Can you look at this map and say Israel does not systemically appropriate land?

I'm confused.. My aunt is Jewish and married to an Arab Palestinian who is my favorite uncle. I don' t wan't for anyone to take advantage of anyone. They're both lovely. I want all my cousins to be happy and live....words of my niece....from the mouth of babes....

It's not; the US is the only country where the CEO's earn 300 times the average pay of their company. The US is the only country where wealth has shifted to the top 20% who now own 80% of the assets.

You're not keeping an eye on your own economic status; believe it or not, you've been losing buying power for the last 3 - 4 decades now - and that's if you consider yourself middle class.

No need; we "see" the self-perceptions of Jews regularly here on a2k. Iranians are only but a sub-note to the real news coming from Israel on a daily basis.

As you were saying about Islam and Muslims?

Yes that is true. Take Saudi Arabia for example. Saudi Arabia practices Shariah Law. In Shariah Law a rapist, killer, homosexual, kidnapper, drug smuggler gets their head chopped off in public. Adulterers are stoned to death. Thieves get their hand or foot chopped off on the third offense. Women and men who commit fornication are whipped 100 times in public since virginity is important for both men and women until marriage in Islam. This deters crime because of the severe penalties for certain crimes and scares the entire citizens of the country making it safe to live in. You don't need to worry about being killed for your money or for just stepping outside your door. You can carry $200 or more in your pocket and can go outside without having to worry about someone robbing you for your cash. Now look at the USA. If you rape someone then you go to jail for 25 years which means you'll be out in 15 for good behavior and then that person will continue to rape other women until he dies. Or the woman might be afraid to testify against her rapist because she is afraid that when he gets out he'll kill her. You can be shot for just stepping outside your house or over $1.00 in the USA! How does this make the USA safe? The USA has the highest crime rate in the world. If the USA implemented Shariah Law the USA would be a lot safer. The USA is concerned about human rights in other countries but they don't bother to protect their own citizens from crime. Also about the high birth rate in Muslim countries. In Islam family is very important and so Muslims are encouraged to have large numbers of children. Not only to spread Islam faster but the main reason is if the husband dies the eldest son can get a job and provide for his widowed mother and orphaned siblings. Whereas in the USA most couples only have 1-2 children and then quit having kids. When the couple dies the children are split up and thrown in foster care or a realative takes only one child in and not the other. If the father died then the widowed wife would have to work the rest of her life to take care of her children and she would be miserable because she would never see her children and no man in the USA wants to marry a woman who has kids.

True, but your claim was about Muslims and their crimes

Relatively speaking, most of the countries with Muslims are peaceful ones, and crime doesn't even come close to the US ratio.

I notice this with you, and some others, that when you lose the thrust of an argument, you revert to personal vituperation.

There's a certain immorality in that,

as well as lack of intellectual rigour.

For all the rhetoric coming from the Israeli side that they don't target civilians, their actions speak louder than their words.

The numbers speak for themselves. 73% of the dead Palestinians are civilians, 94% of the dead Israelis are soldiers. For all of Israel's spin and mendacity, it's clear which side is targeting civilians.

Israelis wear uniforms.

Really? I'd thought only those in the forces, police etc.

For Israel, this is a war against Hamas that started a few weeks ago. Outsiders increasingly see it as war against Gaza for years, and against Palestinians for decades

Protective Edge, the war between Israel and Hamas, has received some legitimacy from key Israeli allies; both the US and Europe have observed Israel's right to defend itself against rockets and terror infiltration through tunnels. But from the start, the life span of that support was bound to be short. As a brief ceasefire was reached on Saturday, it may already be waning.

The reason can be summed up as follows: the immediate casus belli – Hamas aggression – appears to justify Israel's actions. But on closer inspection, threats against civilians fade compared to actual carnage among civilians – Palestinians. Zooming out, the long-term context of the conflict is increasingly indefensible. Yet Israel's argument for the war depends on immediate justifications and ignores the context. To compensate, Israel is fixated on narrative, in the deep conviction that a campaign of slogans and images, known as "hasbara", will work.
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For Israel, this is a war against Hamas that started a few weeks ago. Outsiders increasingly see it as war against Gaza for years, and against Palestinians for decades. In that environment, it doesn't matter who fired at the UN school.

People were killed because of a war, because of the big picture, which doesn't favour Israel. Not wishing to address the big picture, Israel has embraced hasbara to explain its pinpointed strikes. The strategy fails on multiple levels.

In general, Israeli hasbara observes only those short-term arguments for the war. But it drills down even further, to explain tactics and incidents. The UN school, like other cases before it, could be reduced to a whodunnit in the grimmest of games: Who fired the shot? Did Palestinians doctor the photos? Evidence-doubting is becoming a favourite game.

But as the war heats up, the global media pay closer attention to the whole situation. The world is able to pan out to see the whole picture, while Israel is zeroing in.

Another problem is that hasbara serves up pith instead of policy. From its Twitter account, the IDF offers these formulations: "Hamas does not exist for the people of Gaza; it abuses its people in order to exist."

"Israel uses its weapons to protect civilians; Hamas uses its civilians to protect weapons."

The slogans are augmented by flashy graphics that could grace a magazine but are no substitute for solutions. Netanyahu may know that the cartoon bomb he flashed in his 2012 United Nations speech about the Iranian nuclear threat yielded jokes. This time, no one is laughing.

Worse still, the scent of hasbara taints even clearly legitimate actions. Thus: "IDF soldiers were rushed by a female suicide bomber in Gaza. They were able to neutralise the threat," reads another message. Surely everyone can agree on the need to kill a suicide bomber before she strikes, if necessary. But the euphemistic self-justifications that are so overused in far less clear situations can cause momentary doubt even here.

By ignoring and perpetuating the long-term conflict, obsessively reading only the very, very short term, and by dressing up its actions in cheap linguistic clothes, Israel's communications may backfire among precisely those who need to be convinced.

There are two paths to understanding this conflict – Israel's and those seen by the outside world. Increasingly, they do not cross.

Killing so many children for their fight against Hamas can't be excused. Why so many are silent against this massacre is the mystery.

Look at the numbers. Those countries may have higher crime rates, but that's a small ratio of Muslims in the world.

Did you look at the crimes committed in the US? Most are perpetrated by whites.