Hey Amy, instead of imagining a bunch of self-serving statements that demonstrate your completely one-sided political view, how about looking at reality?

You're an MD, right? I assume you consider yourself a healer. Seen any photos of the Palestinian kids with blood all over their faces and bodies lately? As a professional healer, what do you make of the 2,700 Palestinians with major wounds, limbs amputated, skin burned, etc.?

War is really "rah rah" and makes you feel good about your "side" until you see those photos. Then you realize that politics and sports are not the same thing.

I have been waiting for an article like this. How I wished that a President Obama will have the courage to call Israel to reason. But that is perhaps too much to wish for. Israel seems to be much too eager to play the Holocaust trauma indefinitely. But why should we play along?

Once again Gary demonstrates why he is one of the best writers at Salon. He points out the 800 lbs. gorilla (Israel) in the room (American politics) and gets the exact kneejerk responses that US politicians avoid by ignoring the gorilla.

A diplomatic solution is the only solution to the ongoing strife, and a hard look at Israel, to include their nuclear arsenal and the blank check we annually provide them with, is not anti-semitic. Our foreign policy needs to based on fairness with our allies and diplomacy with our enemies, not automatically praising one while castigating another.

Between writers like Gary and Glenn Greenwald, perhaps this issue will finally see daylight.

Being an apologist for this grand lie is not going to change the lie or the carrying out of the lie which requires the sacrifice of Palestinians at the altar of the God of War.

You can excuse and understand the lie because of the Holocaust but not learning the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust is just stupid and evil.

You cannot negotiate or apologize for those who wantonly murder civilians. You would not do that for the Nazis and you should not do that for the Zionists. Who is causing misery and suffering now?

From what I have seen these people are just as bad as the worst that humanity can produce. We humans are good at doing the worst to each other.

Our government and Media have been corrupted to ensure that this keeps on going on forever. It needs to stop now.

Imagine if the Israelis treated Palestinians like human beings.

Imagine if Israel emulated Humanist Judaism rather than German Nazism.

Imagine if what was being done to the Palestinians was being done to you and yours.

Imagine if the Golden Rule meant something to psychopaths.

the headline for this story should have read

OUR MYTHICAL IMAGE OF ISREAL HAS BINDED US TO ITS FAULTS.

not blinded us to its faults.

we have known its faults for decades.

its time to stop lying and living with myth.

everyone must stop being cowards.

and hear the bombs. and the dead. and bullets. and blood.

and babies dying.

no more distance cowards.

Israel has every right to exist as a country. It has the right to govern its own people in whatever manner they will accept. That has never been the issue.

The real issue is how Israel manipulates the United States into being its protector, its enabler and its source for most of the arms with which it beats the crap out of its neighbors. Any attempt to plot and follow a neutral and/or middle ground in the Middle East by any American government official is nearly always met with immediate and petulant whines of anti-Semitism by the Israelis and their toadies here in the United States, i.e., AIPAC and its bastard kin. Any American politician who tries to follow a neutral and middle ground in dealing with all factions in the Middle East can count on being labeled "anti-Semitic" in a nonce, a trice and a heartbeat. Count on it!

Israel is our "special friend"? Consider: Israel knowingly bombed the USS Liberty and killed many United States naval personnel in 1967, knew it was an American ship and has a wall of "honor" at its military HQ dedicated to the event. Israel spied on the United States with Jonathan Pollard and yet it continues to whine that it wants him released because of our "special friendship". No apologies have ever been offered, either.

No, I don't hate Israel; I do view, with disgust, our complete obeisance to Israel, right or wrong, and wish that our Middle East policy was more even-handed. If not, at least Israel could do us all a favor and give us a "reach-around" while they're screwing us in the butt!

Killing the natives was OK.

Owning slaves was OK.

Keeping women as chattel was OK.

Persecuting people for religion was OK.

Stealing land from the weak and powerless was OK.

Racism was OK.

Last time I checked it was the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY.

Evil, stupid, savagery is not cool ANYMORE.

An excellent article, combining mastery of fact with clear moral and political judgement. It is not alone Israel's existence that is in peril in a world which sooner or later will intervene to impose a solution to the Palestine problem. Most of the leadership of the American Jewish community has shown inexpungable ethnocentrism, aggressive self-righteousness, and brutal political tactics in support of Israel and has put at risk the security and well being of American Jewry. At some point, despite all the efforts of

unconditional supporters of Israel in the US elite, a new foreign policy consensus will dictate a righting of the current imbalance. At that point, those whose most profound

notion is that Israel can do no wrong (beneath which there are other, Social Darwinian strata and a deep rejection of the Enlightenment) will find themselves confronted with questions about dual loyalty--and the golden age of American Jewry will end.

Today, many Americans on the political Left reflexively sympathize with the Palestinians. They are absolutely sure that morality compels them to demand that Israelis give up land and some believe that Palestinians should be allowed to return to their old homes within the State of Israel. Yet most of these same people own land that originally belonged to Native Americans.

There is no doubt that the Native Americans were victims of a virtual genocide planned and carried out by settlers. There is no doubt that the Native Americans were herded onto, and many still remain in, reservations that are nothing more than refugee camps. So why don’t the people sympathetic to the Palestinians return their land to the Native Americans who have survived the genocide? How can they justify owning land that was expropriated from the people who had lived here for more than 10,000 years before the settlers arrived?

The Israelis can at least claim that they fear annihilation at the hands of people who have vowed to annihilate them. Contemporary Americans can claim no such fears. Their lives would not be threatened. All that would happen is that they would return the land to its original rightful owners.

Yet Americans who are quick to call for the Israelis to compromise their own security by handing land back to the Palestinians have absolutely no intention of handing the land they own back to the Native Americans. It has never even crossed their minds. Why is that? Because they are hypocrites.

It is easy for some Americans to feel morally superior by advising the Israelis to risk their lives by giving back land, while they themselves would not for an instant contemplate accepting the financial loss of giving back their property to the Native Americans. How can any Americans presume to tell the Israelis what to do with Israel if they are not prepared to negotiate with Native Americans on the restitution of all their land? There is an old saying, “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.” Perhaps it should be updated to “People who live on stolen land should not self-righteously throw accusations.”