Funny how it is that when Zionists are faced with facts, they resort to writing nonsense thinking this make the whole thread look like nonsense.

ElectroRobo, I said Israel views all Palestinians, including babies at the moment of their birth in the land where their ancestors have lived for as long as they could remember, as a "demographic threat" (as mentioned by countless Israeli politicians from across the political spectrum). Is this the kind of "democracy" you want to defend?

"Ein Vulcan is beyond reason. Jews ate her baby."

-- Electro Robo

Jews did not eat my baby but Zionists destroyed the fertile land where my ancestors had lived happily for countless generations, turned us into refugee and continue to terrorize and imprison my people.

I love America and all it stands for. I hate how Zionists have misled this great country into believing that a country based on ethnic cleansing and racism (My people are viewed as a "demographic threat" by the Government of Israel - Can you deny this?) is actually a democracy!

"Yup, definitely stolen land. The poor Palestinians were just sitting there, and those nasty Israelis just came and took it. The Arab states NEVER attacked Israel. 48? 67?* 73? Those weren't wars, they were, uh, garden parties! That's right! The Syrians wanted to have a picnic in Tel Aviv, their car broke down, so they decided to drive over in a tank. Yeah, that's it!"

-- cestmoi123

cestmoi123, the Palestinians were there before European Jews showed up to take over their land starting in the early twentieth century. By 1948 plenty of Palestinian towns and villages were ethnically cleansed. You clearly subscribe to the racist slogan "a land without a people for a people without a land" claiming that the Palestinians did not exist or else you wouldn't be implying the land of Palestine was empty for Israel to be established on it in 1948!

Cloudberry,

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is made to look complicated. At its essence, it is story of ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians by the Zionist movement of mostly European (and at later stages Middle Eastern) Jews. Throughout this process of ethnic cleansing - which is still ongoing today- Palestinians are made to look like the aggressor in one of the most successful PR spins in history. The ineffective involvement of corrupt (and largely pro-Western) Arab regimes is magnified by the Zionists to make themselves look like the victims. In the US, the Israel Lobby's influence on the media and on politicians has resulted in Middle Eastern media coverage that is devoid of context and in distorted policies leading to the Iraq war. You may want to read the landmark study on the Lobby by professors Walt of Harvard and Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago in the London Review of Books Unhttp://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html.

About the conflict itself, consider the following historical facts.

- Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism in the late 19th century, when Jews were less than 3% of the population of the holy land, wrote the following in his diary about the indigenous population of Palestine "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries whilst denying it any employment in our own country."

- During the establishment of the state of Israel, over 400 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed by the Haganah, Irgun and other Jewish terrorist gangs. "There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."

[Moshe Dayan, in Haifa, quoted by Ha'aretz, April, 4 1969]. More than 750,000 Palestinians were made refugees as a result (now they and their descendants are in the millions). Israel will not allow them to return in spite of UN resolutions.

- In the ethnic cleansing that took place, Menachem Begin's Irgun gang was one of the most aggressive. The massacre in the village of Deir Yassin was particularly gruesome, as pregnant women and children were murdered to "throw terror in the heart of the Arabs" so that they will flee and make room for the Jews coming from Europe. Begin said later in his autobiography "if it wasnt for Deir Yassin, there would have been no Israel"

- Even Israeli historian Benny Morris, in his interviews with Haaretz following publication of his "Birth of the Refugee Problem Revisited." indicated that he now believes there was an official policy to sanction or at least acquiesce in ethnic cleansing.

- This ethnic cleansing is continuing with the building of the wall/fence in the West Bank which will separate thousands of Palestinian farmers from their fields (their fertile land will have been ethnically cleansed!), and the settlements in the West Bank which keep on expanding to eat up the agricultural land of the surrounding Palestinian villages.

As for racism, consider the fact that demography (in addition to shortening Israel's line of defense) was given as the main reason for the evacuation of Gaza - Ariel Sharon wanted to subtract 1.4 million Palestinians from the demographic equation! The same racist demographic argument is behind the fact that Israel will not agree to a bi-national state, although the extensive building of settlements in the West Bank has made this state almost all but inevitable, for fear of losing the "Jewish Majority".

Being part of the Establishment, she has nothing to offer Americans but more fear.

With Bush's failed policies endangering America's economy and status in the world, the Democrats would have to work very hard to lose this time.