Dear Bazz,

«It is the basis of the whole problem of the Middle East.»

What problem are you talking about?

There are of course many problems - in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi-Arabia, to name a few, but I don't think you were referring to those.

Israel has a problem, a problem of its own creation - the corrupting effect of the ongoing occupation of the land it took in 1967. This is an internal problem and was not caused by Arabs, Muslims or the Koran.

Surely Israel had to rout its stupid attackers in 1967, which it easily did and surely it had to go beyond its borders to achieve this - but it did not need to stay there afterwards, certainly not for 49 years. The Arabs, otherwise weak and helpless as far as open warfare is concerned, were somehow able to trap Israel in its own arrogance, making it bleed internally and allow their originally-superior moral strength to deteriorate and rust over. If Israel does not rid itself of that poisoned fruit (and if the rest of the world fails to induce Israel to vomit it), then the Arabs need do nothing but wait patiently for Israel to decay and crumble by itself.

Waiting for the Arabs to agree was of course the biggest mistake - why should they when time is on their side?

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Dear Josephus,

I agree with Netanyahu that Jews should be able to live anywhere and not be ethnically-cleansed. What Netanyahu omitted, however, is that this need not imply that everywhere where Jews live must belong to the state of Israel. If those Jews who wish to live in the West Bank are prevented by the so-called "Palestinians", then they should create their own Jewish state there and defend themselves rather than burden Israel with the need to guard them there. I wonder whether they would then allow non-Jews to live within their new state or gain any access to water, but that would no longer be Israel's business or problem.

Yuyutsu said;
What problem are you talking about?

I was referring to their inbreeding by way of cousin marriage.
It has been a very long standing problem for perhaps a 1000 years
before Mohammed came on the scene. It is encouraged in Islam.
There is much information on this genome problem which all Arab
populations suffer.
It is something that no one wants to talk about but it has reduced
their natural level of intelligence below that of other populations.
It also appears as behaviour problems one of which is often a
difficulty in accepting change or compromise.

It is a very brutal fact but cousin marriage is so wide spread that
if the practise was stopped now it would take some hundreds of years
to repair their genome.
I suggest you google Arab cousin marriage. The worse affected country
appears to be Pakistan with IQs commonly around 70.
It was a common problem in European Royalty until medical knowledge caught up.
Funny thing they took no notice of horse breeders.

Dear Josephus,

Netanyahu said that Jews and Arabs should live together in peace. One way to do that would be to have one state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. That state would be neither Arab, Jewish, Christian nor Muslim. It would have an integrated public school system with Jews, Muslims and Christians attending the same schools as is not the present case in Israel. It would have civil marriage instead of having to have the permission of clergy to marry as is the present case in Israel. It would have a democratic government with separation of religion and state as is not the present case in Israel.

Dear David,

The question is, are you sincerely motivated by the desire for peace, or are the Middle-Eastern wars only a pretext to shove Western anti-religious culture down the throats of the people who live in those countries.

The larger the state - the less freedom its inhabitants have to live according to their own values. The smaller the states - the more competition there is between states over individual freedoms as there is more opportunity for those who are unhappy with the regime to migrate to a place that better suits them.

The heart and soul of Judaism is the Sabbath. The ultimate peace for a Jew is to be able to rest once a week on this day and Jews deserve to have one place in the world where they enjoy the safety that no one will ever expect them to work, answer the phone or attend court or any other civil function on this sacred day. Nothing is comparable with the peace, labelled "a taste of heaven", one can experience when walking around in certain areas of Israel on the Sabbath, seeing only families walking calmly in the streets with practically no cars or other traffic as well as the complete freedom from electronic devices.

As for education, the right to nourish one's children with wholesome traditions and to protect them from the corrupting effects of secular/Western influence, should not be reserved only for the rich who can afford to pay twice for their children's education.

While peace between Jews and Arabs is desirable, it is not the be-all and end-all: there are more important matters and values at stake.

David f,
I am afraid that what you would like to see is unacceptable to the Arabs.
Hamas has made it very clear that they want a Palestinian state with
no Israel and no Jews.
The PLA's Pres Abbas has said that their state must include all the
present Israeli territory, especially including Jerusalem.
These demands are minimum conditions.
Sounds like Abbas may be more flexible but Jerusalem was a minimum condition.
It is bit like if you shoot yourself we can come to an agreement !