Renegade's comment is bigoted, I agree.

But don't you think suicide bombers hitting Israel are now hightly likely?

The Israeli Prime Minister said that they would stop when terrorism stopped. The question I have for him is "When whose terrorism stops." The nonsense of painting Israel is a victim while it victimizes the Palestinians insults our intelligence. Jimmy Carter was right. Israel is practicing aparteid against the Palestinians and it it needs to end. Preventing humanitarian aid from reaching a starving population is a terrorist act. Israel expects the Palestinians to do nothing while it puts a stranglehold on a population with sixty percent unemployment. It is not in the United State's best interest to allow Israel to get away with mass murder.

Israel's argument is a weak lie grounded in racism and superstition. The victimization of Palestinians insights the entire Muslim world against the U.S. Those who support this style of foreign diplomacy, which is nothing more than to keep killing until the other side gives up is immoral, stupid, and shameful. The other side is never going to give up, because they are never going to accept the dominance of Israel or the U.S. over their lives any more than Americans would accept the dominance of fascists in our country. People will fight to the death to protect their way of life. Don't any of our foreign policy experts understand this?

There are over 1.3 billion Muslims in the world and with our current foreign policy we are going to have to kill them all to gain the type of security it claims is necessary. I am disgusted with the level of ignorance and refusal to face reality by the current foreign policy establishment. Never have so few delusional special interests gathered to cause such harm for so long for so many, while ruining America's standing in the world.

Maybe I am missing the point. The establishment's goal may be to have a hundred year war to prop up the military/technological complex and our economy. Do our leaders lack the imagination to discover a means of maintaining security without killing everyone who is not us? Who is next after the Muslims, Europeans, Russians, Chinese, Africans, or those sneaky Australians. Our foreign policy reminds me of the life cycle of cockroaches.

as Germans have a peculiar habit of joining up several words to create one jaw-breaker. I didn't know that you had to be able to speak Yiddish to join this fracas ( think that's French).

I'll modify my statement to be more accurate of my own knowledge. I have never seen video of a massive party when a child is born.

I have seen videos of martyr celebrations. Perhaps there is a huge party when a child is born in Palestine, and dancing in the streets. I've just never seen it. Maybe you can point me to an example.

The anti-Israel contingent picked up on one statement, and failed to acknowledge my substantive criticism of Israel. Did you folks even read my post?

"Perhaps you need to know more about him; he's mild, sardonic and doesn't kick anyone's butt around"

He bloody would if you told him to amend his wording. Remember he does come from Yorkshire. All I was saying is that he would later offer you a cup of tea. Which cup, when he wasn't looking, you would look at the bottom in the time honoured manner to see whether the cup came from Woolworths or whether he'd served you his best china.

Sadly, due to the credit crunch Woolworths has now disappeared from our high streets taking with it a very petty bourgeouis habit and depriving Mr Bennett of a very useful theatrical conceit. And the world of British snobbery is also the poorer for it. Such is life.

1. If the leaders of a neighboring territory are [committing an act of war by blockading] your territory, and refuse to stop, it is entirely within rights - indeed within responsibility - to kill them.

Etc.

Israeli military and political leaders also have homes. They also "shelter with" civilians. Are their families also "human shields"?

Of course, they are much more likely.

I do get annoyed about how much attention suicide bombings get. One suicide bombing killing 15 people is treated as if the Palestinians used some kind of WMD. While Israel dropped so many cluster bombs on Lebanon on 2006, that's they're still cleaning up the bomblets. They killed something on the order of 1000 people, by blowing them to shreds. When a suicide bomb occurs in a public place in Israel, the media focus on the nails, the types of horrific injuries they cause, the individual victims. Good, I don't see why they shouldn't

But Palestinian and Arab vicitms are just "killed" or "injured". We never hear about the weaponry used, how it affects the dead and the survivors.

The Germans in my family and the Jews I work with tell me that Yiddish is German. "High German" even.

Perhaps that is why you think them similar in nature?

"Perhaps there is a huge party when a child is born in Palestine, and dancing in the streets. I've just never seen it. Maybe you can point me to an example."

Well, of course some families throw huge parties when children are born. And others don't I imagine. It may be possible that Palestinians are individuals and do things as they see fit. I wouldn't want to aver, because that would mean they are humans like us.

As for dancing in the streets. Do you remember our invasions of Iraq? "Yay, America we can do it?" Pro-American parades. Veterans Day Parades? If you were at all a fair minded person, you would see that every society celebrates its own casualties and the casualties they inflict on the 'enemy' whoever they may be at any given time.

Indeed, you could write a whole treatise on the toxic impact of Israel on Jewish diversity world wide.

-- omooex

(Got my 2.25s on so I can see the text better. Sorry for my former mispelling of your handle.)

Treatise? Books and books. But the thing which completely floors me is the way commenters seem to posit that Jews (Zionists) could undertake a colonial settlement project, requiring at least the subduing of the indigenous people, culminating in an armed sovereign state, hell, an armed sovereign religious majority state, and do it without giving anybody cause to get mad at them. Or coarsening their precious Jewish Ideals.

Judaism is a wonderful religion! It provides spiritual comfort, beautiful and unifying rituals for all stages and events of life. Jewish "culture" such as it is, has many things to add to life for those who embrace it, and hopefully those who come in contact with it by friendship or relation.

But Judaism as a basis for a state? Historically a failure, and BTW, religiously forbidden.

And then we get to the ultimate tragedy of the thing: Once one abandons the British public-school Biblical geography on which Zionism was based (How could it be otherwise? After all, the project had to appeal to Goyim even more than it did to Jews)

every bit of historical evidence tells us that the people in the area are the closest relatives of the people killing them.

It was inevitable that once Zionism got a foothold, it would hold Judaism hostage to its exigencies, and that is what Zionism has done. If Zionism does not loosen its death-grip on Judaism, Judaism will be destroyed. Oh sure, like the Dutch Reformed Church did for a while, it may live on as a ceremonial adjunct to an apartheid state, but that's it.

And if I wrote that last paragraph and put "Muslim extremeism" or "Al Queada" in place of Judaism, nobody would have any issue with it.