...her husbands annexation of the West Bank in defiance of the UN?

In late September, 1944 Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery claimed his personal brainchild Operation "Market-Garden" was "90% successful".

It was a combined airborne/armor offensive though Holland that was meant to reach a 'back-door' bridgehead over the Rhine river and into northern Germany. This would have ended the war as early as December, 1944.

It failed to reach the critical bridge in Arnhem, where the British 1st Airborne Division was ultimately destroyed.

The offensive failed to accomplish anything of strategic worth and cost 17,000+ Allied casualties (plus several hundred Dutch citizens and about 8,000+ Germans casualties). The war would continue into the first half of 1945 and cost thousands more lives.

But Montgomery would continue to insist it was "90% successful".

Wonder if the Israeli President is reading from the same notes as Monty was.

The real deal?

Without all the filler

And gung-ho

Pro-Israel spiel?

Jesus Christ in a chicken basket!

Has the glass ceiling finally shattered?

All the way from New Orleans

To Jerusalem.

anyone to expect anything else. Queen Noor is obviously an intelligent, extremely well-informed woman who has had the experience of living in the Middle East and understanding the problems better than anyone sitting on a couch in Chattanooga or anwhere else in the western world.

You are no longer a "voice in the wilderness". She stated the facts calmly and truthfully about the deliberate destitution of the Gaza Palestinians. The first writer on this thread had to resort to bringing Noor's dead husband into it - the Hillary Clinton scenario all over again, although Bill is very much alive. For a country that prides itself so much on its "enlightened" attitide to women, America still produces people who still cannot see women as individuals with their own opinions which, in many cases, are at variance with those of their husbands and even other family members. Is that so hard to understand,marcparis? I'm surprised that you didn't blame Queen Noor for her father-in-law's actions too. King Abdullah of Jordan annexed the West Bank and was assassinated in 1951 by a Palestinian. As Noor was born in Washington D.C. in that same year, your implication doesn't make any sense, macparis, but that's not exactly novel around here.

The word "noor" means light.

And this world

Sure could use more noor

To dispell

The thick darkness

Of the blackest dark night.

You are quickly becoming one of my favorite writers.

While I was reading Haaretz I came across this in a letter to the paper supporting the atrocities in on Gaza:

"...Because if you are truly concerned about the death of our children and theirs, you would understand the present war - not in order to uproot Hamas from Gaza but to induce its followers to understand, and regrettably in the only way they understand in the meantime, that they must stop the firing unilaterally, stop hoarding missiles for a bitter and hopeless war to destroy Israel, and above all for the sake of their children in the future, so they will not die in another pointless adventure."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1055977.html

Everyone knows, even in Israel, that there is no way you can kill all of Hamas. They do however think you can kill and destroy enough of Gaza and its citizens to "induce" them to stop opposing the occupation. In essence use state terrorism.

The most important fact that is really missing in the reporting from all of this is the fact that Israel has been for a long time, and still is, a illegal occupier of Palestine. They are the ones responsible for the lack of a two state solution. They are the ones that can give peace a chance by ending the occupation now! Gideon Levy the recipient of the above quoted letter says it better then i can:

"Israel is not being asked "to give" anything to the Palestinians; it is only being asked to return - to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their fundamental human rights and humanity. This is the primary core issue, the only one worthy of the title, and no one talks about it anymore. No one is talking about morality anymore. Justice is also an archaic concept, a taboo that has deliberately been erased from all negotiations. Two and a half million people - farmers, merchants, lawyers, drivers, daydreaming teenage girls, love-smitten men, old people, women, children and combatants using violent means for a just cause - have all been living under a brutal boot for 40 years. Meanwhile, in our cafes and living rooms the conversation is over giving or not giving. . . Just as a thief cannot present demands - neither preconditions nor any other terms - to the owner of the property he has robbed, Israel cannot present demands to the other side as long as the situation remains as it is."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/927531.html

How deeply official Washington, London, Brussels, Europe hates the Israelis. I am not talking a little annoyance – they outright hate the Israelis. The reason is the craven and servile behaviour demanded by the Israelis and their shills. I remember a late Pentagon General Counsel, the top career attorney for the US DOD who had been their through Reagan, Bush I and Clinton telling me how annoyed he was that the early Clinton administration had not yet learned about Netanyahu –dating back to Reagan he kept a list of every US soldier whose death could be directly attributed to Netanyahu (and Pollard continued presence in Jail is because of this) -- and I recall it was over 30. Diplomats who dealt with Netanyahu in DC and Europe described him as an almost compulsive liar - and I know this from people who were in meetings with him where they describe people as struck dumb by his outrageous mendacity, his bald faced lying (and Israelis I know wonder if he is in fact sane, since some of it is pointless.) By the way, he has made this lying part of the Israeli diplomatic culture, another reason they are detested.

Now you have the juvenile boast by an Israeli Prime Minister that demanded that Bush interrupt a speech to get him to overrule Rice and stop the US voting for the UN Cease Fiore resolution (showing that the President of the United States carries his spittoon.) A story that is almost certainly true, and that probably left her and numerous people in DC spitting mad. I have heard so many stories about the appalling Wurmsers, husband and wife, and their behavior -- they are hard to describe.

The point that I am making is that privately, official Washington almost to a man and woman agreed with John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’ Israel Lobby – and everybody read it. But they agreed quietly, while openly condemning it.

Meanwhile around the world, government after government deeply resents the pressure brought through Washington for them to tone down criticism of the Israelis. The way in which stories are whipped up of anti-Semitism in this country or that country (always front page in a US newspaper) – noting of course that whipping up ideas of anti-Semitism creates a solidarity effect so that the 70% odd of US Jews that disagree with Israeli policy and AIPAC, and almost 90% or Europeans feel obliged to toe the party-line.

The real issue though is that you cannot be so hated as the Israelis are in DC, bully so many politicians, be regarded as complete liars, without their being an eventual backlash. The day that Israel loses seriously its support in US public opinion, it will quite literally reap the whirlwind. There is an astonishing level of anger in DC at the way the Israelis behave, and deep anger in capitals all around the world. They are on a precipice here.