Israel's time to sink or swim?

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#1

This is coming from a non-Jew who in 1967 offered himself to fight in what turned out to be a war which was over a couple of days later (another lucky escape for a foolish boy!), and who subsequently has learnt a lot more about the history of Israel and who has seen its usually disgraceful actions in the succeeding forty years.

Frankly, I’m sick of the arrogance of the Israelis and their intransigent refusal to consider anything except grabbing more land and keeping the poor bloody Palestinians out of their homeland.

I don’t want my nation to support them any more and I don’t think any other nation should.

If they had to stand on their own feet for a change, instead of having the US and other nations to back them up, they might stop being the rabid little terrier of the Middle East that causes a lot more trouble than they’re worth.

#2

Well, they did mistreat the Palestineans from day one.

I think the post-war psyche of the Israelis was one of ‘Do unto others as they would do unto you!’

They obviously had a lot of international sympathy, and much of it was from the British.

One would think that after what they went through at the hands of the Germans and Russians, that they would be a little more sympathetic to the Palestineans.

If the Arab nations surrounding Israel are intent upon its destruction, then I think that that calls for harsh measures. However, I don’t think that those harsh measures should necessarily fall on the palestineans. Furhtermore, I think that the Palestineans ought to be looking to come to some sort of accord with Israel, that isn’t directed by thee anti-Israeli fanatisism of Syria and its allies.

The capture of the Sinai in 1967 enabled Israel to concentrate its forces against Syria in the Golan, in 1973, before turning on the Egyptions. If not for that buffer (i.e. the Siani, the Egyptions would have been attackign directly into Israel as they were planning on doing via the Gaza Strip in 1967), they would have had to fight a war on two fronts, for which they had not the resourses and, furthermore, would have been more than likely overwhelmed and destroyed. The Golan itself, was of great strategic value, again, offering a buffer against Syrian invasion before the Syrians were able to enter the Israeli heartland.

The Syrians attacked the Golan with 1200 tanks in 1973. Once through the Israeli defences, they would have run amok.

Sorry for waffling, had one or two pints of ale. :slight_smile:

#3

The problem the Israelis have is that they are surrounded by people who would cheerfully exterminate them if given the opportunity - and have tried to do so on a regular basis. For a people who had that attempted on them shortly before their homeland was set up, and while they were defenceless, this has an understandably strong effect. Nowadays Israel is (perhaps rightly) criticised heavily for “playing the Holocaust card”, but I guarantee you if someone had tried to exterminate your entire people, and others were loudly proclaiming that as their aim you’d take it very seriously, and probably very violently.

#4

I understand that, and they’re certainly compelling arguments for many Israelis and for the international community not to withdraw support and perhaps faciliate a new Holocaust, but I’ve reached a point of extreme frustration where I think Israel has had more than a fair run of international sympathy and support while, along with Arafat and others, letting every opportunity for peace slip through its fingers.

The Holocaust argument is understandable, as is the fact that Zionism long preceded Hitler out of a desire for a Jewish homeland where they wouldn’t be subject to the often violent discrimination they suffered throughout most of Europe for centuries. The problem is that, in the end, those arguments come down to the illogical and morally insupportable argument: We’ve been badly treated in Europe, so that justifies us as Europeans in muscling in to Palestine and displacing the Arab people who’ve been there for millennia, and without compensating them for taking their land and other assets while they left with what they could carry.

Regardless of how we got to the current position, it seems to me that Israel is a nasty and aggressive state which, while nowhere near as homicidal as the Nazis, still shows aspects of the same arrogant contempt for another race.

If Israel had been less arrogant and less aggressive, and hadn’t intentionally displaced and excluded the Palestinians around the time of its inception and since, there would be considerably less animosity towards it by the Arab states. That animosity has reduced significantly from the levels of several decades ago, although Iran has taken it up with a vengeance, but they’re not Arabs.

My current sentiment towards Israel is along the lines: Look, you keep bleating about the Holocaust and how some other states want to exterminate you, but when it comes to the crunch you don’t want to do anything to resolve the problem you’ve created and instead have spent decades doing just about everything you can to inflame it. Instead of recognising their legitimate claims, you’ve ramped up your institutionalised mistreatment of the Palestinians. You’ve done all this with endless international support, and because you had that support. If you don’t want to do anything to help yourselves out of the mess you’ve created then it’s time for other nations to withdraw their support, because you’re causing more international trouble than you’re worth. See how long you last on your own.

#5

I agree wholeheartedly. But I think the Jordanians, Egyptians, and Syrians have also pissed on the backs of the Palestinians on more than one occasion, the Arab states are at least as culpable in the plight of the Palestinians…

#6

You see, I’m not so sure that this is the case any longer. Maybe thirty or forty years ago, this was true. But I actually think that most of the Arab states with chronic dissent problems due to corruption, stratified class systems, hollow economies, and political repressions actually need the Israelis to be their scapegoats to blame and to draw the ire of their peoples away from their regimes. We can argue whether this is consciously or unconsciously actuated by those in said regimes. But there’s little question that Israel exists as too convenient a whipping boy/bogeyman for the Arab regimes to actually want them gone…

#7

That’s for sure.

Nobody wants the poor bloody Palestinians, three or four generations after most of them were driven out of Palestine. Makes you wonder if they’re descended from the Wandering Jew.

As you say in your subsequent post, they’re a convenient distraction for Arab governments from other internal issues.

It may suit those governments as a conscious policy to do little to assist the Palestinians so that the distraction continues. It might be otherwise if they’d been integrated into other Arab societies, but that would consititute acceptance of Israel as a fait accompli which might be politically unacceptable to their constituencies.

I think you’re right about the threat to Israel from surrounding states having diminshed greatly over the past two or maybe three decades, although Israeli actions like the last debacle in Lebanon stoke the fires periodically.

Israel’s last performance in Lebanon suggests that it’s not as good a military force as it used to be, while serious divisions in Israel suggest that the government is far from representing the wishes of all the people which in turn can feed through to problems in a conscript army if required to fight what some soldiers see as the wrong fight. That puts Israel in a worse position if international support is withdrawn.

The current Hamas conflict, frustrating US peace attempts as usual with almost all peace attempts in the region (Sadat’s initiative being the one glorious exception), threatens to be a bigger problem in time if it develops into a larger form of unconventional warfare storngly supplied and trained by Iran. This will, predictably, provoke the Israelis into another Lebanon type exercise on its borders or, potentially worse, Osiraq type exercise in Iran, which is probably exactly what it is designed to do. It’s feasible, although unlikely, that such a process could lead to international support for Israel weakening as my view becomes more common. However, it’s not usual in international affairs to abandon a state, but it’s happened before for various reasons and might again.

The biggest protection Israel has is the electorally significant lunatic American Christian fundamentalists who believe that Israel must be preserved to enable the second coming of Christ. Neither Republicans nor Democrats want to alienate them. The fundamentalist position is somewhat paradoxical given Jewish attitudes to Christ in Palestine around 1 to 33 AD. It would be interesting to see how Christ would be received in Tel Aviv on his return tour. He’d have to be the least popular Palestinian to visit there since 1948.

#8

It wasn’t always the case that the Arabs were kicked out by the Israelis - while this happened sometimes, at others it was them running away from fighting, or leaving at the request of the surrounding Arab states which wanted to turn the whole of Israel into a free fire zone. The whole situation is seriously complex unfortunately…

#9

True.

It’s hard to determine now what happened because each side has revised history to the point that it’s unrecognisable.

My impression is that there were a few instances of Zionists driving Arabs out at gunpoint after killing others to encourage them to go, which had the intended effect of encouraging an awful lot more to go. I don’t know that the Arab requests for free fire zones had as much impact as the common sense realisation of civilians in many war zones that it’s a good idea to move.

Also true.

But the longstanding and uncompromising contempt of some Zionists, notably the politically influential ones in Palestine and then Israel, for the Palestinians isn’t complex, as revealed by some of their quotes.

“We must expel Arabs and take their places.”
– David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.

“There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
– Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-122.

“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”

– David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.

“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.”
– David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s "Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”
– David Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai Teveth’s Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation).

David Ben Gurion
Prime Minister of Israel
1949 - 1954,
1955 - 1963

“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.”
– Golda Meir, statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.

“How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.”
– Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.

“Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen.”
– Golda Meir, 1961, in a speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner, October 1961

“This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.”
– Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971

Golda Meir
Prime Minister of Israel
1969 - 1974

“We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?’ Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!”
– Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

“[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat.”
– Yitzhak Rabin (a “Prince of Peace” by Clinton’s standards), explaining his method of ethnically cleansing the occupied land without stirring a world outcry. (Quoted in David Shipler in the New York Times, 04/04/1983 citing Meir Cohen’s remarks to the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee on March 16.)

Yitzhak Rabin
Prime Minister of Israel
1974 - 1977,
1992 - 1995

“[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs.”

– Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the 'Beasts,”’ New Statesman, June 25, 1982.

“The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized … Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever.”
– Menachem Begin, the day after the U.N. vote to partition Palestine.

Menachem Begin
Prime Minister of Israel
1977 - 1983

“The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliya (=Jewish immigration), and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country.”
– Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declares at a Tel Aviv memorial service for former Likud leaders, November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service.

“The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It’s that simple.”
– Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 02/21/1997.

“(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.”
– Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

Yizhak Shamir
Prime Minister of Israel
1983 - 1984,
1986 - 1992

“Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.”
– Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.

Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister of Israel
1996 - 1999

“The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more”…
– Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000

“If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force…”
– Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted in Associated Press, November 16, 2000.

“I would have joined a terrorist organization.”
– Ehud Barak’s response to Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Ha’aretz newspaper, when Barak was asked what he would have done if he had been born a Palestinian.

Ehud Barak
Prime Minister of Israel
1999 - 2001

“It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.”

– Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

“Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours…Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”
– Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.

“Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.”

– Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online
Ariel Sharon
Prime Minister of Israel
2001 - present
http://www.monabaker.com/quotes.htm [Obviously a bit out of date on Sharon]

Continued - word limit

#10

I stumbled on that when googling to find a quote I can’t remember verbatim by an early Israeli ?prime minister? in a source I’m not sure I have, to the effect that while Israel hadn’t driven all the Palestinians out in the 1940’s, Israel sure as hell wasn’t going to let them return. And, lo and behold, about sixty year later what do we have less than a year ago:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in interviews published Friday that Israel would not allow a single Palestinian refugee to return to what is now Israel, and that the country bore no responsibility for the refugees because their plight resulted from an attack by Arab nations on Israel when it was a fledgling state.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/31/world/middleeast/31mideast.html

There’s nothing complex about the intention and actions of some Zionists to take over a country that wasn’t theirs and revise history to wipe out any rights of the people who were there before.

I think that any group that does that and maintains it for sixty or so years, particularly when justifying it by the dispossession and persecution it suffered, has lost the moral high ground and forfeited any right to support from other nations to persist with its actions which, while not genocidal in the strict sense, have elements of the attitudes which Hitler expressed against the very people incessantly demanding special treatment for themselves while denying the Palestinians their human rights.

It’s not the Palestinians’ fault any of this happened, but they’re the victims. The world has ignored their plight too long while falling for the well oiled Zionist ‘we’re the only victims’ publicity.

#11

Do I detect a sense of Fair-play and support for the Underdog, both in 1967 and the current situation?

I think that that was always my influence.

I can’t argue with you RS as I’m not that much in disagreement, although I do attempt to look at the situation from all angles. I think in the case of the Israelis, hubris has raised its ugly head.

The Israeli policy has always been that of the Iron-fist as opposed to Hearts and Minds.

#12

I’ve never thought of it that way until reading your comment, but I think you’re exactly right. It explains two inconsistent positions over time, along with changed knowledge and a more mature appreciation of the situation. Well, as near as I can get to mature. :wink:

In 1967 all I knew was stuff like Lord Russell’s distressingly factual Scourge of the Swastika and Leon Uris’s distressingly fictional Exodus and the film of the same name (which oddly enough was on here for a few minutes very late a few nights ago before I got sick of Paul Newman running around in a British uniform to no discernible purpose and sundry other Americans whose overwhelming presence suggested that Palestine was in fact taken over by Hollywood rather than Zionists, although there mightn’t be much difference between the two) and outrage that anyone could be so heartless towards the poor bloody Jews seeking sanctuary after abuses beyond belief at the hand of the Nazis. And the French and the Hungarians and the Poles and the Rumanians and the Lithunians and all the other bastards who enjoyed the bloodletting and confiscation of property without the faintest idea where the Jews they herded into the cattle wagons were going, :evil: but at that time I thought it was only the Germans who did it rather than most of Europe.

I had a misty eyed notion then that it was good and fair for the Jews (I had no idea what a Zionist was) to have a safe home after what the Nazis had done to them, and they deserved to have it protected from rabid anti-Semites like the Arabs. I didn’t know what the Zionists had done to the Palestinians, or for that matter have much more than a vague idea about the terror campaign they ran against the British and others, to get it. Which seemed reasonable to me at the time when the evil Brits were keeping the poor bastards out of their supposed homeland. At that time also, Arabs weren’t exactly regarded as great people here. As kids, the phrase ‘What an Arab’ was something like today’s ‘What a wanker / loser.’ We also said ‘What a Jew.’, which was almost as bad as ‘What a Scotsman.’, to the same effect. ;). Arabs were somewhere between Japanese and Italians, without the military ability of the former or the style of the latter in WWII. Or, in a positive sense, with the military ability of the Italians and the style of the Japanese in WWII. Some of the Arabs have slipped a bit in my estimation since then, what with flying planes into buildings and so on.

We’re in furious agreement, except that I’ve chosen to stop looking at it from all angles and just a want a bloody solution, which requires the Israelis to stop being professional mongrels, whingers, and graspers for a change.

It’s a bit like moments I have in my working life, when I forget about all the noble principles and understanding the complexities of human experience and behaviour and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and just think: ‘WTF am I doing defending this little turd? He’s long needed a good kick up the arse; the cops gave it to him when he’s lucky they didn’t shoot him while he was running down the street with a machete yelling that he was going to kill everyone; now he’s whingeing about a cop’s foot up his precious arse; and I’m doing my best to make his whinge heard loud and clear. What’s wrong with this picture?’

I reckon Israel is long overdue for a big kick up the arse.

That’s about the heart of it, no pun intended.

Too bloody grasping, and no concern for or understanding of anyone but themselves.

I’m a fraction Dutch. My grandfather on the other side, of Irish descent, used to repeat this rhyme to me when I was little and demanding.

In matters of business
The fault of the Dutch
Is giving too little
And asking too much.

Substitute Israeli for Dutch, and after sixty odd years of it and no sign of backing off, that’s why I’ve lost sympathy for them.

But, from the Israeli side after centuries of use and abuse by others in Europe, Shakespeare summed it up in the Merchant of Venice:

About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help:
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say
‘Shylock, we would have moneys:’ you say so;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold: moneys is your suit
What should I say to you? Should I not say
‘Hath a dog money? is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats?’ Or
Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness, Say this;
‘Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn’d me such a day; another time
You call’d me dog; and for these courtesies
I’ll lend you thus much moneys’?

The difference now is, Israel is not the abused and used lender but the abusive and using borrower, and deep in debt to the rest of the world.

There was a point to all that somewhere, but it got lost in the view through the beer goggles. :confused:

#13

That’s just simply my way. :slight_smile:

I reckon Israel is long overdue for a big kick up the arse.

What, do you think, would be the result of that kick up the arse. I would suppose it depends on what form it takes?

I’m a fraction Dutch. My grandfather on the other side, of Irish descent, used to repeat this rhyme to me when I was little and demanding.

There was I thinking you to be of pure Oisrish stock. :slight_smile:

There was a point to all that somewhere, but it got lost in the view through the beer goggles. :confused:

Don’t worry, I too am wearing mine - all is clear. :slight_smile:

#14

Exactly.

A desirable kick up the arse would be one that produces the realisation that Israel can’t spend the rest of its existence shitting on everyone in sight, and produces whatever passes for peace, or at least a bearable accommodation between all the warring nutcases in that part of the world. Or is total warfare but just leaves the rest of the world out of their idiocy. The rest of the world is fully occupied with its own military and other idiocies.

An undesirable kick up the arse, from the Israeli but not other viewpoints in the region and elsewhere, would be one that sees the Israelis experience what they did to the Palestinians. If that happens after Israel nukes others, then they might envy the luxury the Palestinians had in being able to leave without being slaughtered.

Everybody I know had a kid who terrorised them or their schoolmates by making unreasonable demands and stealing their lunch money and so on. Hardly anyone I know ever stood up to that kid, but most times that kid got creamed sooner or later by someone even nastier.

In Israel’s case, Iran is starting to look like the seriously nasty kid who might grab Israel’s lunch money, and keep it.

One of the first of my ancestors to land here was an Irishman. A sergeant in the British Army who probably amused himself pulling wings off the convicts, rather than a convict who could bestow true Australian aristocracy upon me.

Do you have any idea how cheated I feel? :smiley:

Yes.

Clarity.

One must pursue clarity.

I’m feeling a bit clarity right now.

I might have a bit of claret.

I’ve run out of beer. :smiley:

#15

Yes.

Clarity.

One must pursue clarity.

I’m feeling a bit clarity right now.

I might have a bit of claret.

I’ve run out of beer. :smiley:

What? No beer?..why that’s inexcusable - spank that man somebody!

#16

So really, what you are all saying, is that Israel should just sit there and take thousands of rockets a year fired from the “unoccupied” Palestinian territories?

#17

Personally, I have no recollection of having said that?

Do you wish to discuss this topic, or simply state what you assume is our…actually, I can ony speak for myself, therefore…my stand on the matter?

#18

The point is that you all seem to think that Israel is doing wrong by reacting militarily to military bombardment from a neighbouring region.

It was more directed at Rising Sun, who was doing most of the “saying”. You were doing most of the “agreeing” though.

#19

Oh, sorry, I did just assume that this was the issue which sparked this thread off.

Anyway, here is my take:

Israel has as much right to exist as France has to own Alsace Lorraine, Poland has to own East Prussia, and Denmark, Belgium, etc have to own their bits of what used to be Germany. Plenty of Germans were forcibly expelled from East Prussia, so there is a certain parallel.

It also has a right to defend itself when attacked from without all within by either State or nonstate actors. Frankly, they are very restrained, and react only when they have had causus belli for a significantly long period.

It is far too easy to condemn them: how do you think the French would react if the Vlaams Belang took to lobbing rockets over the border into France and suicide bombing within France to get the northern corner of France back as part of Flanders and kick all French people out of it? How do you think they would react if this had the tacit and possibly material support of the Belgian government in Brussels?

They would probably build a bloody great wall, and if that didn’t stop it they would probably send troops in. And they would be right to do it.

#20

I do agree that Israel is on a hiding to nothing with its policies.

I could argue that the reason the Arabs are rocketing Israeli settlements is because that they know that they cannot defeat Israel in open battle, while Israel is being supported by the West. Also, that it is as a direct result of israeli policy towards the Palestineans.

The arguments are cyclical, somewhat like a chicken and egg situation.
Bottomline, my sympathies have always been with Israel, but that doesn’t mean that I have to agree with their methods, or turn a blind-eye to all that they do which I might consider wrong.

Why did the Israelis win the wars of the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies?..because they were fighting for their very survival, the Arabs weren’t.

The only way, as I see it, that the israelies could be really taught a lesson, would be their defeat by the Arabs, which came close in 1973. However, when the Arab armies were defeated the Israelis simply left them to make their way home. If Israel had been defeated, and the Arabs left to carry out their own will, the Israelies would have been anihilated.

Yes! I do sympathise with the Israelis for the way they were treated during the war, and even afterwards - and to some degree by the British - however, I don’t think that it was the Arabs that were commiting the atrocities in Germany, Poland and Russia.

I do agree with much of what RS has been saying, although he expresses it somewhat differently to the way I would. There must be a solution or the situation will continue to subject the rest of the world to war and terrorist attacks.

Also, I believe that other Eastern powers (Iran and Syria in particular) exploit the situation of the Palestineans to further their own agenda, as they do in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I see nothing to be gained by the use of Iron-Fist diplomacy, I have always believed that the way to success in any of these situations is by winning Hearts and Minds and taking the moral high-ground.

A recent example of where I consider the righteous to have gotten it wrong:

The execution of Sadam Hussein. It turned into a lynching rather than an execution. I can’t say I completely blame the people who carried it out, but, in my opinion, it turned Hussein into a victim and a martyr.