Why do you think the Jewish people were in danger of "disappearing"? Where on earth do you get that idea?

I'll p[oint out to you, Winsmith, that God Himself said that the Jewish would not

The West Bank and Gaza may have been part of the mandate, but they were not a part of the formation of Israel, and the various Arabs living there (soon to be grouped together as "Palestinians") were not displaced by the formation of Israel at that point.

This distinction is crucial, because you cite nearly a million Palestinians in "Israel" in 1948, and that is empirically not true. Exaggerating the displacement of Palestinians because there are so many in Israel today (thanks to their prodigious birth-rate, nearly 7 children per family) helps confuse what happened historically.

This is so bad that I am virtually frozen into nothing but an ice cold RAGE. I mean: Before this utter madness started I could not even look at the Palestinian/Israel situation without too much pain. It is and HAS BEEN a shame for the entire global community that nothing has been done to minimize the suffering in Palestine. And it's also a shame that Arab countries have done so little.

A Crime against Humanity is Crime, no matter what party performing it. The rockets from Hamas is Criminal. The attitude of the Israeli government is a Crime. The US attitude against this conflict is a Crime. The amount of US tax payers money used to buy expensive weapons systems directed at TOTALLY defenseless civilians is a HUGE crime and it's a BLOODY shame that the people the of USA do not react and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!

It's a joke that the European political leaders NOW try to ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING when they have looked the other way for years. It's UTTERLY AMAZING that the International Community hasn't grabbed Israel BY THEIR TESTOSTERONE INTOXICATED BALLS - sorry! - and said: STOP IT!!!! or we will cut off EVERY kind of support for your criminal behavior. SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

Sorry for shouting, but this is one of those times when I am not AT ALL happy being a so called Human Being. No.

That PR gag[Mission Accomplished] was widely lambasted in both the press and in America at large.

-- Renegade Iconoclast

Is that right?

“Mission Accomplished” - Media Reaction

PBS' Gwen Ifill said Bush was "part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan." On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, "The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a -- on a carrier landing."

Bob Schieffer on CBS said: "As far as I'm concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time." His guest, Joe Klein, responded: "Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me." Everyone agreed the Democrats and antiwar critics were now on the run.

When Bush's jet landed on an aircraft carrier, American casualties stood at 139 killed and 542 wounded.

The following looks at how one newspaper -- it happens to be The New York Times -- covered the Bush declaration and its immediate aftermath. One snippet: "The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today."

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/5-years-ago-how-the-media_b_99633.html)

Mission Accomplished: A look back at the media's coverage of Bush's declaration of victory in Iraq --

On the May 1, 2003, edition of Hardball, Chris Matthews was joined by right-wing pundit Ann Coulter and "Democrat" Pat Caddell.

MATTHEWS: Ann Coulter, you're the first to speak tonight on the buzz. The president's performance tonight, redolent of the best of Reagan -- what do you think?

COULTER: It's stunning. It's amazing. I think it's huge. I mean, he's landing on a boat at 150 miles per hour. It's tremendous. It's hard to imagine any Democrat being able to do that. And it doesn't matter if Democrats try to ridicule it. It's stunning, and it speaks for itself.

MATTHEWS: Pat Caddell, the president's performance tonight on television, his arrival on ship?...

CADDELL: He looks like a fighter pilot.

MATTHEWS: He looks for real. What is it about the commander in chief role, the hat that he does wear, that makes him -- I mean, he seems like -- he didn't fight in a war, but he looks like he does.

Later that day, on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Matthews said:

MATTHEWS: We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like [former President Bill] Clinton or even like [former Democratic presidential candidates Michael] Dukakis or [Walter] Mondale, all those guys, [George] McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits. We don't want an indoor prime minister type, or the Danes or the Dutch or the Italians, or a [Russian Federation President Vladimir] Putin. Can you imagine Putin getting elected here? We want a guy as president.

On the May 7, 2003, edition of Hardball, Matthews asked former Nixon administration official G. Gordon Liddy what he thought of the response to Bush's landing on the Abraham Lincoln. Looking at the footage, Liddy commented that Bush's flight suit made "the best of his manly characteristic."

On the May 1 edition of CNBC's The News with Brian Williams, Williams, now anchor of NBC's Nightly News, said of Bush:

WILLIAMS: And two immutable truths about the president that the Democrats can't change: He's a youthful guy. He looked terrific and full of energy in a flight suit. He is a former pilot, so it's not a foreign art farm -- art form to him. Not all presidents could have pulled this scene off today.

The print media joined in the collective swoon the following day. From a May 2, 2003, article in The New York Times by staff writer David E. Sanger:

"But within minutes Mr. Bush emerged for the kind of photographs that other politicians can only dream about. He hopped out of the plane with a helmet tucked under his arm and walked across the flight deck with a swagger that seemed to suggest he had seen Top Gun. Clearly in his element, he was swarmed by cheering members of the Lincoln's crew."

Even in a White House that prides itself on its mastery of political staging, Mr. Bush's arrival on board the Lincoln was a first of many kinds.

On the May 1 edition of CNBC's The News with Brian Williams, Williams, now anchor of NBC's Nightly News, said of Bush:

WILLIAMS: And two immutable truths about the president that the Democrats can't change: He's a youthful guy. He looked terrific and full of energy in a flight suit. He is a former pilot, so it's not a foreign art farm -- art form to him. Not all presidents could have pulled this scene off today.

On the May 3, 2003, edition of CNN's The Capital Gang, then-Time columnist Margaret Carlson spoke of the "stirring tableau":

CARLSON: A hurricane couldn't have interfered with that particular parade. It was so well done, and even though we knew that everything was choreographed down to, you know, catching that fourth hook on the ship, it was still a pretty stirring tableau. Cecil B. DeMille couldn't have been done better. And even though you know there's no Santa Claus, Christmas is still great, as it was with that particular moment.

And on, and on, and on...

http://www.wthefilm.com/guide/pages/73-Mission-Accomplished-Media-Reaction.html