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Originally Posted by Mikeuk
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Originally Posted by blondy
Your post presents me a unique dilemma. You sound very intelligent and quite credible. Not at all like an easily dismissed or dismissible wild-eyed hate-filled zealot
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Only an American would regard this as a 'unique dilemma'
Those of us who don't see the world in terms of black and white expect there to be reasonable people on both sides of a debate.
Sure, most of the really crazy fanatics are on the Palestinian side, but they get support because the Palestinians have legitimate grievances.
Most of the reasonable people are probably there somewhere on the Israeli side, but nobody hears them because the right-wing extremists have controlled Israel for years.
If I were forced to live in that part of the world I would probably choose to live in Israel because it is the nearest approximation to a Western democracy, albeit a very poor approximation.
I respect the feelings of Jews who have relatives in Israel and feel a natural sympathy for their co-religionists. However, I simply cannot understand the attitudes of a lot of Americans and a few (a very few) Englishmen who feel a kind of proxy patriotism for Israel. It's not my country, and I have more Jewish blood in my veins than the pro-Israel jingo gentiles I used to encounter in the Conservative Friends of Israel (of which I was once a member).
'World Holocaust Guilt' does not entitle the Israelis to behave like a bunch of tinpot fascists, although they and their American friends seem to think it does.
Maybe if Americans got about a bit more they would find out why everybody's out of step except them. |
What I've discovered is that the more layers of the onion I peel away the more I see that israel has done every reasonable thing a nation can do to achieve peace without committing suicide. And when every reasonable thing is tried and found to be futile then what do you do?
Would Churchill have been reasonable in giving up Suffolk, Essex and Kent to Hitler in order to achieve peace?
No. That would not have been reasonable at all. Why? Because no matter what some might have believed justified the idea there was no stopping Hitler. Give him an inch and he'll take a mile!
Hitler was committed to conquering England. His previous deceits became clear and his intent was unmistakable.
The Palestinian leadership is committed to conquering Israel. Their previous ploys have become clear and their intent is unmistakable.