ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

Respect, George.

Some Israelis present a very valid argument for not withdrawing from the WB. The argument is that such a withdrawal will transform all of Israel into a Siderot (a target for untold thousands of rockets and shells). Then, the targets would include such places as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the international airport, etc.. It seems that when Israel withdraws from Arab territory (e.g., Lebanon and Gaza), the Arabs use the evacuated areas for shelling and rocketing Israel.

People forget that the Pals have always insisted on a right of return (which is tantamount to the destruction of Israel). Arafat said he walked from Camp David because he didn't get that right. Considering this, the hope for peace is dim.

Pals have no reservations about attacking little children.


Israeli Teen Dies in West Bank Ax Attack MATTI FRIEDMAN, AP

(April 2) - An ax-wielding Palestinian militant entered a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Thursday and went on a rampage, killing an Israeli teenager and wounding a young boy before fleeing the area.
Authorities said a manhunt was under way for the assailant, who was believed to have been wounded by security guards.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the militant used the ax and a knife in the attack in Bat Ayin, a settlement south of Jerusalem. "No shots were fired," he said.
Security guards wounded the attacker before he fled, said Shaul Goldstein, a settler leader. "The security team here managed to shoot and hit the terrorist, but he managed to escape," he told Army Radio.
Skip over this content Police and military units were searching for the attacker, according to Rosenfeld and army officials. Israeli TV showed images of a large group soldiers in combat gear gathered at an intersection, and the army said all roads around the settlement were closed.
Rescuers on the scene told Israel Radio that a 13-year-old boy was killed and a 7-year-old boy was badly wounded. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The attack was likely to heighten tensions between the Palestinians and Israel's new hard-line government, which has already voiced skepticism about peace negotiations in its first days in office.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was elected to office on a campaign that criticized his predecessor's peace negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Netanyahu has said he will still seek peace, but has given few details about his vision for a final agreement. He has specifically refused to endorse the idea of an independent Palestinian state " a key demand of the Palestinians and the centerpiece of U.S. diplomacy in the region.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said Israeli concessions to the Palestinians would only bring more war. He also rejected the previous government's peace talks, launched at a U.S.-sponsored conference in 2007.

Netanyahu hasn't commented publicly on Lieberman's statement. But a close Netanyahu ally, Cabinet minister Gilad Erdan, said Thursday that Lieberman's comments reflected the position of the prime minister's Likud Party.
Israel's former chief peace negotiator, Tzipi Livni, said Lieberman's scathing rejection of recent negotiations shows the new government is not a partner for peace with the Palestinians.
"What happened yesterday is that the Israeli government announced that Israel isn't relevant, isn't a partner," Livni told Army Radio.
The appointment of the ultranationalist Lieberman has angered Palestinians and raised international concerns because of his hard-line positions on peace and an election campaign that was widely seen as racist.
His comments on Wednesday signaled a difficult road ahead for President Barack Obama's Mideast policy, especially its push for a Palestinian state.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Lieberman early Thursday, according to Lieberman spokeswoman Irena Etinger. The conversation was conducted in a "good atmosphere," and the two agreed to meet as soon as possible, Etinger said. She would not say what issues were discussed.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Lieberman's remarks were an insult to the world powers pushing for peace.
"He has slammed the door in the face of the U.S. and the international community," Erekat said. "It seems to me that this is President Obama's first real test."

I read this story this morning and wondered how it was being reported as fact that the assailant was a Palestinian, given that they didn't find him. But even if it was, you've just again taken the actions of one person and projected them onto the entire population of Palestinians. Should we take the actions of Baruch Goldstein and project them onto the Israelis?

Advocate, You are ignoring all the casualty stats of Israel that shows the number of children killed on both sides. Until you can reconcile those numbers with some humanity and logic, there are still many more Palestinian children killed by the Israelis, and those numbers keep climbing. So, who's the terrorists here?

Perhaps some forget it, but I don't think most with some knowledge of the situation in the Middle East do so. Frankly, I don't see any moral inferiority to the Palestinian claim for the right of those wrongfully displaced from home, hearth and property just a generation ago, to return to their homeland when compared to the insistence of Israel that Jews throughout the world have an unlimited right to a (usually subsidized) 'return' to a Jewish homeland (aliyah) their ancestors left almost two thousand years ago.

Your insistence that a Palestinian right of return would necessarily be "tantamount to the destruction of Israel" is at best a metaphor for the likely creation of a mixed population which would then demand the creation of a pluralistic social and political structure in Israel, resulting in (horror of horrors!) equal treatment of Jews and non Jews alike. This is not at all the same thing as destruction. Indeed it is the normal condition of Advocate's own country, the United States - not to mention that it is also increasingly the norm for all modern states. I'm not aware that it has brought any harm to our country or even stood in the way of the growth of a prosperous and thriving Jewish population here, larger, incidently than that of Israel, and one that contributes substantially to our own common culture.

The big difference is that Israel doesn't target children and other innocents.

Probably (mostly) true. However, as the mortality data over the past four decades has clearly shown, far more Palestinian "innocents" have been killed than Israeli.

Moreover, you fail to acknowledge the suffering and injury inflicted on the Palestinian population every day by the wrongful political and economic oppression Israel has inflicted on them (and asserts it will continue).

Again, if the Palestinians didn't place their ammunition and rocket launchers and launch their rockets from the midst of civilian population, no Palestinians innocents would have been killed. If the Palestinians took any measures to protect their people as the Israelis do, far fewer innocents would have been killed.

The Israelis provide air raid warnings and bomb shelters for their people as well as trying to take out the rocket launchers and ammo as much as they can. Otherwise the Israelis would have far more innocents killed.

I suppose that would make some people think it was at least more fair, but how silly is that? The Palestinians are deliberately targeting innocents. The Israelis are not.

Points to your response to my post:

1. The Germans and Japanese signed peace treaties, agreed to cease hostilities, and made that stick. Had they not, I think even you would have to agree that the situation there would have been much different. Perhaps not all that much different than the situation the Israelis have with the Palestinians. And, I think if the Germans were hellbent on destroying the USA, we wouldn't much care whether the Germans were our friends or not. By the end of the war we were a much more powerful force with much more ability to kill Germans than Germans had the ability to kill us, but we would do what we felt we had to do to prevent German aggression just the same. I think only the most anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian fanatic would not see that there is at least some truth to that.

2. No false statement. Egypt is not the Palestinians. And Egypt did sign a peace treat with Israel, acknowledged its right to exist, and agreed to demilitarize the Sinai in return for Israel returning the Sinai to Egypt. And Egypt kept their end of the bargain. The Palestinian leadership has agreed to no such peace treaty and when Israel has ceded any land back to the Palestinians anyway, the Palestinian militants have used that land to launch new attacks against Israel. Would you at least admit that much?

3. Again, no false statement. Israel does what it feels it needs to do to protect its civilian population. The Palestinians had conducted suicide bombings and sabotage at regular intervals the whole time. It was only when Israel restricted the movement of the Palestinians and finally built the wall that the suicide bombings have mostly stopped.

Yes there have been excesses and improper conduct on the Israeli side. But as long as the bleeding hearts refuse to grant Israel a credible side in the conflict and acknowledge their right to do what they must to protect their people from those determined to murder them, there will be no peace possible. On what planet does a viable government not do what it can to protect its people from those who wish to murder them? As long as you or anybody else refuse to see Israel's side of the conflict, and continue to make them the primary villain, there will be no peace.



You sound like the looney left here putting thoughts into my head that I don't think and words into my mouth that I haven't said.

Let's keep this really simple. The Israelis have the right to do whatever they have to do to keep Palestinian militants from murdering innocent Israelis. There is no way to distinguish a Palestinian militant from an innocent Palestinian, and, since the militant Palestinians intentionally place themselves among the innocents with the intention that those innocents will be killed or injured--the militants then use such casualties for propaganda purposes--the Israelis have no choice but to consider all Palestinians as potential enemy until that situation no longer exists.

The Israelis have two choices. Fight and take measures to protect its citizens or not fight and take measures to protect its citizens. To fight means that Palestinian civilians are in harms way. To not fight subjects Israeli civilians to continuous rocket attacks, suicide bombers, and sabotage.

At such time as the Palestinians do what Egypt did--make peace--and Israel does not reciprocate appropriately, then I will be on the Palestinian side 100%. Until then, Israel has valid grievances and I frankly cannot understand how intelligent people are unable to see that.

You have taken some of my statements out of context and misrepresented them. You are accusing me of what I am not guilty and you have taken some of my statements out of context as illustration while omitting my statements that clearly qualify the others and show your accusations to be false.

I have extensively read the history of this conflict and I am well aware of bad acts conducted by Israel and the element of fanatical Zionism that is not reasonable and is racist. I have also extensively read the history of the United States along with its bad acts and fanaticisms that are not reasonable. I don't condemn all of Israel because of its bad acts or unreasonable elements any more than I condemn the United States for its bad acts or unreasonable elements. I believe both have more to commend them than to condemn them.

For me, the bottom line is that Israel has committed no bad acts sufficient to have its innocent men, women, and children targeted for injury, maiming, murder, extermination. And I believe that if Palestinian militants would simply acknowledge that and agree to make peace with Israel and allow Israel to exist in peace, nobody would be getting killed or maimed or injured.

Again, if the Palestinian leadership would agree to that--REALLY agree to that followed by removing a commitment to destroy Israel from their charters/constitutions/manifestos or whatever each group calls the documents that govern them--REALLY agree to that by standing down, removing the rocket launchers, and ceasing the bombings and sabotage--REALLY agree to that by acknowledging Israels right to exist in peace. . . .

If the Palestinian leadership did that and Israel did not become a peaceful and friendly neighbor to the Palestinians, THEN I will join you in condemning Israel.

Until then, I think Israel has no obligation to allow militant Palestinians to murder and main Israeli innocents, and you and others who seem to place all or most of the blame on Israel are the blind ones.

Just a small correction: Germany never signed a peace treaty after WWII, never, until today (April 2, 2009), with none of the Allies.


Nor did any of the (Western) Allies sign one with us. (But Russia and the GDR did.)

Yes you are correct. An unconditional surrender is not the same thing as a peace treaty and I should have made that distinction. Had your German leadership refused to do that and were on record as intending the destruction of the USA or any of the allies, however, I think the history would read much differently than it does.

It is as foolish to condemn Israel for the indefensible part of its past as it is to condemn Germany for its indefensible history or the USA for its indefensible history. I imagine we would be hard put to find any nation without such history.

The attitudes, behaviors, and attitudes that exist now are what we should judge each nation/people on.

How could Germany even contemplate the "destruction of the USA" after WWII? They were completely demolished as a country, and wasn't in any condition to make threats against anyone.

And don't you forget it Walter !!!

I won't. (But some, if not many, Germans regard the 1990 Settlement as equivalent to a peace treaty. - As an aside: only then [sic!] the death penalty in the American Sector of [West-] Berlin was repealed, for instance for carrying knives ... .)

News of today: Lieberman has been questioned for more than eight hours by the National Fraud Unit and Lahav 433, the anti-organized crime unit.

It could well be that they'll have to look for a new foreign minister in Israel soon ...

I will add my two cents at this juncture, since there is a line of reasoning I do not believe I have yet seen here. Even if it was possible to "add" land to that part of the world, so both Israel and the Palestineans could both have countries as large as Texas, I truly believe, the Arabs/Palestineans will continue to want to wage war on Israel for the simple reason that Israel shows up the shortcomings of Arabs developing their respective countries - democratically, economically, and societally (women's rights, gay rights, minority religious rights).

Few may like a neighbor that is living in another century (the present).

I believe the only solution would be to "deflate" both populations by the west offering both Israel and Palestineans a better life in the west. In other words, make Israel and the Palestinean territories more like the towns that once had large populations, but due to changing technology, etc., are currently a fraction of its population, during its heyday. For all the world-wide rhetoric about Israel, how many western nations would be willing to open their borders to these people?

So, would the comments above mean that the Palestineans have every right to target children and other innocents, since they do not have the ability to wage effective war?

Let us just assume for once that until there is a peace settlement, if ever, the two adversaries are actually enemies. Not friendly neighbors, but actual enemies. What do enemy states do from time immemorial? Well, to paraphrase (or quote?) a line from the movie Patton: kill the bastards.

Being in a nuclear age, it appears to me that many do not want to sit by and watch, since the concern with hostilities is that it can escalate to a nuclear level. So, much concern over "peace" may be self-serving concerns. And, the quickest way to truncate the possibility of escalation is to blame the victim, when the perpetrator is totally recalcitrant with no learning curve.

Foofie, The Jews create their own enemies when they treat Palestinians like third class citizens without equal legal rights, and their lands are stolen.

You can't figure that out for yourself?

The Palestinian Arabs treat themselves "like third class citizens without equal rights." They act like they are not responsible for the crimes committed by those among them committing crimes against the Israelis. Yes, their land was stolen by the Israelis. But it was stolen by the Israelis in reaction to the protracted and repeated efforts by Palestinian Arabs to steal land from the Israelis.