Thanks Professor Rees for such a deep and humanitarian overview of the major problems of the Middle East. Your article rises far above the usual sectarian advocacy.

In that sense your article is far more useful than those of a particular, regular author on OLO, whose life's mission appears to be "101 ways to kick the Palestinians when they're down".

The divisions between Palestinian groups and between Arab countries owe much to cultural traditions and are also the outcome of an intentional Israeli strategy to keep its enemies divided and off balance.

Regards

Pete

The lovely folk in Washington are calling the shots in the Middle East, Prof. They have been doing this for decades during which the Palestinians have been under the boot-heel of the world's most racist, brutal occupier nation next to the U.S.: Israel.

What Washington says goes in this world and they have the world's biggest army and the world's biggest arsenal of nukes to ensure their commands are heeded.

There's not much to understand about the Palestinian issue, Prof. They, the Palestinians, were, after WW2, forced by a few Western Nations to accept millions of Jews in their land and the Jews, helped by the lovely folk from Washington (who have centuries of experience in slaughtering and slavery), promptly built up a big army and occupied the whole of Palestine.

The 'invaders' set about creating a psychological hell on earth for the Palestinians hoping they would move to better locations. But, funny thing, they didn't go (though some did).

There will be no Palestinian State, Prof. The lovely totalitarian regime in Washington says so mainly because it wants Israel to be a mini-capitalist State in the M.E. as part of its drive to achieve world domination.

The Palestinians will eventually be disappeared from Palestine by the lovely folk from Washington who have managed to dupe most of the people in the world, even some of the intelligent ones.

Take up another cause, Prof. The Yanks are running things on earth though, if the Chinese and Russians combine forces, this horrific reality may change!

P.S. China and Russia saving Earth from Big Brother Sam. Fancy that! Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined it.

So the 'cultural traditions' of the 6th century are still ok in today's world? Most cultures have an evolutionary capacity, apparently not the middle eastern cultures? What do we hear of the Jordanian, Syrian and Egyption treatment of their Palistinian populations?

The 'International Isreali conspiracy theory'. Hmm interesting, I wouldn't be surprised if the Isrealis put the Wikileaks party up to the recent Syrian visit, you know, just to 'stir the pot' and keep everyone off balance. Laughable.

I was fascinated by Prompete's mention of 'cultural traditions'!

I though about the U.S. and wondered what were its 'cultural traditions'. They seem to center around slaughter and slavery (as previously mentioned) but I forgot to mention 'apartheid'.

Yeah, when the slaves were freed, the Yanks imposed upon them a hideous regime that has been copied by the Israelis. Yeah, the black people in the U.S., taken there as slaves, surely suffered when they were segregated and treated like cattle. It took a M.L. King to finally unite those who suffered under a white-supremacist Government.

The U.S. has other 'cultural traditions' as well. Most of the wealth in America, as in Australia, is held by the 1% and the movement of the dollars is always upwards.

Another quaint 'cultural tradition' is mixing depleted uranium into their munitions so that damage is caused to local people for thousands of years. And let's not forget cluster bombs and water-boarding!

Another landmark American 'cultural tradition' is sanctions which starve innocent children to death by the millions. And what about 'Shock and Awe'? And who can forget Bagdad burning or the horrific photographs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, two of America's crowning achievement or the little Vietnamese girl running down a road with her clothes burned off by napalm.

Another 'cultural tradition' in the U.S. is putting people in jails and bashing those who protest against capitalist traditions like rewarding the rich. I could go on and on but I've made my point but only to those who are open to looking at the facts!

Yeah, God Bless America!

Another "Muslims are the victims" BS article by an academic who admires a Muslim civilisation he has no intention of living under. Muslims complaining about oppression and dispossession? Yeah, right. So where are all the Jews in Muslim lands? Why do Christians live in fear in Muslim countries?

Muslims whining about other people doing to them what they have been doing to everybody else for the last 1300 years is a bit much. They are only complaining because in the end they blew it. After conquering 5 million square miles of mostly Christian lands in 100 years, they got complacent, never capitalised on their territorial gains by learning to think straight, never evolved socially, became militarily inconsequential, and reverted to near barbarism.

The smartest thing the Arabs could do is hire the Jews to run their economies. On second thought, the smartest thing they could do would be to become either Christian or atheist.

A genius has been born and he's in our midst. I refer of course to LEGO.

One of the statements to fall from his pen is:
"The smartest thing the Arabs could do is hire the Jews to run their economies."

What a wonderful suggestion, one only a true genius could make.

Step one in the Jewish vocabulary is OCCUPATION! Yeah, if you occupy the Arab nation, then you can really get the economy going. So razor-wire everywhere is the order of the day plus innumerable checkpoints which can be blocked anytime both day and night to frustrate movement. It's like dividing a property up into paddocks so you can herd the inhabitants better.

The next step is to introduce the IDF tanks and fill the skies over the ECONOMY UNDER REPAIR (EUR) with Apache gun-ships, F-16s and drones. It's amazing how malleable the population and an economy becomes when you instill a bit a fear by machine-gunning a few old peoples' homes, etc.

Firing the odd missile is a game-changer too and throwing people into the streets with their belongings has a dramatic effect as does leveling farmhouses and flattening grapes that could be a thousand years old.

The last step is to build the prisons to hold any dissenters. These prisons should be built well away from population centers lest the screams of the tortured keep the residents awake.

Now that the preparations are complete its time to work on the economy. Keeping taxes is a highly profitable move as is imposing blockades and building Jewish settlements on the Nation Under Repair.

A bit of starvation doesn't hurt either and you can achieve wonders by restricting medicines. Employing Jew-only workers really gets the locals motivated and, before you know it, the Nation Under Repair has become useful part of Israel.

As LEGO would accept, Israel is entitled to some recompense for its achievements in helping its neighbors surely.

P.S. I hope Arab Nations appreciate LEGO's genius, perhaps make him a Sheik!