I always laugh at the ignorance of people who blame "tha jooooos" for all of the world's problems.

Israel is a simple democracy trying to live in peace. All they ask is to be left alone, however they are surrounded by Islamic dictatorships that seek the annihilation fo every Jew on the planet. Israel is a modern state with equal rights for women and minorities. It's neighbors are primitive FASCISTS actively seeking to live in the 7th century A.D. under totalitarian Islamic rule.

There is absolutely no moral equivalence between Israel and it's enemies.

Last edited by Capitalizt on Mar-03-2005 at 03:24

quote:

Originally posted by Capitalizt I always laugh at the ignorance of people who blame "tha jooooos" for all of the world's problems. Israel is a simple democracy trying to live in peace. All they ask is to be left alone, however they are surrounded by Islamic dictatorships that seek the annihilation fo every Jew on the planet. Israel is a modern state with equal rights for women and minorities. It's neighbors are primitive FASCISTS actively seeking to live in the 7th century A.D. under totalitarian Islamic rule. There is absolutely no moral equivalence between Israel and it's enemies.

true

I wouldn't have beleived you before until I started reading articles on the subject and seeing more tv shows on PBS about the topic



BTW

PBS is a great network. They provide the best news source and investigative reporting. I thank them for opening my eyes and hears to the middle east.

bah! just post the article here... even if its long. Copyright laws I think give us fair educaitonal use or somethin... ask trance-X

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HERE IS THE ARTICLE


(Source: www.foreignpolicy.com)



Imagine that Israel never existed. Would the economic malaise and political repression that drive angry young men to become suicide bombers vanish? Would the Palestinians have an independent state? Would the United States, freed of its burdensome ally, suddenly find itself beloved throughout the Muslim world? Wishful thinking. Far from creating tensions, Israel actually contains more antagonisms than it causes.






Since World War II, no state has suffered so cruel a reversal of fortunes as Israel. Admired all the way into the 1970s as the state of “those plucky Jews” who survived against all odds and made democracy and the desert bloom in a climate hostile to both liberty and greenery, Israel has become the target of creeping delegitimization. The denigration comes in two guises. The first, the soft version, blames Israel first and most for whatever ails the Middle East, and for having corrupted U.S. foreign policy. It is the standard fare of editorials around the world, not to mention the sheer venom oozing from the pages of the Arab-Islamic press. The more recent hard version zeroes in on Israel’s very existence. According to this dispensation, it is Israel as such, and not its behavior, that lies at the root of troubles in the Middle East. Hence the “statocidal” conclusion that Israel’s birth, midwifed by both the United States and the Soviet Union in 1948, was a grievous mistake, grandiose and worthy as it may have been at the time.

The soft version is familiar enough. One motif is the “wagging the dog” theory. Thus, in the United States, the “Jewish lobby” and a cabal of neoconservatives have bamboozled the Bush administration into a mindless pro-Israel policy inimical to the national interest. This view attributes, as has happened so often in history, too much clout to the Jews. And behind this charge lurks a more general one—that it is somehow antidemocratic for subnational groups to throw themselves into the hurly-burly of politics when it comes to foreign policy. But let us count the ways in which subnational entities battle over the national interest: unions and corporations clamor for tariffs and tax loopholes; nongovernmental organizations agitate for humanitarian intervention; and Cuban Americans keep us from smoking cheroots from the Vuelta Abajo. In previous years, Poles militated in favor of Solidarity, African Americans against Apartheid South Africa, and Latvians against the Soviet Union. In other words, the democratic melee has never stopped at the water’s edge.

Another soft version is the “root-cause” theory in its many variations. Because the “obstinate” and “recalcitrant” Israelis are the main culprits, they must be punished and pushed back for the sake of peace. “Put pressure on Israel”; “cut economic and military aid”; “serve them notice that we will not condone their brutalities”—these have been the boilerplate homilies, indeed the obsessions, of the chattering classes and the foreign-office establishment for decades. Yet, as Sigmund Freud reminded us, obsessions tend to spread. And so there are ever more creative addenda to the well-wrought root-cause theory. Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argues that what is happening between Israelis and Palestinians is a “tremendous obstacle to democratization because it inflames all the worst, most regressive aspects of Arab nationalism and Arab culture.” In other words, the conflict drives the pathology, and not the other way around—which is like the streetfighter explaining to the police: “It all started when this guy hit back.”

The problem with this root-cause argument is threefold: It blurs, if not reverses, cause and effect. It ignores a myriad of conflicts unrelated to Israel. And it absolves the Arabs of culpability, shifting the blame to you know whom. If one believes former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, the Arab-Islamic quest for weapons of mass destruction, and by extension the war against Iraq, are also Made in Israel. “[A]s long as Israel has nuclear weapons,” Ritter opines, “it has chosen to take a path that is inherently confrontational.…Now the Arab countries, the Muslim world, is not about to sit back and let this happen, so they will seek their own deterrent. We saw this in Iraq, not only with a nuclear deterrent but also with a biological weapons deterrent…that the Iraqis were developing to offset the Israeli nuclear superiority.”

This theory would be engaging if it did not collide with some inconvenient facts. Iraqis didn’t use their weapons of mass destruction against the Israeli usurper but against fellow Muslims during the Iran-Iraq War, and against fellow Iraqis in the poison-gas attack against Kurds in Halabja in 1988—neither of whom were brandishing any nuclear weapons. As for the Iraqi nuclear program, we now have the “Duelfer Report,” based on the debriefing of Iraqi regime loyalists, which concluded: “Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of this policy. All senior-level Iraqi officials considered Iran to be Iraq’s principal enemy in the region. The wish to balance Israel and acquire status and influence in the Arab world were also considerations, but secondary.”

Now to the hard version. Ever so subtly, a more baleful tone slips into this narrative: Israel is not merely an unruly neighbor but an unwelcome intruder. Still timidly uttered outside the Arab world, this version’s proponents in the West bestride the stage as truth-sayers who dare to defy taboo. Thus, the British writer A.N. Wilson declares that he has reluctantly come to the conclusion that Israel, through its own actions, has proven it does not have the right to exist. And, following Sept. 11, 2001, Brazilian scholar Jose Arthur Giannotti said: “Let us agree that the history of the Middle East would be entirely different without the State of Israel, which opened a wound between Islam and the West. Can you get rid of Muslim terrorism without getting rid of this wound which is the source of the frustration of potential terrorists?”

The very idea of a Jewish state is an “anachronism,” argues Tony Judt, a professor and director of the Remarque Institute at New York University. It resembles a “late-nineteenth-century separatist project” that has “no place” in this wondrous new world moving toward the teleological perfection of multiethnic and multicultural togetherness bound together by international law. The time has come to “think the unthinkable,” hence, to ditch this Jewish state for a binational one, guaranteed, of course, by international force.

So let us assume that Israel is an anachronism and a historical mistake without which the Arab-Islamic world stretching from Algeria to Egypt, from Syria to Pakistan, would be a far happier place, above all because the original sin, the establishment of Israel, never would have been committed. Then let’s move from the past to the present, pretending that we could wave a mighty magic wand, and “poof,” Israel disappears from the map.

Civilization of Clashes
Let us start the what-if procession in 1948, when Israel was born in war. Would stillbirth have nipped the Palestinian problem in the bud? Not quite. Egypt, Transjordan (now Jordan), Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon marched on Haifa and Tel Aviv not to liberate Palestine, but to grab it. The invasion was a textbook competitive power play by neighboring states intent on acquiring territory for themselves. If they had been victorious, a Palestinian state would not have emerged, and there still would have been plenty of refugees. (Recall that half the population of Kuwait fled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s “liberation” of that country in 1990.) Indeed, assuming that Palestinian nationalism had awakened when it did in the late 1960s and 1970s, the Palestinians might now be dispatching suicide bombers to Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere.

Let us imagine Israel had disappeared in 1967, instead of occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which were held, respectively, by Jordan’s King Hussein and Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Would they have relinquished their possessions to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and thrown in Haifa and Tel Aviv for good measure? Not likely. The two potentates, enemies in all but name, were united only by their common hatred and fear of Arafat, the founder of Fatah (the Palestine National Liberation Movement) and rightly suspected of plotting against Arab regimes. In short, the “root cause” of Palestinian statelessness would have persisted, even in Israel’s absence.

Let us finally assume, through a thought experiment, that Israel goes “poof” today. How would this development affect the political pathologies of the Middle East? Only those who think the Palestinian issue is at the core of the Middle East conflict would lightly predict a happy career for this most dysfunctional region once Israel vanishes. For there is no such thing as “the” conflict. A quick count reveals five ways in which the region’s fortunes would remain stunted—or worse:

States vs. States: Israel’s elimination from the regional balance would hardly bolster intra-Arab amity. The retraction of the colonial powers, Britain and France, in the mid-20th century left behind a bunch of young Arab states seeking to redraw the map of the region. From the very beginning, Syria laid claim to Lebanon. In 1970, only the Israeli military deterred Damascus from invading Jordan under the pretext of supporting a Palestinian uprising. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Nasser’s Egypt proclaimed itself the avatar of pan-Arabism, intervening in Yemen during the 1960s. Nasser’s successor, President Anwar Sadat, was embroiled in on-and-off clashes with Libya throughout the late 1970s. Syria marched into Lebanon in 1976 and then effectively annexed the country 15 years later, and Iraq launched two wars against fellow Muslim states: Iran in 1980, Kuwait in 1990. The war against Iran was the longest conventional war of the 20th century. None of these conflicts is related to the Israeli-Palestinian one. Indeed, Israel’s disappearance would only liberate military assets for use in such internal rivalries.

Believers vs. Believers: Those who think that the Middle East conflict is a “Muslim-Jewish thing” had better take a closer look at the score card: 14 years of sectarian bloodshed in Lebanon; Saddam’s campaign of extinction against the Shia in the aftermath of the first Gulf War; Syria’s massacre of 20,000 people in the Muslim Brotherhood stronghold of Hama in 1982; and terrorist violence against Egyptian Christians in the 1990s. Add to this tally intraconfessional oppression, such as in Saudi Arabia, where the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect wields the truncheon of state power to inflict its dour lifestyle on the less devout.

Ideologies vs. Ideologies: Zionism is not the only “ism” in the region, which is rife with competing ideologies. Even though the Baathist parties in Syria and Iraq sprang from the same fascist European roots, both have vied for precedence in the Middle East. Nasser wielded pan-Arabism-cum-socialism against the Arab nation-state. And both Baathists and Nasserites have opposed the monarchies, such as in Jordan. Khomeinist Iran and Wahhabite Saudi Arabia remain mortal enemies. What is the connection to the Arab-Israeli conflict? Nil, with the exception of Hamas, a terror army of the faithful once supported by Israel as a rival to the Palestine Liberation Organization and now responsible for many suicide bombings in Israel. But will Hamas disband once Israel is gone? Hardly. Hamas has bigger ambitions than eliminating the “Zionist entity.” The organization seeks nothing less than a unified Arab state under a regime of God.

Reactionary Utopia vs. Modernity: A common enmity toward Israel is the only thing that prevents Arab modernizers and traditionalists from tearing their societies apart. Fundamentalists vie against secularists and reformist Muslims for the fusion of mosque and state under the green flag of the Prophet. And a barely concealed class struggle pits a minuscule bourgeoisie and millions of unemployed young men against the power structure, usually a form of statist cronyism that controls the means of production. Far from creating tensions, Israel actually contains the antagonisms in the world around it.

Regimes vs. Peoples: The existence of Israel cannot explain the breadth and depth of the Mukhabarat states (secret police states) throughout the Middle East. With the exceptions of Jordan, Morocco, and the Gulf sheikdoms, which gingerly practice an enlightened monarchism, all Arab countries (plus Iran and Pakistan) are but variations of despotism—from the dynastic dictatorship of Syria to the authoritarianism of Egypt. Intranational strife in Algeria has killed nearly 100,000, with no letup in sight. Saddam’s victims are said to number 300,000. After the Khomeinists took power in 1979, Iran was embroiled not only in the Iran-Iraq War but also in barely contained civil unrest into the 1980s. Pakistan is an explosion waiting to happen. Ruthless suppression is the price of stability in this region.

Again, it would take a florid imagination to surmise that factoring Israel out of the Middle East equation would produce liberal democracy in the region. It might be plausible to argue that the dialectic of enmity somehow favors dictatorship in “frontline states” such as Egypt and Syria—governments that invoke the proximity of the “Zionist threat” as a pretext to suppress dissent. But how then to explain the mayhem in faraway Algeria, the bizarre cult-of-personality regime in Libya, the pious kleptocracy of Saudi Arabia, the clerical despotism of Iran, or democracy’s enduring failure to take root in Pakistan? Did Israel somehow cause the various putsches that produced the republic of fear in Iraq? If Jordan, the state sharing the longest border with Israel, can experiment with constitutional monarchy, why not Syria?

It won’t do to lay the democracy and development deficits of the Arab world on the doorstep of the Jewish state. Israel is a pretext, not a cause, and therefore its dispatch will not heal the self-inflicted wounds of the Arab-Islamic world. Nor will the mild version of “statocide,” a binational state, do the trick—not in view of the “civilization of clashes” (to borrow a term from British historian Niall Ferguson) that is the hallmark of Arab political culture. The mortal struggle between Israelis and Palestinians would simply shift from the outside to the inside.

My Enemy, Myself
Can anybody proclaim in good conscience that these dysfunctionalities of the Arab world would vanish along with Israel? Two U.N. “Arab Human Development Reports,” written by Arab authors, say no. The calamities are homemade. Stagnation and hopelessness have three root causes. The first is lack of freedom. The United Nations cites the persistence of absolute autocracies, bogus elections, judiciaries beholden to executives, and constraints on civil society. Freedom of expression and association are also sharply limited. The second root cause is lack of knowledge: Sixty-five million adults are illiterate, and some 10 million children have no schooling at all. As such, the Arab world is dropping ever further behind in scientific research and the development of information technology. Third, female participation in political and economic life is the lowest in the world. Economic growth will continue to lag as long as the potential of half the population remains largely untapped.

Will all of this right itself when that Judeo-Western insult to Arab pride finally vanishes? Will the millions of unemployed and bored young men, cannon fodder for the terrorists, vanish as well—along with one-party rule, corruption, and closed economies? This notion makes sense only if one cherishes single-cause explanations or, worse, harbors a particular animus against the Jewish state and its refusal to behave like Sweden. (Come to think of it, Sweden would not be Sweden either if it lived in the Hobbesian world of the Middle East.)

Finally, the most popular what-if issue of them all: Would the Islamic world hate the United States less if Israel vanished? Like all what-if queries, this one, too, admits only suggestive evidence. To begin, the notion that 5 million Jews are solely responsible for the rage of 1 billion or so Muslims cannot carry the weight assigned to it. Second, Arab-Islamic hatreds of the United States preceded the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza. Recall the loathing left behind by the U.S.-managed coup that restored the shah’s rule in Tehran in 1953, or the U.S. intervention in Lebanon in 1958. As soon as Britain and France left the Middle East, the United States became the dominant power and the No. 1 target. Another bit of suggestive evidence is that the fiercest (unofficial) anti-Americanism emanates from Washington’s self-styled allies in the Arab Middle East, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Is this situation because of Israel—or because it is so convenient for these regimes to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels” (as Shakespeare’s Henry IV put it) to distract their populations from their dependence on the “Great Satan”?

Take the Cairo Declaration against “U.S. hegemony,” endorsed by 400 delegates from across the Middle East and the West in December 2002. The lengthy indictment mentions Palestine only peripherally. The central condemnation, uttered in profuse variation, targets the United States for monopolizing power “within the framework of capitalist globalization,” for reinstating “colonialism,” and for blocking the “emergence of forces that would shift the balance of power toward multi-polarity.” In short, Global America is responsible for all the afflictions of the Arab world, with Israel coming in a distant second.

This familiar tale has an ironic twist: One of the key signers is Nader Fergany, lead author of the 2002 U.N. Arab Human Development Report. So even those who confess to the internal failures of the Arab world end up blaming “the Other.” Given the enormity of the indictment, ditching Israel will not absolve the United States. Iran’s Khomeinists have it right, so to speak, when they denounce America as the “Great Satan” and Israel only as the “Little Satan,” a handmaiden of U.S. power. What really riles America-haters in the Middle East is Washington’s intrusion into their affairs, be it for reasons of oil, terrorism, or weapons of mass destruction. This fact is why Osama bin Laden, having attached himself to the Palestinian cause only as an afterthought, calls the Americans the new crusaders, and the Jews their imperialist stand-ins.

None of this is to argue in favor of Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, nor to excuse the cruel hardship it imposes on the Palestinians, which is pernicious, even for Israel’s own soul. But as this analysis suggests, the real source of Arab angst is the West as a palpable symbol of misery and an irresistible target of what noted Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami has called “Arab rage.” The puzzle is why so many Westerners, like those who signed the Cairo Declaration, believe otherwise.

Is this anti-Semitism, as so many Jews are quick to suspect? No, but denying Israel’s legitimacy bears an uncanny resemblance to some central features of this darkest of creeds. Accordingly, the Jews are omnipotent, ubiquitous, and thus responsible for the evils of the world. Today, Israel finds itself in an analogous position, either as handmaiden or manipulator of U.S. might. The soft version sighs: “If only Israel were more reasonable…” The semihard version demands that “the United States pull the rug out from under Israel” to impose the pliancy that comes from impotence. And the hard-hard version dreams about salvation springing from Israel’s disappearance.

Why, sure—if it weren’t for that old joke from Israel’s War of Independence: While the bullets were whistling overhead and the two Jews in their foxhole were running out of rounds, one griped, “If the Brits had to give us a country not their own, why couldn’t they have given us Switzerland?” Alas, Israel is just a strip of land in the world’s most noxious neighborhood, and the cleanup hasn’t even begun.




Josef Joffe is the publisher of Die Zeit, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and distinguished fellow at the Institute for International Studies, both at Stanford University.




(Source: www.foreignpolicy.com)

quote:

Originally posted by Capitalizt Israel is a modern state with equal rights for women and minorities.

are you sure about this?

i think certain religious sects get preferential treament and certain ethnic groups are discriminated against by law. maybe someone else knows a bit more. either way, its not the model of democracy or equality you suggest it is.

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quote:

Originally posted by Capitalizt I always laugh at the ignorance of people who blame "tha jooooos" for all of the world's problems. Israel is a simple democracy trying to live in peace. All they ask is to be left alone, however they are surrounded by Islamic dictatorships that seek the annihilation fo every Jew on the planet. Israel is a modern state with equal rights for women and minorities. It's neighbors are primitive FASCISTS actively seeking to live in the 7th century A.D. under totalitarian Islamic rule. There is absolutely no moral equivalence between Israel and it's enemies.

But there are strong forces in the government, in the military and in society in general that have as their aim the establishment of Eratz Yisrael (sp?) so no, they dont simply ask to be left alone in peace. Dont get me wrong, Israel is far more of a democracy than its neighbours, but democracy does not just mean give people the vote etc. Its how you act. Can you honestly say the treatment of the Palestinians (whether you deem that treatment as neccessary or not) can be defined as the actions of a democratic nation?

As for your notions of Israel's neighbours "actively seeking to live in the 7th century A.D. under totalitarian Islamic rule" well words escape me as to what utter rubbish has just escaped your mouth! What the hell are you basing that on?!

As for the article, it is interesting (ok I skimmed thru it cos I'm lazy) and makes some good points. Obviously it is merely speculation and should be taken with a pinch of salt but at the end of the day, you can very easliy argue that Israel has actually been a stabalising factor in the Middle East. The Palestinian cause has been used by all the Arab nations as a form of legitimacy. Most of them however, guilty of shitting on the Palestinians at some point.

Had Israel never existed?

Well if that had happened (take it back further than the article) if there were no Zionist movement (or if they had been given land in East Africa or South America) then you'd get Transjordan as one country covering the Holy Lands. Its hard to say what would happen cos Israel was a uniting factor for pan-Arabism. take away Israel and the Arabs would not have been humiliated in '67 - the pan-Arabists may have the obsticle that led them to failure removed and we may see a united Arab state? Or they may have desparately tried to cling on to power and blown each other to smitherines! Another factor is the Cold War (not mentioned in the article I think) The US and USSR would have vied for control. In reality, the Soviets funded the Arabs and America got Israel (or did Israel get America ) Without Israel, either all the Arab states would have gone to one side (and would be even more under the influence of that side I believe) or they could have been split (the Monarchies would have gone with America, and the Republics with the USSR) which would possibly have left them open for certain changes their sponsors wanted (America may have exerted pressure for democracy for example or maybe not )

So, in summary, you cant say what would or would not have happened so there! (Still, interesting to speculate and interested to hear what others think - altho I have a feeling we are gonna be treated to endless posts from pro-Israelis/anti-Arabs/Islam saying how nasty the middle east would be, and endless posts from anti-Israelis saying how nice the middle east would be so on second thoughts it might not be as interesting as I thought!!!)

quote:

Originally posted by Spacey Orange i think certain religious sects get preferential treament and certain ethnic groups are discriminated against by law. maybe someone else knows a bit more. either way, its not the model of democracy or equality you suggest it is.

How is this exactly different than any other democracy? Say USA, Canada, UK, Germany etc?

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quote:

Originally posted by George Smiley So, in summary, you cant say what would or would not have happened so there! (Still, interesting to speculate and interested to hear what others think - altho I have a feeling we are gonna be treated to endless posts from pro-Israelis/anti-Arabs/Islam saying how nasty the middle east would be, and endless posts from anti-Israelis saying how nice the middle east would be so on second thoughts it might not be as interesting as I thought!!!)

From reading the article this is what I think the author's response to some of these points would be:
A) Transjordan would not control all of Israel, it would be shared - the power struggle seen during the 1948 war would still have happened. Somebody would have to have control, and most likely it would be several nations not one.
B) Pan Arabism would not exist, either because it was only inspired the existance of Israel (and hence its defeat when Israel defeated it.. if it was a true Pan-Arab cause the defeat by Israel would have only expanded it not destroyed it).
C) Most likely US/USSR relations would be split between the Arab states. As we know most Arab states claimed "neutrality" during the Cold War but most did go to the Soviet Union. It was not clear cut. Egypt for instance was unde US influence for a very long time. Iraq was under US influence, Saudi Arabia was under US influence. So I do think you would probably see a split, maybe not equal but close to it.

As for what I personally think would happen. I am leaning to it wouldn't be much better off. What most likely would happen or would happen soon based on timeline of these things as that either the Arabs would simply blame the West/US for their woes and we'd be in a worse state than if Israel did not exist. Or having no close scapegoat Arab societies would go to war with one another or internally, killing millions, and come out the better from the ensuring revolutions into friendly democratic players.

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quote:

Originally posted by Yoepus From reading the article this is what I think the author's response to some of these points would be: A) Transjordan would not control all of Israel, it would be shared - the power struggle seen during the 1948 war would still have happened. Somebody would have to have control, and most likely it would be several nations not one. B) Pan Arabism would not exist, either because it was only inspired the existance of Israel (and hence its defeat when Israel defeated it.. if it was a true Pan-Arab cause the defeat by Israel would have only expanded it not destroyed it). C) Most likely US/USSR relations would be split between the Arab states. As we know most Arab states claimed "neutrality" during the Cold War but most did go to the Soviet Union. It was not clear cut. Egypt for instance was unde US influence for a very long time. Iraq was under US influence, Saudi Arabia was under US influence. So I do think you would probably see a split, maybe not equal but close to it. As for what I personally think would happen. I am leaning to it wouldn't be much better off. What most likely would happen or would happen soon based on timeline of these things as that either the Arabs would simply blame the West/US for their woes and we'd be in a worse state than if Israel did not exist. Or having no close scapegoat Arab societies would go to war with one another or internally, killing millions, and come out the better from the ensuring revolutions into friendly democratic players.

fair enough on points A and C but on point B you aren't right.

The first recorded Arab nationalist movement was a secret society in Beirut in 1876 by a group of Christian Arabs at the American University. Most sources agree Arab nationalism was born out of the oppressive nature of the Ottoman empire (after the Young Turk revolution in 1908) Zionism and Israel had nothing to do with the ideology's creation. The Arab nationalist movement grew steadily and yes, it did begin to focus on the land graps that preceded Israel's independence and then after that Israel did provide it a focus.

The reason Arab nationalism died was simply because it didn't deliver its promised goals and the people of the Arab nations gave up on it (after 1967). In fact, you can see in the PLO's Covenant revised in 1968 the shift from relying on the Arab states to liberate Palestine to stating it is up to the Palestinians to liberate Palestine

The following pictures wouldn't exisit.

++ WARNING ++ THIS LINK IS EXTREMELY GRAPHIC AND NOT FOR THOSE WITH DELICATE NERVES.

++ REALLY++

I Mean this.. I really do. Once you look at these they willl be seared into your brain forever. You will be unable to forget.

So you know what you are getting into, these are pictures of the remains of suicide bomber attacks. It isn't pretty.

Last chance to skip the pics and just read the point below.

http://www.ehowa.com/features/suicidebombers.shtml

My point out of this is it's a miserable situation, but with the recent leadership change for the Palestinian people and the softening of Sharon we may be able to bring this sorry chapter of history to a close.

Another brief note about this situation. As a percentage of population Israel has taken over 3x the WTC casualties EVERY YEAR for the last 8 years.

I have no idea about the Palestinian side, but I'm sure it's just as high or higher. Neither is forgivable. I just hope it can be worked out by people smarter than myself