This article is so full of crap - where to begin?

In the end, when Hamas is beaten and the evidence is released, cowards like this writer will melt away back to mediocre anonymity.

BTW, when compared to the money the US has thrown at the Arabs, the support of Israel is the cost of a Mars bar. Don't forget all the oil money that supports "progressive sheikh society".

And the Arabs have been a huge success at State building, no?

Dismantling Israel is latter day Nazis wet dream - but that's all it is.

Amen. (you should excuse the expression)

LeftWingPharisee ~

Boo.

is right on in every single aspect of the argument regarding the current situation in Israel and Gaza. It is a crime that most Americans will never see or even have a chance to be exposed to this important and logical argument.

And if B Obama had an ounce of courage, at the very least he would be talking about the facts expressed here and in a perfect world would be shouting these facts to the world!

Thanks.

It's all about the holocaust, kept alive with movies.

Mr. Kamiya makes a few good points in his piece, but unfortunately he surrounds them with the same ole anti-Israeli rhetoric that we get to hear from the pro-Palestinian side whenever there is a flare up.

He makes an appeal for pragmatism, which is certainly called for by all parties involved, but most of his article is spent discussing Israel's "founding myths" as if that was even relevant to the discussion.

For example:

The problem is political and historical: the dispossession of Palestinians and the ongoing Israeli occupation of their land.

Well, there you have it, don't you? If the problem is ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the only reasonable way to solve that problem is to evict the Israelis isn't it? I can't understand why the Israelis would not take the perfectly reasonable approach of nullifying their state and handing it over to the Arabs (note that the elected leaders of the PA, Hamas, claim all of Israel as Palestinian land, not just the '48 or '67 borders).

Getting into who did what over 60 years ago is no longer germane to the issue. We can all sit around and debate whether Israel's founding was legitimate until we're blue in the face, but unless/until the anti-Israeli forces have enough power to actually wipe Israel off the map as they like to say, such will just remain a pipe dream for them- a pipe dream that justifies all manners of atrocities and will forever block any real progress toward lasting peace. The Hatfields and the McCoys can each sulk about what injustices the other family has done, but it will never get them anywhere but dead.

The Israelis, for their part, also have to face the facts. Mr. Kamiya is correct that peace (and security) will not be won through militarism. However, neither will it be won by raising old questions about the legitimacy of the state.

What would America do if a militaristic Native American group were firing rockets into American cities (whether or not they caused casualties)? Well, we'd wipe them out, for better or worse. In fact, alter the time period, revert the technology, and you need not pose it as a hypothetical. That's exactly what we did. It may not have been humane (it certainly was not), it may not have justified, but that's what happened.

The Palestinians, however, as Mr. Kamiya points out, have somewhat better prospects than basing their future income on Israeli gambling and taste for nicotine. The question is, will they act on this opportunity, or will they continue to hold out hope of some future pan-Arab salvation that never materializes, while their children die either by Israeli bombs that drop on their towns or Iranian bombs that are strapped to their chests?

Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are going anywhere for a while, and until both sides return to the table with a realistic view toward negotiations, nothing will be accomplished but more bloodshed, and history indicates most of the blood shed will be that of the hapless Palestinians.

All this imagining is giving me a headache.

These 'parallels', both in the Gary's article and these forum comments, are so ill-fitting and unrealistic they don't warrant equating or analogizing the current crisis to.

Lets deal with the situation at hand, and not to contort this amazingly complex dilemma into some simplified inverse scenario.

Israel's history shows that it's an amoral, rapacious country. Israel has never hesitated to piss on the United States, either.

In 1954, they tried to provoke war between the U.S. and Egypt ("Lavon Affair"). In 1967, they shot the hell out of U.S.S. LIBERTY, nearly sinking her. Israel commits uninhibited--and largely unpunished--espionage against the United States.

The slaughter they're inflicting on the Palestinians is perfectly in character for 'em. I don't hear Saint Barack of Obama condemning it, either. (Of course, I realize he's in the hip pocket of the Israel Lobby, but still. . . .)

Israel started the 1967 war with a sneak attack on the Egyptian air force, after Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran. So by Israeli logic, Hamas is perfectly justified in firing rockets into Israel because of the Gaza blockade.

To me the very first thing to do is to stop building the settlements and demand the take down of those built . Israel says that civil war will ensue and that is the time we stand firm .

Matunos: "Well, there you have it, don't you? If the problem is ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the only reasonable way to solve that problem is to evict the Israelis isn't it? I can't understand why the Israelis would not take the perfectly reasonable approach of nullifying their state and handing it over to the Arabs..."

Obviously Gary was talking about settlements. How much of West Bank do Palestinians actually get to live and work on? Anybody seen any maps lately?

You know, Salon would do us all a big favor if it would do some of the hard work of showing maps of this stuff. Not just Salon but all media. One of the reasons that U.S. citizens are so sadly ignorant of the situation in Israel is that they don't have any idea of what goes where.

All you need to understand why Palestinians are angry at Israel is to look at a comparative map showing how much land the Palestinians are legally supposed to have, and how much they actually have.