I believe that Obama's Cairo speech was a genuine effort toward peace. He showed it by mentioning the wrongs that the US had committed in Iran and that the US decision to invade Iraq was a war of choice and not necessity.

He devoted only 17 words to the Israeli incursion in Gaza. However, he wasn't engaged in an exercise in finger pointing. He could have mentioned the number of Jews expelled from the Arab countries. The number was about the same as the Arabs forced to leave Israel during their War of Independence. He didn't mention them at all. He didn't need to. It was enough to mention there were wrongs on all sides of the conflict including his own.

I think Pilger is so partisan that he cannot recognise a genuine effort for peace.

Irrespective of the wrongs that occurred 40 years ago, or even 20 years ago, we live in the here and now. At the moment living conditions in Gaza are impossible. I thought calling Gaza a concentration camp is a bit rich, its not like Sobihor, may be more like Theriesenstadt or the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 or perhaps the concentration camps in the Boer War.

Living conditions in Baghdad are also far worse today than they were before the American invasion of 2003 and the Iraqis are free to vote for the ruler the Americans chose for them, if they vote for who they like the Americans will question the voting process, just because America rigs elections doesn't mean every one else does.

As a [dodgy] Christian I was taught to forgive and I think that the Jews keeping alive the wrongs done to them in 1930s and 1940s are doing the same injustice to Palestinians. There is no point in me judging historic wrongs but I can and will hold people accountable for their current behaviours

I concur with David f. Obama's speech is in huge contrast to the failure of past US Presidents to truly engage with the Middle East. The best way to remove your enemies is to befriend them in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding.

Obama's comments about the need to engage with the Middle East using a different dialogue, to depart from what has gone before would indicate a esire to bring respect, conciliation and cordiality to a longstanding troubled relationship.

Obama is making the first steps towards peace - what is there to disapprove?

John, Your special pleading is very boring.

I don't like to see human misery anywhere, but the plight of the Palestinians is eminently fixable - by emigration. Their Arab kin own all the territory from Mauretania to Iraq, and a few of them have oil coming out of their ears. Simple really. There never was such a thing as a Palestinian nation, and no such country as Palestine, except as a geographic descriptor applied to the area by the Romans after they razed the Temple in 70 AD and scattered the Jews.

When did you last write something about genocide perpetrated by Arabs in Darfur, or the arrogance and racism of the Saudis toward foreigners working there, not least toward other Muslims? Or the contemptible continued peddling in Arab capitals of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Get a life, mate.

The Israelis want national security, not rockets lobbing into their towns.

Your sense of history appears to be tightly aligned with the Christian period, Glorfindel.

>>There never was such a thing as a Palestinian nation, and no such country as Palestine, except as a geographic descriptor applied to the area by the Romans after they razed the Temple in 70 AD and scattered the Jews.<<

You only go back 2000 years, presumably to fit in with your worldview.

If you were to look only one short millennium further back in time, you will find the land occupied by Canaanites. It was taken - by force - by a confederation of Hebrew tribes calling themselves the Israelites.

Calling upon history to support your cause won't cut it, I'm afraid. There have simply been too many levels of interference throughout the ages to make a case that will stick.

Greece, Rome, Persia, Turkey, Egypt, Britain, France, Russia, all have had a hand in creating the mess that presently exists. Which makes it highly improbable that there will ever be a solution based upon historical certainties.

It is also clear that making a claim to unique rights has been the single most prevalent factor in maintaining the hatreds and the killings.

Pericles.

“Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.” - George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950). Ecrasia, in Back to Methuselah (1921).