The US government should use its huge subsidies to pressure Israel to stop trapping and depriving entire towns just to punish some terrorists. That's collective punishment and it's immoral.

The US government should also pressure the Israeli government to stop allowing Jewish settlers to grab the best West Bank land, and stop sending soldiers to protect them and their roads. That's collective coddling for an entire group based on their ethnicity, and it's immoral. Make the settlers save a down payment, take out a mortgage and buy land legally in Israel. To me the fields and orchards of America are part of my sacred country, but I don't expect anyone to GIVE me those fields and orchards. Why should my US taxpayer dollars support the settlers' land grab?

If the Israelis want to continue collective punishment and collective coddling, let them do it without my tax dollars.

which is not the same as a treaty; again, how might one nation negotiate a treaty with another group of people bent on destroying it (short of surrendering or mass suicide)?

israel has shown itself a reliable peace partner with egypt and jordan--a fact rarely acknowledged or never tempers the customary outrage against israel. palestinians have yet to produce a leadership capable of managing a peace deal to completion.

in the long term, a complete withdrawal from west bank is in israel's best interest. the settlement movement has been too divisive among israelis. palestine should declare itself and receive full UN recognition. then perhaps having a hard-earned sovereignty to lose they'll be in a better position to negotioate for peace.

"Israel has been ruled by the paranoid right for too long"

That's what many Israelis thought before the Barak Administration. He tried every means to negotiate long-term peace, and the response from the Palestinians was the Second Intefada.

Thanks to anonymous for the citations on limited offers by Hamas to accept a temporary cease-fire in exchange for Israeli surrender to all their demands. Based on those articles, it seems that if the offer ever becomes a serious offer to negotiate, the Israeli government would be listening.

Don't get me started.

I find the idea that religion is the result of selection pressure enforcing tribal identity quite appealing.

Recommended reading:

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/067003472X

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

by Daniel C. Dennett

Steven Pinker has no shortage of insight on the subject eaither.

.... Some kind words here make me imagine we have new-friends on a sandy beach.

We are seen putting tanning lotion on wood-limbs, shoulders, plumb bellies, and bare backs.

No. Not on the YKW!

Other comments (anonymous @ 9:49, and yes @ 9:58 bystander) etc.,

Wow, I'd love to talk to Mona, bethincary, and many other singsong voices.... someday.

Oh wow. I'd tip a conical hat or wear a African traditional garb if I was the kitchen help.

I'd go barefoot and be a dishwasher in the new non-Hate-era of The White House... for free.

Now I am ready for some grilled cheese. Who cares if the waitress has hairy knuckles if they are nice?

I'd tip a dime.

Glenn is no well dressed haberdasher wearing a pin-striped three-piece suit? Who cares?

Jkalos? Seersucker.

Seersucker is clothes.

Mona. jockey shorts?

The Wa/Po said: Sale!

A post George W. Sale!

You all make me cheese-smile.

I was outside laying some rocks,

on a pathway to the herb greenhouse.

Jkalos? We need a all expense paid ocean boat cruise?

I Hope you don't wear a blonde hairpiece and snooze.

You know I'm trying real hard to not embarrass anybody?

Glenn needs to write a book for pre-schoolers? John McCain did?

I guess the sequel next book will be how to bomb children as the sleep?

IntelVet may get upset when football centers pass gas when they hike a football?

I don't know? Let's hope he's not the football center who was a homophobe refusing to play center? I tease. I'm not making 'jest' of gender, temperament, or those who like to watch seagulls.

Hate makes me nauseated.

If a visit to the Moose Club,

for a triple decker bacon helps a Rabbi?

Gads. No hate. To get rid of stress? Juggle pork-chops? Bean Sprout? Sauerkraut? Swallow Gold tropical fish? No bury heads in the sand? Or, if you do, take a shower with whoever you wish. Scrub a GWB's back? Glenn? I nominate him because he is a lawyer who defends truth.

That is to say the Irgun, the Stern Gang and the rest. Begin, Shamir etc. were terrorists -- one of their party tricks was to murder a British seargeant, a veteran of the war against Hitler, hang his body in an orchard, having eviserated it (not clear if this was before he was dead) and pack the body cavity with explosives, so as to kill the people who cut it down -- nice huh! And yet the British negotiated with them, and later they were elected Prime Minister. And later yet, Binyamin Netanyahu unveiled a plaque commemorating in glorious terms the bombing of the King David Hotel, for many years the most lethal act of terrorism in history. I could cite example after example, but remember the point, the Israeli Labour Party and especially the Irgun grew out of a particularly nasty bunch of terrorists -- and several Israeli Prime Ministers were wholly unrepentant terrorists, and still the victims, the UK and the US negotiated with them.

For that matter the UK also negotiated with Michael Collins, Liam Cosgrave and Eamon de Valera -- all of whom could easily be called terrorists. Hell the UK negotiated with the American Rebels, and many of their tactics don't stand up to close scrutiny.

Not negotiating with Hamas is just plain silly. The reasons given are hypocritical -- especially from an AIPAC which thinks Netanyahu is a great guy, and though the same of Shamir and Begin. More to the point, not negotiating feeds the ideological belief in Israels destruction, since if Israel won't ever negotiate with the elected leaders of the Palestinians, what else is there to do but destroy Israel. If negotiation improves the lot of the Palestinians and is seen to do so in substantial and ongoing ways, the argument that Israel must be destroyed becomes pointless.

The problem those who oppose negotiation miss (and I am sure I will be attacked for using this line) is that there can be no "final solution to the [Palestinian] problem." The Palestinians are not going to go away, vanish, be exterminated -- the Israeli people will not tolerate that. the world learned its lesson in 1945 and won't put up with it either. So the problem of the Palestinians cannot be wished away except by negotiation.

As a lawyer, when a case needs to be settled, I do not get to dictate who the other side's counsel will be -- I deal with who they chose. (The only lawyer I knew to try that is a Harvard grad, and was a lousy representative of his client.) That is the way it works, the Palestinians have chosen their representatives, the world needs to deal with that fact, not kvetch and moan about it, or sit there fingers in ears going nyah nyah.