Glenn, great post as usual. I'd like to think it's only a matter if time before you move on up but maybe you'll stay a blogger. Good for us.

Re previous commenter on never negotiate with your sworn enemy, my first reaction is wasn't that the PLO and Yasser Arafat in the 1970's? They killed Israelis too but, in the end, Rabin, Barak, and even Ariel Sharon sat down with them and talked because there was no alternative but constant war. As Rabin said at the White House "enough of blood and tears". Alas, his hope and his life were dashed.

On the other hand, while I am not jewish, I do have relatives who are not american and I have lived abroad for much of my youth. I can understand how defensive someone can get when those from other countries speak negatively of your country or your people. I remember finding myself defending that which I didn't believe in just because it was American and it was a european criticizing america.

and now, when someone criticizes my father's country or my wife's country, I have to fight myself to not reflexively defend them, even when they're wrong.

I don't know but maybe that's how some jews feel when a non-jew criticizes Israel? Given the history that jews have had in the world, a hypersensitivity would be understandable.

quick results aren't going to happen. unfortunately. if the israelis expect that they're going to suddenly make friends with the palestinians, they're wrong. i'd be surprised if they were that dumb. but, that's kind of what voters do; they vote in a peace party, they make some gesture to the palestinians, hope abounds, the militant factions of the palestinians stage another assault of some kind, the climate among the voters change, the hardliners are voted back into power, the militants say that they were right all the time, the "peace offer" was just a sham, status quo.

students of the bible might say it's going to take 40 years in the desert until the older generation on both sides is replaced; that's after hostilities are finally officially abandoned and rapproachment is finally fully embraced.

it is a matter of hatred (mostly one-way) that cannot be placated or negotiated with.

Its always one way. That's the magic of it. They can't be negotiated with therefore I refuse to negotiate.

And no one sees the irony.

Negotiate is true...

My concern is that if one throws 'crap' at someone, The Crap Thrower may slip and fall and break their own sacroiliac.

The tailbone can get sore if a troll chauffeur gets fired too. The mode of transportation may mean.... one has to drive a tricycle to find new Honest work. if you get the toes stuck in the spokes of a three wheel bike.... you will need to visit a podiatrist.

Those pothole are slippery and splash contaminated water at friendly pedestrian folk.

We need less problems, and not more.

John is right.

How many wars would end if all the jeering spectators weren't egging on the participants?

-- Scientician

I have a better one: How many wars would even start if the jeering spectators were forced to become participants?

hmm. a consensus among the posters is emerging....

as long as somebody sees the conflict as "Israel vs. the Palestinians", whichever side they are on, they are buying into the mindset that keeps it continuing. When they rotate the frame of reference and look at it as "folks working towards an end to hostilities vs. folks working to keep hostilities going", of either nationality, they are freed to do something positive.

Reagan, despite the more recent canonization of him by the right was loathed for his efforts to reduce nuclear stockpiles. I have a copy of a NATO magazine called "THREAT" which included an editorial cartoon depicting a Communist vixen cooing over all the conventional arms the Soviets would be able to build with the money they saved not maintaining the nuclear arsenal. Reagan was constantly accused of being a dupe to Gorbachev.

Quite right. In fact, at the time Norman Podhoretz angrily reviled Reagan as being the new Neville Chamberlain. (The accusation that never loses its usefulness, regardless of who the latest Unstoppable Enemy may be.)

Superb post, Glenn.

We are now up to 6 pages of rational and constructive comments about Israel and US policy toward Israel. Has that ever happened before?

Congratulations Glenn on setting the tone.

Thoreau writes in that chapter also (context of the quote):

"The Vedas say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour."

Thanks, bebop, for making me think of this.