Ted,

Can you solve a problem without solving some of its route causes?

“And no one should doubt the willingness of the Jewish state to secure its self-preservation today”

You need to think of resolving the underlying issues for threats otherwise you will always be living a ground hog day, Hitler, Nasser, Ahmedi Nejad, whoever comes in another 39 years and the one to follow..


Start by explaining your views on the following:
- What are the borders of the Jewish state that you need your neighbours to recognize and accept?
- What is your definition of the Palestinian state: land, people, borders and government?
- Is Israel, the nuclear state, capable of initiating, driving and reaching a settlement with a weak state?

Yet another recycling of Zionist mythology. The Six Day War:
"Nasser didn't want war. The 2 divisions he sent to the Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it." (Yitzhak Rabin, Le Monde, 28/2/68)
"The Egyptian layout in Sinai and the general buildup there testified to a militarily defensive Egyptian set-up, south of Israel." (Levy Eshkol, Yediot Ahronot, 16/10/67)
"In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack them." (Menachem Begin, New York Times, 21/8/82)

Strewth....
very selective quoting there. I don't have the time or energy right now to sus out the rest which you omitted, but Ted did give a few hints at where things were headed. You also neglect the role of the Russians in all this, and their role was not insignificant.

TED.. if you have a hotline to the powers to be in Israel, you know what to do, just DO it. Look closely at the trappings of Ahmedinajads speeches, it looks like some Jehovah Witness scene.. VERY theological as you pointed out. Persian history goes back a longggg way, and their various trists with empire and domination of Israel are numerous.

I don't think the Americans will have a hope in hell of taking out the Iranian Nuke sites, they are too selfishly reliant on the oil, which would probably have the tap turned off if they attacked.

I don't think I've ever seen such an epitomy of pure distilled evil as when I look at Ayutollah Khomenie's picture. Ahmedinajad is just a new cloak for the same mentality.

My views on what Israel should do, have nothing to do with my theological standpoint re Israel, its just common sense about survival. (ours as well as Israel's)

In the end..what will be... will be.

Ah, STREWTHIE,

You never let an opportunity pass to recycle an erronious assertion from a dubious lefty website. Rabin never made the comment that you attribute to him because it simply doesn't convey the true facts. You are regurgitating an anti-Israel urban myth. Why am I not surprised?

Allow me to present an accurate account of the stituation immediately prior to the commencement of the Six Day War:

After evicting the UN force, Nasser sent 5 divisions into the Sinai to reinforce the 30,000 Egyptian troops already there and the 10,000 strong Palestine Liberation Army division stationed in Gaza. The units dispatched from Egypt into the Sinai on 15-16 May 1967 included: the 5th, 2nd and 7th Infantry Divisions and the 6th and 4th Armoured Divisions, as well as several independent brigades that collectively amounted to the strength of another division. Each division was composed of about 15,000 men, and bringing the total Egyptian troop strength in Sinai to over 100,000. And they brought with them over 900 tanks, hundreds of artillery pieces of various calibres and vast ammounts of ammunition.

The Egyptian order of battle is openly available from a variety of sources on the 1967 war. Michael Oren's "Six Days of War," and Eric Hammel's "Six Days in June" are just a couple of books on the subject.

You might want to do a little reading from reputable sources before you embarass yourself further.

Ted, old son,

Settle down. The only parallel with the Six Day War that the Iranian crisis presents is that there may be serious trouble if parties don't sensibly negotiate.

Tony Walker, foreign editor of The Australian Financial Review, who himself has spent a long time in the Middle East, discussing the fact that the Bush Administration is in serious trouble in the popularity polls in its final 1000 days, reports today:

QUOTE
Arthur Schlesinger, a historian and adviser to John F. Kennedy, finds a foreboding in [new White house Chief of Staff Joshua] Bolten's phrase "1000 days" since he fears that Bush, driven by a messianic belief in his own divine mission, will launch the US into another war - this time against Iran.

"There stretch ahead for Bush 1000 days of his own," Schlesinger observes. "He might use them to start the third Bush war. There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than foreign policy based on presidential preventive war."
END QUOTE

What do we have to do to persuade both Palestine and its Hamas administration and Israel and its noisy diaspora that neither suicide bomber attacks nor missiles fired from jet fighters pave the road to peace?

It is worth remembering that some of Israel's most fervent supporters in the US, fundamentalist Christians, oppose Muslims because they wish to reclaim Jerusalem for Christ and on the Day of Rapture wish to see Jews tipped down the garbage chute into the fiery furnaces of Hell.

Uncomfortable bed-fellows I would have thought, Ted.

Ted, are you part of the solution, or part of the problem? Are the Coalition of the Deluded ready to wage war on Iran?

Big Ted, You question my sources. All quotes come from Hebrew University of Jerusalem sociologist, Baruch Kimmerling's 'Politicide' (p 58) But I suppose you'd have a problem with him too?