NEXT!

[A Black Falcon]

Ditch the land? No, the Romans scattered the Jewish nation... 70 AD was the date mentioned, right? There was yet another revolt, Rome came in, flattened Jerusalem, etc...

Oh, and the Palestinians WERE kicked off their land... but if they want to live a more healthy existence they'll at some point have to admit that they won't be getting Israel back. Well, more important than them is the leaders of those nations... THEY have to admit that Israel is here to stay and have to make serious efforts to integrate the Palestinians into their societies -- something, as I said, that they still are not doing after so many decades. Only with that will the Palestinian anger get lessened... but of course they don't want that, they want Israel destroyed in some illogical fashion...

But as I said Israel is hardly blameless. Executing leaders, attacks on terrorists that often kill civilians, etc.. yes, it's in self defence, but it's also a very good way to get the people you are targeting very mad at you. Given their situation, ANYONE in the place the Palestinians are in would be outraged! And given their history, trying for peaceful settlement just isn't very likely.

Oh, I agree -- Israel is more willing to try peace than the Palestinians, overall. Sharon, though? Nah, he's not very interested in true peace. He just wants the Palestinians away... note the wall... he's a hard-liner, after all. He, like the Palestinians, doesn't want to compromise much. And in situations like this, you need to make compromises...

About the Christian/Jewish relationship, it's a good point. I never bought into the main Christian beef with Judaism anyway, blaming them for the death of Christ, sadly, for centuries people did. It's just that, for two thousand years the Jews have been hunted almost constantly and persecuted. They finally get their Promised Land, for which they probably have the oldest valid claim, and everyone around them wants them dead still. Those people need friends, and for the life of me I cannot understand why even in America so many people consider them terrorists and support the Palestinian cause. In a culture, both American and, to a greater extent, European, of increasingly-oppressive political correctness, hating Jews is still tolerated.

It was only after WWII that America started to like the Jews... up until then, the prevailing attitude was towards anti-semitism. The Holocaust? There were rumors for years of the Nazis doing bad things to Jews, and Jewish groups wanted action, but America didn't care much, not until we saw them ourselves... Roosevelt didn't exactly press to go after Nazis for their persecution of Jews, and on that note (unlike his feelings that we should be fighting the Nazis to help Britain, which went against the other prevailing sentiment, isolationism...) he was in step with his time... bad, from a modern perspective, but it was just normal then. Same with racism against plenty of other groups, like Asians...