Iran's preparations to reach a negotiated political solution with Israel are notably apparent.

That being said I agree that Israel's current air campaign is horrifyingly counter-productive.

isn't it Israel that's occupying territory it was asked to let go of by the U.N. all the way back in the sixties? Wasn't there a border that was drawn that Israel refuses to recognize?

This is not some anti-Israel posting. I would have said the same if it were Palestine that was not recognizing what the U.N. set up. I don't see this as a Jewish versus Muslim issue though that is what it seems to have become now. It's really one country occupying a part of another when it comes down to it.

I have some questions that I'm really seeking answers to. Why does the U.S. support this? Is it because of the number of rich and powerful Jewish people that run things in the U.S.? Why does Israel not need to comply with the U.N. (while I'm writing this, I'm realizing that we in the U.S. don't exactly comply when it doesn't suit us either)?

Lastly, why is it so politically incorrect to ask this in the U.S.? I've done a lot of reading on the issues in the Middle East and I can't seem to understand this. Of course, being neither Muslim nor Jewish, I realize I may never understand the emotions attached to this but I'd like to try.

You war-lovers in the crowd realize, don't you, that the events in and around Israel are the final and ultimate confirmation of the abject failure of Bush's foreign policy? This isn't to say that the events are Bush's fault - clearly they aren't his fault.

It is interesting to note, however, that there are those among you who have fellated Bush at every step of the way. Indeed, if a child helped an elderly person cross the street somewhere in the Middle East you cried out that it is an example of George Bush's Middle East policy "paying dividends." If George Bush has been responsible for anything positive taking place in the Middle East, shouldn't he also take responsibility for the bad?

But I digress.

It wouldn't be too much of an oversimplification to say that many of you have propped up and supported our brutal, pointless war in Iraq because you believed that the ultimate payout as a result would be "peace in the Middle East." Yo. Hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of casualties, death squads - be damned! You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, and GW is making a giant Democracy-flavored omelette out of the entire Middle East.

Sadly, we're as far from that ideal as we ever were at this point - and today Israel and Lebanon are exchanging rockets and missiles.

Pax Americana, indeed.

If you think about the other rivalries that wage worldwide, can you come up with any other that even comes close to comparing with this 3000 year old idiocy? As a Jewish person I can tell you I am already sick of this bull$417!

Yes, we are all idiots and we are more than willing to end our lives for nothing and no-one while the rest of the world spins.

Does anyone else have a problem with this? Many will say I have turned against my own people but my people are acting like idiots, fighting their own strawmen and making things worse with every action... the only one more idiotic than us are the Arabs... Maybe the sooner we kill eachother off the better...

see you in hell!

...who's "negotiate a political solution"? When Palestinians and other groups in the Middle East tell you what they truly think, they admit they want to destroy Israel, if not today, then eventually. Hell, they can't even bring themselves to think of Israel as a legitimate nation, preferring to call it the "Zionist entity". Until the Muslim world undergoes its own Enlightenment and learns to live peaceably with other religions, any "political solution" that does not return the land of Israel to the Islamic fold will merely be a cease-fire.

This is such a biased article. The writer pairs a number of countries together and basically tells you the Israelis occupy Palestinian and Lebanese land (not true for the Lebanese) and that Israel is just abusing these poor people. When it talks about the Israel-US duo it basically goes back to blaming Israel for its strategies.

Israel pulled out of Gaza last year, only to be greeted with 5000 Kazam rockets landing in Israel. Will this encourage the Israelis to withdraw from more land?

In 1947, both the Palestinians and the Israelis had a choice to accept the United Nation partition of the land. One Jewish and one Arab. The Israelis accepted the miserable piece they got. The local arabs did not and they started a war.

The Gaza strip was always occupied by Egypt and the West Bank was occupied by Jordan until 1967. Only when Israel occupied these same lands did this really become an issue. Why is it worse when the Jews occupy the land?

Israel has demonstrated time and again that it is willing to cede land for peace. With Egypt a peace agreement was signed and the Sinai was ceded. In 2000 Israel pulled out of Lebanon, yet they keep launching missiles. Same in Gaza.

I think the world tries too hard to give excuses for the barbaric nature of the Muslim Arabs. They are backward and incompatible with western civilization. What have they contributed to civilization over the past 500 years? Terror?

Daryl

"Is it because of the number of rich and powerful Jewish people that run things in the U.S.?"

Of course it is, Anonymous. Duh! Everything is due to or caused by the Jews who "run things" in the US. Ken Lay? Jewish. Real name, Laybowitz. George Bush? Jewish. Real name, Bushinsky. Condi Rice? She's an Ethiopian Jew. They're all Jews. Jews run everything, the media, the Big Three Auto Companies (Henry Ford only pretended to be an anti-semite to throw people off his tracks), the oil companies, you name it. That includes Salon, of course, so brave Anonymous, if you think you're really anonymous, watch out, because they know what you think and you might find out messing with the Jews isn't as safe as you think.