I understand Bushbred and accept the honest misunderstanding. I've stopped debating Danielle. It's just to hard to be continually abused, misread and have words stuffed in my mouth. On top of all I just cannot deal with the hypocrisy and the continual part application of real standards or the selective moralising.

No real discussion of the eventual solving of the problem is possible with such attitudes. I fear the eventual situation will be a mid east utterly uninhabitable or mostly destroyed by nuclear attacks and their consequences... if such intransiant attitudes persist. The bright side ... all this blaming and abuse of others will probably end.

Thanks, Keith, and like you I wonder about Danielle, who like Paull does support Israel. Yet keep on doing what you've been doing, mate, it's so much needed.

What the future of the Middle East will be with an Israel with a brace of nuclear warheads eternally at the ready is the real worry?

One wonders what Dick Cheney means when he predicts that if something is not done about a future nuclear Iran we could have a WW3?

Yet one could well believe that Cheney still with his mind naturally on oil as well as a capitulated Iran in the name of an American peace, could well be the one who begins it.

As I mentioned in my earlier thread, let's have some Bismarkian Realpolitik and have our so-called natural enemies come in and prevent it, like Russia and China?

Nothing new in history, actually...

Regards, BB, WA.

Hello all - sorry for any duplication, but I got too angry reading a few to read any more.
Current archeology points to those who became the northern Israelites being the original occupatants of (northern) Israel, so indigenous can be ascribed to them.
The whole of the peoples who became the jews occupied the land they called Judea in around 1200BC and have been there, in varying numbers, ever since.
When the Islamic armies came to the area in around 635 AD, they found majority christian and Jewish populations. Most of these peoples were either killed in the Muslim invasion, enslaved and removed from the area during the Muslim occupation, or allowed to remain under repressive Sharia laws. Many of this last group chose to convert to Islam to escape the repression. Many Jews (and christians) left the area to escape the Muslim persecution. (Some of their descendents now wish to return to their traditional homeland.) And so formerly majority populations are now very small minorities in their historic homelands.
During the 1400 years of Islamic history, peoples have been conquered, and some have released themselves from the Islamic occupation. From southern France, Spain, to Romania and India, Greece and (now half of) Cypress, Islamic rule has been removed so that non-Muslims don't have to continue to live under repressive Sharia law.
Why can people not see the fight to liberate Israel in the same light? The Jews do not wish to live under Islamic oppression, any more than they wish to leave themselves open to another christian holocaust.
The creation of the state of Israel is a project of national liberation. If it looks bad, that's because it is a war. It will remain a war unless and until Islam acknowledges that it occupied Palestine by force, and has no 'divine' right to rule it. Islam is now being repelled from Palestine by force, by those who do have right to rule it.
And do all the Jews who were expelled from Muslim countries in the late 1940s deserve to be allowed back?

Camo,

Nice to see sound words of reason.

Whilst some OLO writers consider that the UN mandated Israel is somehow illegal, they conveniently disregard the fact that many Arab states were drawn up arbitrarily with a pen and ruler by colonial interests.

Iraq’s borders include a some of Persia stolen from Iran, along with pieces of Kurdish territory ... and people wonder why Iraq is in such a parlous state.

Sudan includes not only some of the old Egyptian empire, but also Christian and Animistic blackAfrica.

Morocco includes a former French and Spanish colony.

Lebanon - a French invention.

None of these states existed under any Islamic ruler who preceded colonial powers.

Jordan, Kuwait, the emirates and more were also created for colonial interests - should they too be dismantled? There has been more conflict beween and within Arab states, than there has been with Israel.

There were seven Arab states in 1948; by 1972 these had grown into a bloc of 18.

Palestinians living in Arab countries are treated with contempt, living in appalling circumstances, with none of the rights Arabs have in Israel. Indeed, they have no rights at all. Most have now been born on Arab soil. Why are they not considered nationals of the states of their birth?

Those OLO writers, upholders of the single state solution deliberately ignore the fact that the situation in the Palestinian territories is so fraught by Palestinian killing killing Palestinian, that average Palestinians, who can afford to, are democratically thinking with their feet - and in droves (some even going to Israel); so much so, the Muslim religious leader, Sheikh Hamad Al-Bitawi, very undemocratically, issued a fatwa against Arabs leaving Palestinian territories - (except temporarily for education)

However, these writers believe they have the answers to the problem. Looks good seeing it in print ... and they can applaud themselves that they are logical human beings.

cont ...

Lev,

I am rather surprised that you fell back on the patriachal old chestnut that because I am a woman: “ Perhaps your emotion is clouding your reason.” I am sure you didn’t mean Paul.

Whilst your are tip-toeing through the tulips, strumming your ukulele and singing the theme of libertarian democracy “Play nicely children,” - which I am sure can’t be heard above the gunfire between the Palestinian groups - you ignore the fact that this form of democracy could only be implemented in this region by a heavy-handed totalitarian government with a massive, very expensive bureaucracy, interferring in every part of peoples’ lives.

Israel should remain as it is. There is absolutely no benefit to any party for a single state. The two state solution is the right solution.

Cameo,

The "original inhabitants" issue is pretty irrelavant. The question is whether the current state of Israel and its practises deserve our support. In my opinion it does not; it is simply not good enough. This is not to suggest, as some have claimed - and you have implied - that other Arab or Islamic states do receive our support. (On that matter, of course Jews expelled from Muslim countries in the late 1940s deserve to be allowed back - universal rights are universally applicable)

Danielle,

I made the claim because you do allow your emotions to clould your reason. It has nothing to you with your gender, it's just how you are.

If you support Israel as it is at the moment; with it's religious laws, with is land laws, with its invasions and occupied territory - then you are a supporter of apartheid, which also was generous enough to provide its "inferiors" a second state - bantustans - of their own.