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

Diplomats from a number of European countries and the UN have reacted angrily after Israeli soldiers intervened to prevent them delivering aid to Bedouins in the West Bank.

One French diplomat said she was forced to the ground from her vehicle.

French diplomat Marion Fesneau-Castaing told Reuters news agency: "They dragged me out of the truck and forced me to the ground with no regard for my diplomatic immunity.

"This is how international law is being respected here."

One European official described the Israeli actions as "shocking and outrageous".

A spokesman for the British Consulate General in Jerusalem said it was "concerned at reports that the Israeli military authorities have prevented the affected community from receiving humanitarian assistance".

The spokesman added: "We have repeatedly made clear to the Israeli authorities our concerns over such demolitions, which we view as causing unnecessary suffering to ordinary Palestinians; as harmful to the peace process; and as contrary to international humanitarian law."

UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator James Rawley said the Israeli authorities should "live up to their obligations as occupying power to protect those communities under their responsibility".

JERUSALEM - Israel on Sunday answered EU anger over the confiscation of humanitarian aid for Palestinians with accusations diplomats at the scene defied a court order and one struck a policeman.

"Diplomats are sent by their governments to be a bridge and not act as provocateurs," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"The European diplomats and their governments owe an explanation of this blatant violation of diplomatic codes of conduct," it said.

"Israel has already made it clear that it will not accept this misconduct. Israel's response will reflect the seriousness of these violations."

Foofie wrote:

Well, I did learn that in the US military I was just another enlisted person. Only in civilian life is there the oftentimes jousting for who is higher on a pecking order in society. It is just one of my talents to see through people's phoniness. I'm inured though at this point. And, I can give it right back. You I do not need to know.

Well, who are you, Holden Caulfield?

Salinger excluded a paranoia, though.

Just don't pull a Chapman, and it'll all be alright, relatively speaking.

Foofie wrote:

I wish you would find birds of your own feather, and stop annoying some of us Americans with your cross-pond pontificating.

I wish you'd find people on your level. That way you wouldn't keep pestering those of us who understand what's going on by constantly asking for things to be dumbed down.

We all know foofie is an idiot when he assumes it takes a college education to have knowledge.

Fluff has a deeply ingrained inferiority complex towards the British. He talks about how impressed he is by a British accent and waxes lyrical when talking about BBC newsreaders whilst at the same time trying to evict me from A2K on the grounds that I'm not American. He used to ask me what class I was, and now he's asking about my academic career. I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of an answer. He's more fun when he's being neurotic as his two posts on the N. Carolina nuke thread ably demonstrate.

You might be projecting some feelings about the British and their faded glory,

re Foofie:
Izzy is completely welcome here, as is anybody else anywhere in the world, and is completely welcome to venture his own opinions, which are usually well-informed. You are not the arbiter of who can post here, Foofie. Considering the insularity of your own opinion, I would think you would welcome input from other countries. And, not to put too fine a point on it, it was the Brits' ill-founded Balfour Declaration that helped set the whole Middle East debacle in motion, not to mention the Zionist terror campaign against the Palestine Mandate, so Izzy has a double historical stake here.

That's a bit like saying none of us had a personal stake in the apartheid state of South Africa, so we should just have butted out. It was world prssure and world economic boycotts that helped convince the brutal government there that it had to change. As yoou may have noticed from those NASA photographs, we all live on the same big blue ball, and that's the only place we live. We all have a stake in all of it, Izzy included, and the Brits included.

Well, as the basic training sergeant giving us young recruits a 2 a.m. arrival briefing said: M.Y.O.B. (Mind Your Own Business) will get you through the next four years.

Best advice I every got. Especially, since so many "smart" Jewish friends from high school were concerned about this and that in the world, and just antagonizing all the conservative Goyim (circa 1966) .

So, I internalized that advice, and have had an easier life. So, I do not believe we all have a personal stake in what goes on elsewhere.