Do you have any particular attachment to Israel -- emotional, cultural and/or religious -- which makes you view it as more than just another foreign country?

I mostly agree with everything you say Mr. Greenwald. The only time I really disagree with you is when you mention Obama and express your blind love for him. However, I have never agreed with you as much as I did today; wonderfully written blog that really touched me. The human factor is something that I've been playing with in my head for a while now. It's such a simple concept, but the great majority of the world does not get it.

With all due respect, while I share many of your views, I'd ask you to print (or re-print?) your proposed long-term solution to this situation. You question those defending Israel's actions by asking them to try and understand what it feels like to go through what the Palestinian people have gone through over the last handful of decades, but are we to assume this is a defense of Hamas lobbing rockets into Israel? We can go in circles, can't we?

are we to assume this is a defense of Hamas lobbing rockets into Israel?

No.

The only time I really disagree with you is when you mention Obama and express your blind love for him.

If you'd be so kind, I'd appreciate it if you went ahead and posted just one quote of mine where I mention and express my blind love for Obama.

designed to make us sympathize with Israel and to demonize Hamas. 9/11 itself was part of this.

The tragedy is people on both sides don't want a peaceful co-existence, although most people want this.

One major problem is the illogical belief in religion, the other major problem is the ultimate evil that drives humanity to murder each other.

"Do you have any particular attachment to Israel -- emotional, cultural and/or religious -- which makes you view it as more than just another foreign country?"

And if I do, does that automatically disqualify my opinions from any possible objectivity? Does any emotional or cultural attachments to the United States you might have automatically make you a shill for the Bush/Cheney regime? Obviously not.

"Do you have any particular attachment to Israel -- emotional, cultural and/or religious -- which makes you view it as more than just another foreign country?"

And if I do . . .

Why can't you just answer?

has no intention of allowing a viable, sovereign Palestinian state on its borders. It had no intention of allowing it in 1948 when it grabbed 24 per cent more land than what it was allotted legally, if unfairly, by UN Resolution 181. It had no intention of allowing it throughout the massacres and ploys of the 1950s. It had no intention of allowing two states when it conquered the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine in 1967 and reinterpreted UN Security Council Resolution 242 to its own liking despite the overwhelming international consensus stating that Israel would receive full international recognition within secure and recognized borders if it withdrew from the lands it had only recently occupied.

It had no intention of acknowledging Palestinian national rights at the United Nations in 1974, when –alone with the United States—it voted against a two-state solution. It had no intention of allowing a comprehensive peace settlement when Egypt stood ready to deliver but received, and obediently accepted, a separate peace exclusive of the rights of Palestinians and the remaining peoples of the region. It had no intention of working toward a just two-state solution in 1978 or 1982 when it invaded, fire-bombed, blasted and bulldozed Beirut so that it might annex the West Bank without hassle. It had no intention of granting a Palestinian state in 1987 when the first Intifada spread across occupied Palestine, into the Diaspora and the into the spirits of the global dispossessed, or when Israel deliberately aided the newly formed Hamas movement so that it might undermine the strength of the more secular-nationalist factions.

they don't really see the Muslims they want to kill as being fully human.

On wednesday, the Israeli supreme court ordered that the international media could not be excluded from Gaza. Today, 4 days later, Israel has not only continued exclusion, but are pushing reporters even further back from the Israel/Gaza border.

The reason Israel has done this must be that they will do whatever they must--including ignoring their own high court--to limit evidence that Gazans are indeed human beings and that they are suffering the horrors that occur when war is unleashed on densely-packed urban civilians.

Israel knows full well that reporting from Gaza turns Gazans from vague abstractions to suffering human beings. And they will not allow that reality to be communicated to the world.

"Terrorists" such as Bin Laden are much more rational than western "leaders" like Bush/Cheney and their supporters like Peretz in that they understand the immediate results of their actions.

Bin Laden's objective in the 911 attack was not to intimidate the US directly, but to provoke a major war which he though his side would ultimately win (as they had beaten the USSR in Afghanistan). He understood that the US would retaliate, causing civilian casualties, and that this would solidify Muslim resistance to the US.

The motives and methods of the various Palestinian and other anti-Israeli groups are more complex (for example their rivalries with each other can sometimes be dominant), but generally they are still a step ahead of Israel and the US in terms of rational strategy.

These biblical words opens Väinö Linna's epic trilogy, Under the North Star.

"Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them" is one of themes in this panoramic view of people who participate in historical events. Under the North Star is kind of outlook on life projected onto history depicting the whole of society and dynamics of it.

The characters at the core of the novel participate in historical (tragic) events and give expression to the effect of these events on their individual lives. In this way the past is portrayed as the direct and personal experience of the individuals involved and not as changes in large historical structures.

In english: http://www.vapaasana.com/kirjakauppa2.htm

I just reread Under the North Star. One can only emphasise on the basis of shaking reread experience how important it is to throw light like Glenn Greenwald does.