imajulianutter,

I agree. I also hope that the next you see any of the Arab/Iranian propagandists call to destroy Israel because Israel is a Western Liberal Democracy you will point out the differences ...won't you?

imajulianuttter,

You mean would I include Western European countries under the heading "modern, hegemonic, capitalist and developed"? - Yep!

Here's another one...

Oh look - 99.8 percent debt ratio to annual GDP

http://www.usdebtclock.org

Yuyutsu

They don't do anything of the sort.

They objected to the formation of Israel because of it'sJudean religious basis in the midst of an Islam realm.
They've had lots of other, now proven legitimate complaints, over the years about Israeli expansionism.

Can you please point me to where the existence of Israel as a Liberal Western Democracy has been hfghlighted as a Palestinian or Arab world condemnation?

Poirot,

The US debt isn't caused by stupidly excessive spending on socialist social policies as it was in Greece, Italy and Spain. It's impossible for those economies to become hegemonic or be regarded as Capitalistic. They will soon become 'developing' and historically socialistic without major support from 'the modern, hegemonic, capitalist and developed' European economies of France and Germany.

The US economy has the means to turn their economy around. The Socialist economies of Europe don't have those means. They will go the same way as the stupidities of the former socialist economies of Eastern Europe.

imajulianutter,

What's the cause of U.S. debt then...apart from its stupidly excessive forays into the Middle-East to secure resources and influence and the funnelling of government money into the coffers of private contractors? Not to mention its stupid and excessive love affair with credit. Those countries you mentioned, as members of the European Union and in concert with other Western countries like the U.S., are part of the dominant hegemony - the one that's probably not too far from becoming the "once" dominant hegemony.

Hullo all posters

In the case of your ramblings which have nothing at all to do with my article I take it that you have no disagreement with the thrust of what I have written.

I do not intend to respond to anything that does not bear on my article.

I have a gathering understanding of the toll Israel's belligerency and brutal occupation has exacted on Jewish people in and out of Israel. For a race that has contributed so much to the historical tapestry on human rights and social justice it is indeed a deep tragedy that so many are forced to accept a standard of right and wrong that I believe would otherwise be foreign to them.

Some like Joe Halper, Noam Chomsky and our own Antony Loewenstein have been able to rise above what surely must be a very seductive narrative. But for many their weakness continues to be the story of Israel.

It is not hard for one to see both sides as victims, locked into mindsets that seem only too willing to stymie any attempts at reconciliation.

To me the rest of the world is the only hope of resolving what the two parties are incapable of doing so themselves, achieve a lasting, peaceful two state solution. It should be our want and our duty and in the past Australia has played its part condemning both the occupation, and the terrorism exhibited by both sides. Our voting habit in the UN on resolutions condemning Israel's human rights violations was to either support them or abstain. We slipped under John Howard most notably when we voted with the US and a couple of tiny pacific nations entirely dependent on US aid against a UN resolution calling on Israel to comply with a ruling previously issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), that found that the wall violated international law. However to this day I recognise how powerful the experience of being in New York on 9/11 must have been for him yet thankfully we seem to find our way again under Rudd. Not so now.

Cont'