Hey, Win, it's a pleasure to have you here. It's nice to have someone more eloquent than I, speaking against the "blind, uncritical" anti-Israel rants common here.

Very soon, deletions won't be necessary since the very small handful of posters who aren't welcomed here will just be banned altogether.

Glenn,

I strongly applaud the idea of banning abusive posters, and I look forward to it. I enjoy debate with intelligent people, of whom there are many here, but I find some of the invective and profanity painful. I think you should clarify the rules so people understand them, and you should enforce them.

I have probably been guilty of being less polite than I should have been in certain circumstances where I replied to people who were insulting me. For this I apologize.

I'm sure that finding ways to reduce the ad hominem rhetoric here will elevate the level of discussion. More light with less heat would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Read the Vanity Fair article Canuck posted a bit ago. The claim is that the US State Department fomented an attempted coup by Fatah against Hamas. Very interesting.

@Whinesmith

"For hundreds of years people have tried to figure out why when Jewish people assert their distinctness, their refusal to play by the rules you want to impose on them, when they refuse to acquiesce to a Christian framework of normativity, passivity and meekness, they enrage the Christians who claim to "love" them. As Benjamin Disraeli famously said, Jews are right to be a skittish, insecure people, because 2000 years of Christian love has made them that way."

Well whaddayouknow! Scratcg a Zionist and you find a Jewish Supremeacist! Every time. I'm sorry you find it so bad for your "distinctiveness" to play by the same rules as anybody else. So that's your opinion of non-Jews, Winsmith? No wonder they persecute you, it's self defense!

Winsmith, the tough Jew! What putz!

Please explain how your abusive rant in any way responded to what WinSmith wrote.

Regarding your complaint to WinSmith:

I personally don't understand why anyone would have a problem with someone being passionate about life and death issues. Something is wrong if you don't. You are absolutely wrong that Greenwald's passion for justice sways him in an inappropriate way.

May I submit that Glenn's shrillness and appeal to emotionality, which are evident in all of his writings, are a proximate cause of the intemperance obscuring a helpful discussion here. When a poster like omooex feels the need to inform me each time I say anything with which he disagrees that he would like to knock my teeth out, it diminishes the value of what we are doing here.

... comes Derbig Mooser to prove my point.

I don't really believe in having rules per se. I generally think adults are best left to their own devices to decide with whom they want to engage and what rules of engagement they create with one another.... I think that's what makes the quality of discussion here good -- that people don't have to think about whether they're violating rules in how they express themselves.

I disagree with you, but hey - it's your show. All I can say is: etiquette exists for a reason. Read Miss Manners sometime.

I'm sorry, are you guys both saying I'm a liar about omooex? There are multiple instances from yesterday, I'll put a permalink to the first one at my signature.

Why did Israeli government forces help launch Hamas?

Much the same as why the CIA helped start al-Qaeda, I guess: it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

"I'm sorry, are you guys both saying I'm a liar about omooex? There are multiple instances from yesterday, I'll put a permalink to the first one at my signature."

So, are you guys speechless? Or do you only care about a Jew lying about a Palestinian but not a Palestinian knocking a Jew's teeth out?

There's another post of his at my signature.

So, you called me a liar, as you pretty much call anyone who disagrees with you. Is an apology forthcoming? Are you in fact a grownup?