so it's hard not to notice if you just flip the history book pages, that wait a minute the arabs have been doing this for 1300 years, whoa, you mean the arabs might be more irrational, what about the double standard that the jews are supposed to let themselves be killed so the arabs can win, just because they can outbreed the jews.

Democracy doesn't work in the arab world because they are nuts, and will just as gladly vote for a violent administration which will rob them blind as a peaceful one. But the religion of "peace" is really pretty violent, check mohammed's bio on wikipedia. They are trying to be like the main man. Any other country would have slaughtered or transferred the pals out.

England divided India and Pakistan, that was a much more major transfer.

Somehow the jews aren't allowed to live in the arab world at all anymore except morocco and Iran (persian), how did that get to be, oh yeah, they all got kicked out and their property taken. Sounds kind of like the Pals sob story, but why did the jews take in the refugees and buid a country while the arabs put them in camps in Saudi, Lebanon and Jordan. So basically 2% of the Middle East's population got two percent of the land (70% of palestine went to create jordan (and jews were prohibited). So how about this deal, the pals can live in Jordan and there will be a nice clean border, a river and the UN, EU and Saudi can make them millionaires with one condition, no weapons for you.

Then, if they want to visit Jerusalem they can pass through a metal detector. It only became holy to them hundreds of years after the prophet, and in order to fight a war. Who says Bush invented militarism or colonialism. Iran blasphemes the colonial approach and then participates in it.

But seriously folks, do the arabs get to kick the jews into a corner of the territory, make up evil stories abou them and they go on a killing spree, like the kind they like from ever closer boundaries, as we come to the conclusion that all property was stolen from a dead guy in every country. Double standard.

US would have slaughtered the pals for being so un-nice, how about the mufti of jerusalem, photo op and helper outer of the fuhrer. What is truly evil is the debate continues to be about what the jews have taken from muslims, and not vice versa. Is building a mosque on top of your temple and destroying many other artifacts and sites, really worse than a president walking onto a walkway near a holy site in the country he controls. Or the manufacture of the propoganda clip of the poor boy who only threw pebbles but got shot, and by his own pals. blame it on israel, no investigation, double standard.

how do you look in the mirror with this much double standard, there are so many human rights abuses in the arab world that make the israel-palestine conflict pale in comparison. Saddam killed a million, has Israel killed a million pals, no. Double standard. report both sides the same and check your facts. jenin massacre, made up, remember.

Don't believe the hype, don't repeat their propoganda without acknowledging the source. Take a look at the religion of peace and maybe you'd decide that they have acted poorly and don't deserve any more land anywhere, they have dozens of countries already, but they are so unhappy, because they don't have them all. what logic, but to not question it is a double standard.

UN rights commission, nothing on china, nothing on russia, only has violations in Israel, double standard.

The fact that Hamas has not perpetrated a single suicide attack for a whole year must be seen as absolute proof that Israel could live in virtually perfect peace if it ever decided to totally withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza AND started to treat its Palestinian neighbors as if they were a full fledged free country.

Maybe Israelis have forgotten what peace would be like after 60 years of fighting. If the New York metropolitan area were armed like Israel there would be 40 armored divisions roaming around there -- the Chicago metropolitcan area alone would have 18 such divisions, 10 more than the United States Army! Do Israelis want to go on living like this forever?

Let's make a them deal. :-) Withdraw 400,000 settlers from the West Bank and the USA will throw in a couple of million more Jews to help stave off their Arab population time bomb problem. If half the Jews in the world live in Israel in spite of the WW IV crazy life -- probably at least another quarter would move in if normalcy finally took hold.

We can possibly throw in a couple of million non-Jewish retirees from Europe who now live out their years in places like Algeria to stretch their pensions (but you'll have to keep prices down). I might retire there myself This would more westernize Israel without thinning its Jewishness as retirees would not want to become citizens -- as well as give European governments a bigger stake in Israel's safety.

Part of Israel's inability to see where its interests so clearly lie may stem schizophrenia. Maybe the state of Israel ought to go on Dr. Phil to help it stop swinging back and forth between visions of Jews running into trenches to be shot (Jewish helplessness) and visions of military invincibility (no need for cost benefit thinking) -- got to get Israel to come to rest at some rational point in between.

Arab helplessness can be seen in anything from firing primative rockets into Israel to plots to blow up NYC tunnels. Israel started Arab helplessness -- long overdue time for Israel to stop stoking Arab helplessness for no benefit to itself.

Having said all that, reporting the occupation as anything less than a cold blooded land grab is the very real equivalent of denying the holocaust.

The author makes much of the Hamas-Fatah agreement and its apparent committment to cease attacks across the green-line. Even if the agreement does support this interpretation, it seems highly unlikely that Hamas will honor it. The benefit of the Rocket attacks against Israel, at least until recently, was that they allowed Hamas to demonstrate that they are continuing the struggle against israel without incurring the retributive costs of say, a suicide attack. Unless Israel has actually suceeded in shifting the cost-benefit analysis for Hamas, any agreement is likely to be a dead letter.

When Hitler killed 6 million Jews -- did he drive a few million-more crazy (or at least neurotic)?

For decades, Israel has been busily shoving a tiny percentage (never double digits) of its small population in among a million howling West Bank dwellers -- causing a billion-plus Islamic sympathizers to howl -- and worse. This "never has so much been expended for so needlessly little" effort is called building "Greater Israel". Aren't Jews supposed to be smart?

"Greater Israel" is not taking up a few lots in a permanently hostile neighborhood. Sharon figured that out about Gaza.

One sure accomplishment of pulverizing Palestinians, year in and year out, is to ceaselessly remind the world of the unwholesome way Israel was made -- which Israel's supporters should not be too anxious to remind one and all of, day in and day out. A little Irish political savvy might be help here.

The Holocaust -- a few years after: Israel's founders succeed in establishing the state of Israel by force. A few stark survival wars later (to my amateur psychologist mind) too many, too often traumatized Israelis become totally fixated on military invincibility -- possibly to the point where they refuse to squarely face any realistic notion of vulnerability, from which rational assessments of cost/benefit -- as per above -- can flow.

Being Jews, not real Nazis, they wont finish off their opponents (West Bank residents), of course, only drive them daily to more homicidal rage -- in full knowledge that Palestinians and their world wide co-religionists have a theological template for violence. Maybe it is time to try being all-Jews again.

I always say: Too bad the Arabs don't have a template for politics, like the Irish. I can just see their Madison Avenue campaign now: "Imagine the uproar if China crisscrossed Tibet with Chinese-only roads.... ". I call them infidel-only roads to get a laugh and to avoid ugliness.

The quickest way for anyone to undermine support for Israel would be to widely disseminate (that is, throughout the USA) copies of the Oslo II treaty map: wherein Palestinians are herded into discontiguous ghettos -- nowhere adjacent to other national boundaries -- comprising 60% of West Bank land.

More revealing could be that, should every last Israeli settler vacate the West Bank -- under Oslo II -- said ghettos could still expect to sit surrounded by the 40% Israeli ruled land and sealed beneath 100% Israeli controlled airspace -- "Greater Israel" with no Jews -- Crazier Israel? [ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/israel/map/ ]

Israel has recently taken to starving the ghettos due to the newly elected Hamas government's reluctance to officially ratify the creation of Israel at its own people's expense -- though most reasonable observers agree they would leave Israel alone if Israel left them alone: so now it's Warsaw ghettos! Diagnosis: control frenzy?

Islamics and Jews who see this all as some kind of "manifest destiny" duel should consider that mono-theistic religions are supposed to focus on the next world -- as in sending your members to glory (instead of the other place).

Which is why Islamics can worry less over the withering of their once dominant empire. Ditto: if God wanted the Diaspora to end, Jews by the millions could conceivably have moved back into Palestine as friends, without necessarily establishing political boundaries -- if that was what God wanted.

In any case, it is long past time for Israel to learn to get along with the rest of the world. This means no more "Cask of Amontillado" walls. Israel cannot simply seal off Gaza in 2008 (as it projects) and leave a subject people with little or no sustaining means.

Israel's only practical -- and moral -- course must be to begin to treat their neighbors as well -- instead of as poorly -- as possible and hope they will respond peaceably -- as most rational observers expect they would. Don't almost all Israelis wish they could? Other nations -- just average nations -- treat their neighbors as well as possible all the time -- it happens everywhere. Can't Israelis, the miracle workers who "made the desert bloom", make everyday peace (the poem says only God can make a tree -- maybe He will help with peace too?)?

Maltreatment of Palestinians cannot stay permanently hidden from the eyes of an internet-age world. View a recent email from Israeli peace activists to Canadian sympathizers. Big brother lives right next door. [ http://www.geocities.com/liveletlive2001/letter_to_CUPE.htm ]

Israel's invincibility act has worked up to now largely because big brother happens to be invincible -- and, so far, realtively incurious. Big brother's support act could reach an uncomfortably quick finale should he begin to contemplate that he may have traded skyscrapers for settlements.

Irish IQ level: If you can get a billion, two hundred million Jews together to go pick a fight with six million Arabs -- morals aside -- you can drag us along. But, if the numbers look the other way around -- as big as we are -- we want out.

Denis Drew
Chicago
ddrew@comcast.net
www.purpleocean.com

When Hitler killed 6 million Jews -- did he drive a few million-more crazy (or at least neurotic)?

For decades, Israel has been busily shoving a tiny percentage (never double digits) of its small population in among a million howling West Bank dwellers -- causing a billion-plus Islamic sympathizers to howl -- and worse. This "never has so much been expended for so needlessly little" effort is called building "Greater Israel". Aren't Jews supposed to be smart?

"Greater Israel" is not taking up a few lots in a permanently hostile neighborhood. Sharon figured that out about Gaza.

One sure accomplishment of pulverizing Palestinians, year in and year out, is to ceaselessly remind the world of the unwholesome way Israel was made -- which Israel's supporters should not be too anxious to remind one and all of, day in and day out. A little Irish political savvy might be help here.

The Holocaust -- a few years after: Israel's founders succeed in establishing the state of Israel by force. A few stark survival wars later (to my amateur psychologist mind) too many, too often traumatized Israelis become totally fixated on military invincibility -- possibly to the point where they refuse to squarely face any realistic notion of vulnerability, from which rational assessments of cost/benefit -- as per above -- can flow.

Being Jews, not real Nazis, they wont finish off their opponents (West Bank residents), of course, only drive them daily to more homicidal rage -- in full knowledge that Palestinians and their world wide co-religionists have a theological template for violence. Maybe it is time to try being all-Jews again.

I always say: Too bad the Arabs don't have a template for politics, like the Irish. I can just see their Madison Avenue campaign now: "Imagine the uproar if China crisscrossed Tibet with Chinese-only roads.... ". I call them infidel-only roads to get a laugh and to avoid ugliness.

The quickest way for anyone to undermine support for Israel would be to widely disseminate (that is, throughout the USA) copies of the Oslo II treaty map: wherein Palestinians are herded into discontiguous ghettos -- nowhere adjacent to other national boundaries -- comprising 60% of West Bank land.

More revealing could be that, should every last Israeli settler vacate the West Bank -- under Oslo II -- said ghettos could still expect to sit surrounded by the 40% Israeli ruled land and sealed beneath 100% Israeli controlled airspace -- "Greater Israel" with no Jews -- Crazier Israel? [ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/israel/map/]

Israel has recently taken to starving the ghettos due to the newly elected Hamas government's reluctance to officially ratify the creation of Israel at its own people's expense -- though most reasonable observers agree they would leave Israel alone if Israel left them alone: so now it's Warsaw ghettos! Diagnosis: control frenzy?

Islamics and Jews who see this all as some kind of "manifest destiny" duel should consider that mono-theistic religions are supposed to focus on the next world -- as in sending your members to glory (instead of the other place).

Which is why Islamics can worry less over the withering of their once dominant empire. Ditto: if God wanted the Diaspora to end, Jews by the millions could conceivably have moved back into Palestine as friends, without necessarily establishing political boundaries -- if that was what God wanted.

In any case, it is long past time for Israel to learn to get along with the rest of the world. This means no more "Cask of Amontillado" walls. Israel cannot simply seal off Gaza in 2008 (as it projects) and leave a subject people with little or no sustaining means.

Israel's only practical -- and moral -- course must be to begin to treat their neighbors as well -- instead of as poorly -- as possible and hope they will respond peaceably -- as most rational observers expect they would. Don't almost all Israelis wish they could? Other nations -- just average nations -- treat their neighbors as well as possible all the time -- it happens everywhere. Can't Israelis, the miracle workers who "made the desert bloom", make everyday peace (the poem says only God can make a tree -- maybe He will help with peace too?)?

Maltreatment of Palestinians cannot stay permanently hidden from the eyes of an internet-age world. View a recent email from Israeli peace activists to Canadian sympathizers. Big brother lives right next door. [http://www.geocities.com/liveletlive2001/letter_to_CUPE.htm]

Israel's invincibility act has worked up to now largely because big brother happens to be invincible -- and, so far, realtively incurious. Big brother's support act could reach an uncomfortably quick finale should he begin to contemplate that he may have traded skyscrapers for settlements.

Irish IQ level: If you can get a billion, two hundred million Jews together to go pick a fight with six million Arabs -- morals aside -- you can drag us along. But, if the numbers look the other way around -- as big as we are -- we want out.

Denis Drew
Chicago
ddrew@comcast.net
www.purpleocean.com

I simply see no end to this conflict as both sides are committed to a radical, genocidal, and irrational religious mission: Zionism on the part of Israel, and the destruction of Israel on the part of the Palestinians. How can conflicting ideologies based upon religious irrationality ever be mediated? I think this is the fundamental quesiton, and one that I have never seen fully addressed.