j5o6hn, there is no meaningful comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany. What's the difference between them? Well, for one thing, with Nazi Germany, there was that little issue of the Holocaust. You know, the systematic, premeditated genocide that killed a third of all Jews in the world, in death camps, concentration camps, slave labor camps, etc. There is simply nothing at all comparible going on in Israel/Palestine.

J5o6hn, for goodness sake, about 20% of Israeli citizens ARE Palestinian Arabs. They enjoy all the civil rights of any Israeli, come and go freely, and unlike Jews in Nazi Germany, they are not desperately seeking refuge from a regime that has set up factories for their efficient extermination. Likewise, millions of Palestinians live in autonomous territories in the West Bank and Gaza. They too are not threatened by a policy of extermination, and they never were.

Palestinians and Israelis are locked in national struggle because they both claim the same homeland, and in particular because too many claim that common homeland exclusively for themselves and refuse to consider an appropriate compromise solution. The result is violent and tragic for both sides, but it is not genocide.

In fact, despite the impression one might get from obsessive press coverage in Israel/Palestine, many modern ethnic, national and international conflicts have taken a far greater toll in human life, and some of these really have reached genocidal proportions, although they still don't share the systematic and industrialized nature of the Nazi Holocaust.

The mutual violence of the Israel/Palestine conflict pales in comparison to what has recently been experienced, for example, in Afghanistan; Algeria; Angola; Bangladesh; Bosnia; Burundi; Cambodia; Chad; Chechnya; Colombia; East Timor; El Salvador; Equatorial Guinea; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Guatemala; India; Indonesia; Iran; Iraq; Kashmir; Lebanon; Liberia; Mozambique; Nicaragua; Nigeria; Pakistan; Peru; Philippines; Rwanda; Somalia; Sri Lanka; Sudan; Uganda; Vietnam; Yemen; Yugoslavia; Zaire, etc.

I urge you to read Rory Miller's article, "The Israel-Nazi Slander in Historical Context" http://zope06.v.servelocity.net/hjs/sections/middleeast/document.2005-10-19.3753444436

I once knew a young man called Akram Al Masri who had escaped from persecution on the Gaza Strip and came to Australia. He was locked up in Woomera instead of having his claim for refuge heard and ended up with a crippled arm. You see he asked to go home to Gaza but Israel would not let him go home.

So he stayed locked in Woomera until the courts released him.

He is a Palestinian. How many critics of the Palestinians have ever met or spoken to anyone from Palestine or heard their stories? What if Sydney was annexed by Indonesia for it's personal use - would Sydney siders sit patiently by and allow the occupation without fighting back?

It's really funny that on Independence Day Dubya made a speech about how the US got their freedom by kicking out the Poms - yet it was the poms who became the Americans after they had committed the genocide on the 500 tribes of native Indians.

Funnily enough Bush applauded the resistance to the English rule at the same time he said the US would squash the resistance to occupation that has now been thrown at the US by Iraq and now Afghanistan.

I bet he didn't even see the irony.

Now to the Palestine/Israel story. Every person on the occupied territories is a thief, they deliberately went to Israel from the US and Europe, from Russia and all parts of the world and stole that land and dared the Palestinians to fight back.

It is easy to blame the muslims of Palestine to cover the guilt of the west who stood by while 6 million people were slaughtered by the Nazis - but the problem is when we white, so-called christians look in the mirror the nazis are us.

One facet of middle east history that is rarely mentioned is the comparison between the events in europe at the end of world war 2 and those in palestine. In europe, the west german government looked after the ethnic germans who had been expelled from the east, and resettled them in europe and many other countries, including Australia. The camps were basically emptied by the early fifties. In comparison the arab countries in the middle east, even though they commanded oil money of an amount never before seen, did very little to help the palestinians stuck in camps in countries surrounding Israel. This was because it suited their purpose to have a horde of bitter unemployed refugees on Israel's doorstep. The existence of Israel has never been accepted by the militants, and the area seems doomed to continue with perpetual war. Israel is fighting for its existence, and it is fighting the same people who are attacking us.

Boaz,

Your comparison with Japan and Germany is ridiculous. Both of those countries were militaristic imperialsits who came close to conquering the world, not a divided population with rocks and home made missles who have been living under occupation for nearly fifty years.

You also seems to have forgotten the religous significane of jerusalem to the muslim population, which is why 'resettlement' (or are you proposing 'the final solution') will never work.

Another example of how religion screws up everything .

Two comments on the rantings of Boaz David: a)If ever we needed proof that religion and morality don't necessarilly go together like the proverbial horse and carriage, he provides it; b)Nor is he a harmless nutter. As his rants have made abundantly clear, from the comfort of his living room, equipped with computer, he is using OLO as a platform to push for the perpetration of a crime against humanity: ethnic cleansing. Now it isn't my intention to censor his rants, but simply to draw attention to their bottom line, that a group of people he knows nothing about and who have never done him any harm-every man, woman and child among them-must simply be uprooted, moved on, and dispersed throughout the Arab world. And how's this for the capper: it's nothing personal! The devastating effect of a perverse ideological obsession (in this case, Christian Zionism) is nowhere better displayed. The least we can expect of those posters who could be described as Israel-Firsters is for them to come out and differentiate themselves from Boaz David's advocacy of ethnic cleansing. Failure to do so will be taken as an indication that they are closet advocates of same.

David

All of the attitudes in your post display an unchristian attitude. They fly in the face of Christ's teachings as expounded in the Sermon on the Mount.

But look your position is also illogical and overlooks blatant facts. The silliest comment was your final two sentences.

'Its (Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza and Palestine) the only workable political solution.... and the kindest in the LONG run. Military defeat by Western Values powers is not the end of the world, look at Japan and Germany.'

Yep and neither Japan nor Germany were subject to any ethnic cleansing by Western Powers either. OOps but the Nazi's indulged in that somewhat...eh