Zeev,

Zionism is racism. Nothing more and nothing less. Israel has no plans to give any land back. They have not defined their permanent border. They keep expanding their current ILLEGAL settlements. And then they ask why do they hate us? Stupid question isn't it?

As for their last terrorist action into Lebanon, they used that kidnapping excuse to try and reoccupy the land up to the Litany river. They want to get the fresh water source which they are lacking. Currently they steal the water from Palestinian lands and resell it back to the Palestinians. How devious is that? As another article on Common Dreams mentioned, Israel does not want peace. They are using the instability to steal more land.

Israel has corrupted our entire country. Our 'ties' to them through influential Jewish Americans has completely destroyed our standing throughout the world.

Let's have some full disclosure about who is writing WHAT about whom on this thread. The above post was obviously written by a Jew.

I am NOT a Jew or a Muslim.

Now multiply that covert influence by the thousands and thousands and you have Jews named Miller and Parker writing op ed pieces telling us who our enemies are and why we should nuke them.

In government, media, academia, -- power slots filled with people named Miller and Parker -- telling us that Muslims are bad and Jews are saintly in their goodness.

Come on America... the enemy is within. And they are destroying our country.

Just because this writer says this does not make it so. All Palestinians have access to the Israeli Supreme Court, and routinely seek its assistance. Israel has a law providing for financial compensation for any wrongs done by its army.

Does anyone mention that Hamas kidnapped a soldier and won't even let the Red Cross have access? Or mention the two soldiers kidnapped by Hizbollah, again denied Red Cross access?

Saudi Arabia and Iran pay compensation to the families of any Palestinian arrested by Israel, including children. This is why Children routinely torment Israeli soldiers. An arrest means money for their family as long as they are under arrest. Saudi Arabia and Iran also pay compensation to the families of suicide bombers for life. This is why mothers often praise the suicide of one child.

When there is news of a suicide bomber in Israel, the target being women and children, the Palestinians throw parties, handing out candy to children, so the associate associate the death of jews with the sweetness of candy.

It is endless. Israel to date, treats the Palestinians better than the Egyptians (Will not let them leave Gaza and live in Sinai), the Jordanians (killed over 10,000), the Shiia of Lebanon (Will not let the Palestinians, who got there because they were kicked out of Jordan, leave their camps, go to school, start businesses, etc.), the Shiia of Iraq (of the 50,000 given sanctuary by Sadaam, they have killed thousands, and made the rest homeless).

The author of this pieces is a fraud.

I would suggest that some of you actually read first hand journals of visitors to the Holy Land-never called Palestine 150 years ago. For example, Mark Twain had a complete description in Innocents Abroad. He was there over 150 years ago. It was a desolate region, totally desolated and underpopulated, with an Arab and a Jewish population. The only time that Jews were not in the region was in those few years that they were expelled by your Christian religious fanatics-Crusaders.
Where are you humanitarians when, as now, the few remaining Jews in Yemnen are being persicuted? They have only been there for a thousand years before Muhammed.
I just returned from a week in the Gallelie. There are 1.4 million Israeli Arabs living thger. They have prosperous towns, villages and farms. At the Teacher's Copllege sponsored by the Kibbutz movement, over 20% of the students are Arabs. Arabs have emigrated from all of the countries in the Middle East to Europe and America-but not from Israel proper---they are doing too well and have no need to emigrate.

Jaded,

Coptics are Christian. They have their own Pope and live in the outskirt of Cairo right next to the Jewish section. The Coptics would not advocate bringing back the Pharoahs.

The oldest extant Coptic Church and Synogouge are side by side in Egypt.

Myths of Zionism

Zionist Mythology but the facts on the ground speak for themselves. Zeev needs meet and listen to some Palestinians.

Israel is a terrorist state....no matter how many politicians and media outlets AIPAC financially influences to conceal the truth....Israel is a terrorist state

What cannot be disputed is that Palestine, which was overwhelmingly Arab in population for well over a thousand years, is now a "Jewish" state by means of the eviction and displacement of the indigenous Arabs. Lord Edwin Montagu, Jewish member of the British cabinet in 1917 foresaw this outcome when he opposed Zionism in a Memorandum:"You will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country, drawn from all quarters of the globe." This came to pass in 1948 when the state of Israel was created by force. As Leah Rabin (Yitzhak's widow) said to Madeleine Albright (former U.S. Sec. of State):"We were also terrorists once, and they (the British) didn't uproot us. Despite all the efforts of all the British army in the land, we went on with terrorism." (Christian Science Monitor,10/12/'97 p,7)

The goal of Zionism is far broader than a Jewish state in all of Palestine. In his book OPEN SECRETS, Israeli Professor Dr. Israel Shahak states:
"Israeli strategies are aimed at establishing a hegemony over the entire Middle East,which it has always sought covertly, without hesitating to use for the purpose all means available, INCLUDING NUCLEAR ONES. By insisting on its nuclear monopoly, Israel aims at reducing all other Middle Eastern states to the status of its vassals." (p.45)

The U.S. is slavishly helping Israel accomplish this
and employing Israeli methods like torture and imprisonment without due process. Prisoners at "Gitmo" have been wrapped in Israeli flags.
Senator J. William Fulbright wrote ruefully in his THE PRICE OF EMPIRE back in 1989:"We have lost our freedom of action in the Middle East and are committed to policies that promote neither our own national interest nor the cause of peace...the Israeli government dominates our policy in the Middle East."

Zionism is Anti Semitism.

It would be ludicrous for Coptics to return to Egypt to re-establish a pharonic empire. It is just as ludicrous for European Jews to try to re-establish a much shorter lived bronze age kingdom and claim they have more legitimacy than the local inhabitants of that land who've been there for thousands of years. They wish they could repeat the old testament stories they quote and revere about the conquest of Canaan -- killing every man woman and child.

If Israelis can't live in peace in the region and come to terms with Palestinians, Then we should cut all funding and recognize the area as Palestine funding the Palestinain Authority instead. We would have far less enemies in the region.

While the allegations of torture are disturbing, the sources were mostly unsubstantiated-- using a source such as "a human rights organization" or "a lawyer concerned about monitoring Israeli court proceedings" and such would be considered inadequate citation for a serious undergraduate essay on politics, much less a formidable online publication such as Common Dreams.

Is this sloppy journalism or have I just become a sloppy reader? What gives??

thanks for the history lesson, regardless of what you have always understood it to mean, semite refers to a branch of language which contains both hebrew and arabic. In 1879 europeans didn't really distiguish between jews and arabs. They were both detested, they were seen as brothers engaged in an ancient blood fued and they didn't want any part of it they just wanted them all out of the 'Holy Land'. More propaganda obfuscating the truth.

and as always the co-opting of the term anti-semite, the arabs are semites too.

all of this is digression. The truth is in their own story. Abraham was impatient, he raped a slave girl to acquire an heir. When his own wife did conceive he drove the slave girl and his own firstborn son into the desert to die. This is the story of the patriarch. It doesn't end there, voices in his head(god) told him to sacrifice his firstborn son from his wife to prove his love of god, then commanded him to mutilate the genitalia of all his sons and the sons of his slaves to make a covenant with god. This is too surreal to be believed. If just one of these things happened today we would put this man in jail or a psych ward. The ancient romans destroyed isreal and the temple. Islam did not come into existence for another 6-7 hundred years. The rest is history. We fought WWII because countries were invading other sovereign states, at Nuremberg this was considered the ultimate crime. We (the USofA) 3 years later then created this mess when we recognized the new zionist state. The rest of the world shrugged and nodded their heads in disbelief. The arab world realized that the united states used a double standard when it came to isreal. I have never understood how anybody couldn't put themselves in the Palestinians position and see how unjust this was, and realize how they would feel if this happened to them. If the Jews really believe that Isreal has a right to exist then every one in New York should give their land back to the decedents of native americans. This isn't about justice, it's all just plain greed and avarice. All hail the new fascist axis. The United States and isreal.

I wonder why Palestinains would express those feelings, especially when historically Jews and Muslims lived quite well together -- far better that with Christians?

Alos you should remember that Hamas is originally a creation of Mossad to split support from the PLO. Blowback is never pleasant but as I stated earlier, only Israel and it's handlers in the US have the power to make peace in the reagion because they have the overwhelming military and economic power. There have been many attempts at a reasonable solution from Palestinian leaders but they have met with lies and resistance by Zionist exremists.

You can continue to blather your historic evidence of victimization all you want to but today's victims are plainly obvious as are the crimes of Israel. As a Jew, those are particularly bitter.

The main message of the above contributions amount to this: none of us, particularly me, know a damn thing about the Israeli/Palestine activities being true, rumor or false. You have all shown that.

The Middle East problems can only be solved by Middle Easterners -- that means: not the French, not the British: they both had a hand in it and walked away leaving death and destruction and didn't gain zip. Neither one, and rightly so, have any desire to get embroiled in this mess again. The Americans, who know everything there is to know about everything, will do no better and will undoubtedly screw things up worse than ever. All they will foment is more war until nuclear weapons become involved, and the WORLD will be sorry.

The Answer? Get the hell out of the Middle East. Those people are certainly capable of killing themselves off without our help.

I worked in the UAE, Jordon, Egypt, Kashmir and Israel (just to name a feew) in the 80's. It was the Israeli's they disliked, not the Jews. But now it's probably Israeli's and American's they dislike. And with reason.

I still say Jaded give up on him and his one sided quotes.

Most of the Palestinians and Arabs I have met did not voice hatred of Jews. They voice hatred of Israel and it's treatemtn of Palestinians.

Amazing so many Jews in the region survived! No mass graves, no record of mass murder . . . The real irony is that the state of Israel has adopted much of the rhetoric and tactics of fascism.

I first heard about the one state solution from PALESTINIANS and yes, many would support it.

Israel has done everything possible to insure that a Palestinian State is all but impossible on the ground so the one state solution is what's left short of a complete withdrawl to the 1967 boundaries. Really it should be to the 1948 boundaries.

True many non-Askenazi Jews are welcome to Israel (to keep up the numbers of Jews) but they have reported not being treated as first class citizens. Often they are welcome and "settled" on the West Bank.

Yes zeev, forcible relocation and ethnic cleansing, like war and capitalist exploitation, is a common scourge in the world. Your ancestors were forced out of Iraq and Egypt, mine were forced out of Ireland by the British.

The only solution is for all of us simply stop doing it!

As far as a unitary state, I think Palestinians just want their homes and land back, they don't care how it is achieved. Many still keep the keys to their old demolished houses around their necks.

I likewise like the one-state soluton - Make it dual-language like Belgum is.

But what I find maddening is zeev's assertation that Palestinian individuals are supposed to be happy with some substitute home, land, and livlihood instead of the one thir families lived on and worked for a thousand years.

It's like, say, forcibly relocating all Amish families from the Kish Valley (a big fertile valley in Penna.), leaving them distitute, and saying: isn't there still a lot of land for the Amish to relocate to in Ohio? That someone could expect the penniless homeless families to consider this fair is so utterly preposterous it boggles the mind!

Racism is basic to all nationalism. Zionism is nationalism and denial of Palestinian legitimacy as a people is not unusual. Zionism is also anti-semitism.

I still haven't heard why a unitary state that includes full citizenship for Palestinians is not the best solution and why Israel won't consider it.

Racism is a key element of nationalism, all nationalism. Zionism is nationalism and is dependent on racism. In may cases this takes the form of denial of Palestinian legitimacy as a people. Zionism is also anti-semitism. In many ways, the Zionist my echoes the Boer myth in old South Africa as does the bantuization of Palestinian territory. Israel and South Africa had the closest of ties and Israel is remains the primary merchant of bloody African diamonds.

You still haven't come up with a good reason why a unitary state that includes full citizenship for Palestinians isn't the best solution.

But who made them refugees? What is it about "thall shall not steal" that you don't understand?

Would they have reservations?

What's all this stuff about Jordan's or other countries "responsibilities" to take in refugees or even carve out a Palestine from their territory?

Say someone invaded the land of North Dakota, driving all the farmers from their farms and townspeople from their homes, then said: "Manitoba and Saskatchewan can take them in - thery're teh same they speak same language, grow wheat, go ice-fishing in winter etc..."

Zeev, I am a Jew. I do not sympathize with Israel because Zionism is our curse. It causes nothing but anti-semitism. It goes against every principle and cultural value that we used to represent. We would be better off without a state based on ethnic cleansing and ethnic purity. Why should I as an American Jew have the right of return but a Palestinian whose family was chased from their home not? What have we become?

Jaded Prole,

Trying to reason with "zeeve" is hopless, so we may as well both give up.

This is not the first nor will it be the last time that an Israeli has accused me of being a member of the PLO. I'm not sure why sympathizing with an opressed group automaticaly makes me a member of that group.

You want Quotes?:

* " . . . [W]e must not forget,' wrote Ze'ev Schiff, the senior political and military analyst for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, "the most important aspect of this war: Hezbollah and what this terrorist organization symbolizes must be destroyed at any price. . . .What matters is not the future of the Shiite town of Bint Jbail or the Hezbollah positions in Maroun Ras, but the future and safety of the State of Israel." "If Israel doesn't improve its military cards in the fighting, we will feel the results in the political solution."

* "We must reduce to dust the villages of the south . . ." stated Haim Ramon, long known as a political dove and Israel's Minister of Justice. "I don't understand why there is still electricity there." "Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hizbollah. . . What we should do in southern Lebanon is employ huge firepower before a ground force goes in." Israel's largest selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth put it this way: "A village from which rockets are fired at Israel will simply be destroyed by fire. This decision should have been made and executed after the first Katyusha. But better late than never."

* "[F]or every katyusha barrage on Haifa, 10 Dahiya buildings will be bombed," said the IDF Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz. Eli Yishai, Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, proposed turning south Lebanon into a "sandbox", while Knesset member Moshe Sharoni called for the obliteration of Gaza, and Yoav Limor, a Channel 1 military correspondent, suggested an exhibition of Hezbollah corpses followed by a parade of prisoners in their underwear in order "to strengthen the home front's morale."

* "Remember: distorted philosophical sensitivity [sic] to human lives will make us pay the real price of the lives of many, and the blood of our sons," read an advertisement in Ha'aretz.

* "[A]ccording to Jewish law," announced the Yesha Rabbinical Council, "during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as 'innocents of the enemy'."

* "But speaking from our own Judaic faith and legal legacy," argued the Rabbinical Council of America, "we believe that Judaism would neither require nor permit a Jewish soldier to sacrifice himself in order to save deliberately endangered enemy civilians. This is especially true when confronting a barbaric enemy who would by such illicit, consistent, and systematic means seek to destroy not only the Jewish soldier, but defeat and destroy the Jewish homeland. New realities do indeed require new responses."

* The Israeli author, Naomi Ragan, after learning that many of the war dead in Lebanon were children, wrote "Save your sympathy for the mothers and sisters and girlfriends of our young soldiers who would rather be sitting in study halls learning Torah, but have no choice but to risk their precious lives full of hope, goodness and endless potential, to wipe out the cancerous terrorist cells that threaten their people and all mankind. Make your choice, and save your tears."

Many of us, perhaps most, have declared that all Palestinians and Lebanese are the enemy, threatening our -- Israel and the Jewish people's -- existence. Everyone we kill and every house we demolish is therefore a military target, legitimate and deserving. Terrorism is part of their culture and we must strengthen our ability to deter. Negotiation, to paraphrase the Israeli scholar, Yehoshua Porat, writing during the 1982 Lebanon war, is a "veritable catastrophe for Israel." The battlefield will preserve us.

As for Hebron, a one state solution would allow anyone to leive anywhaer in Palestine/Israel.

Israel doesn't just torture Palestinian children. They have a long history of also torturing jewish children. In the 1950's Israel exposed 100,000 North African jewish children to 35,000 times the maximum safe dose of X-rays on behalf of the US govt. as part of the MK-Ultra program. Thousands of children died soon after the 'treatment' and the rest suffered horrible disease. These facts are presented in a documentary film called "100,000 RADIATIONS" which aired on Israeli television in 2004.

In the early days of Israel thousands of jewish immigrant children from Yemen and other countries were stolen from their parents. Once a child had been of identified as meeting certain criteria the child was sent to a doctor or hospital and confined to an area off-limits to parents. Parents were told to go home and check back with the hospital in a couple of days. When parents tried to pick up their children they were told that the child had died and had been buried. In reality the children were simply stolen by the govt. Almost none of the children have ever surfaced or been accounted for, which means that they are likely dead.

Many estimate that more than 10,000 children were stolen. Rabbi Uzi Meshulam gathered the names of 4,500 missing children but the list was confiscated by the government and he and many of his students were sent to prison for investigating the missing children. Ultimately Rabbi Uzi Meshulam was killed by the Israeli government for his inquiries into the missing children.

Parents of the missing children formed the "Mishkan Ohalim" organization and pressed the govt. for answers. They were able to force the govt. to open some of the children's graves but the graves were found to be empty. The govt. claims that just because they graves were empty didn't mean that the bodies weren't there and continues to insist that the children are dead.

Israel is one of the leading countries engaged in human trafficking with up to 10,000 women kept in Israel and more than 280 brothels in Tel Aviv alone. Many of the women forced into the Israeli sex trade are younger than 18 and some have been found to be as young as 12.

The simple fact is that Israel has long been controlled by evil people who do not respect human life. The average Israeli is not an evil person and many of them are also victims of their govt.

As long as Israel has the financial support of the US it won't change.

As individuals of conscience we should not be afraid to speak out against all atrocities, even if they are from Israelis.

For more info: http://www.truthforachange.info/articles/devilsbestfriend.php

Zeev, you're spewing myths, mostly untrue. Some Palestinians hid Jews from Nazis and their symathizers. Those that sympathized with Germany did so in resistance to English imperialism in the region.

For every radical anti-Jewish quote you have posted, there are at least as many and more Israeli calls for genocide against Palestinians and Arabs in general. I'm sure you've forgotten the Zionist terrorists that massacred Palestinian villages in '48 causing many to flee for their lives. It seems Ben-Gurian's 1948 dictum that "what we can't get in peace, we'll take in war" still holds true. Zionists do not want peace. They want land and dominance in the region. Many Israelis would prefer a more just settlement and I might add, the criticism you see in Israeli papers is verboten here in the country that funds Israel.

As for your comment regarding Hebron, Israel was founded in 1948. It has nothing to do with "biblical times." A few Jews have lived there in peace since them but the vast majority are recent arrivals. Palestinians have lived there all along and many are in fact descended from Jews that remained there. A one state solution would allow both people to live anywhere in that state. It is ultimately the answer to the problem of the Zionist state.

zeeve,

In the 1920's Transjordan help the Zionist. The Zionist agreed to give transjordan their own state if they helped them. But just like the eurpoeans before them after they got what they wanted they reneged.

I have no sympathy for Jordanian's role in this.

I can recall Hamas on several occaisons agreeing to recognize Israel within the 1967 borders (remember the Prison Document) but this is usually followed by asassinations and assaults by the IDF. I would venture to say that if a referendum for peace that required either complete withdrawl by Isreal from the occupied territories and recognition of a Palestinian stat or of a one state solution, the vast majority of Palestinians would support it. The problem historically is that Israel has NEVER honored a single agreement, all the while pointing fingers and blaming Plaestinians. Israel's continued treatment of Palestinians is the vortex of anger in the region and Israle doesn't have a singe enemy it didn't create and dosn't continue to perpetuate daily. It seems Zionism needs enemies to perpetuate a sense of victimization and to justify its aggression.

zeeve,

Over 50% of Jordan's population is Palestinian, they are now taking in a large amount of Iraqui's, they don't have any more room or money to take in more refugee's.

"Wouldn't it be good journalism to confront the israelis on the specific charges leveled by the teenager?"

I'm sure the journalist has tried to contact Israeli authorities numerous times, and she was simply hung up on. Nonetheless, the journalist should have mentioned this - as Amy Goodman must repeatedly do in "Democracy Now".

"And who is this swedish lawyer? Is she a reliable source? Who knows?"

What exactly are you expecting, a Resume??? Woudn't they violate the rule that Journalism be concise?

The article doesn't pretend to be detailed investigative journalism - it's purpose is report a young Plestinians' claim of being tortured by Israeli authorities, and the possibility of this being widespread. Yes, the journalist could have reported the utterly expected, and therfore non-newsworthy Israeli denial.

Your only real compliant about this arttcle is that the people quoted aren't "officials". Why should the credibility of "officials" be trusted over the common people? But considering that it is the job of government press-representatives to lie, I usually find any statement in a news article coming from an "official" to be just so much extraneous verbiage.

dear zeev,

As Carter made clear, the apartheid is being practiced only in the Occupied Territories, not Isreal proper.

In Israel, they are only practicing Jim Crow. (please see latest polls on Israeli attitudes toward Arabs) Even in the era of US Jim Crow South, ther was the sold-out, Abbas-like Booker T. Washington. There were also award winning Black writers, some like WEB DuBois, and some Isreali intellectuals lately, ultimately had to leave poison atmosphere of their home countries for a more open-minded country.

So Zeev, tell us about conditions in the occupied territories? If things are so democratic and equal for non-Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, why not one state for both people?

"Jonathan, all sides in this dispute are not equal and pretending that they are does a diservice to the oppressed."

So true. El-Salvadoran peasants were facing torture, murder and massacres for merely trying to organize against virtual slavery, and Archbishop Oscar Romero appealed to President Carter for help. Carter (yes, Carter) replied: "Can't you all just get along"?

Romero was assassinated while celebrating mass one month later.

All sides in a bloody dispute ARE not equal - and the side deserving support is usually utterly obvious to anyone with a human heart.

But to digress a bit, apparently all heroic martyrs aren't equal either. If you look up "Romero" on Wikipedia, it's editors are considering the article on him for removal as the pro-capitalist "libertarian" computer-geeks who run wikipedia don't consider Archbishop Romero to be "notable".

I'm not going to get into the specifics of whether Israel routinely tortures teenagers. I don't know the specifics and I would be foolish to make blanket statements about whether torture is employed or even statements about the zionism being racism. What I do want to comment on is the lack of balance in this article. The article presents the "fact" of israeli torture without doing real investigative journalism. Why wasn't this teen's specific case looked into? Wouldn't it be good journalism to confront the israelis on the specific charges leveled by the teenager? And who is this swedish lawyer? Is she a reliable source? Who knows? We don't.

This article could have been written while sitting around at a cafe talking with two people (the teen and the lawyer), taking as absolute truth what they say, again without corroborating any of the charges.

Then of course people jump all over it to deny it or use it as evidence, once again, of the evil empire that Israel has become.

A good H.S. newpaper could have done a better job.

"Young Palestinians are encouraged to throw rocks and other debris at Israeli soldiers. Soldiers of any nation who are under attack tend to respond to provocations like this, and when soldiers go into action there is usually violence"

To Jonathon,

The above statement that I've heard over over again as justification for killing Palestinain children is absurd. First of all the soldiers are in Palestine and they are in tanks or behind stone walls. How much damage can children do to them with rocks. This is no justification for killing children or men.

next

"Islam makes demands that Christianity doesn't. We in the West simply don't understand enough about Arab and Muslim culture - and we should be well-aware of that limitation when reading articles such as this one."

What Muslim nation has invaded which Chritian nation or taken over their national resources? Which Arab nation has declared war on which Christian country and killed 600,000 of it's citizen's.

What we should be aware of is the ingrained prejudice the Americans have towards Muslim's and Arab's in particular. Because we don't know much about Islam we hear crap like this over and over again.

"Before you try to remove the speck out of your neighbors eye, first remove the boulder from your own." Jesus

sandya,

"Isreali's do not torture children. Period. Either the author of this story is a grown person, who looks younger..."

So you are admitting Israel tortures adults???

Yes paschn you are right. Sadly, Sandy and Jonathon cannot open their eyes to the other side. They want to stay in denial about what is happening, so they do not have to do something, period. For Jonathon a child is a child weather they are in China or the USA, 14 is just that, 14. Lets us take your kid and beat him at 14 then have sex with him and see how you like it and the then what you would call it. You think that you can claim others do not feel 14 the same way? Who are you trying to fool, Chooch! You are spreading lies and claiming to know what others feel? Your a small person that needs others to hurt so you can feel, period.

I wish you all could stop and think about this report and for once see that Israel is a State, and has many (suburbs), outposts, the Palestinians do not, they are the ones whom needs not only a State, but to be recognized by the very people whom occupy them. They act just like the Republicans here do, they act like victims without bothering to notice their culpability in the mess they create. Right after 911 everyone,(the talking heads) said "we need to act more like Israel", and apparently they were not kidding, we became just like them and then some, now haven't we?

The sheeple are in denial, but the planet they will kill off anyways and in the end it will be someone else's fault that they were not convinced sooner!

Jonathan, all sides in this dispute are not equal and pretending that they are does a diservice to the oppressed.

The poor guy shouldn't waste his effort trying to waken the U.S. sheeple to Israel's terrorist actions. As long as they, ( the sheeple) are told by Israel's media here that they are a democratic nation being picked on by Palistine, they gonna poo-poo any muslims for their viciousness and say it's too bad they ask for all this.
I don't know who I detest more, Israel or the U.S. sheeple that think their "buying a stairway to heaven" by supporting the murderous swine.

I have little doubt that the Israelis are not saints when dealing with the Palestinians. However, we all know that the Palestinians are are also cruel and reactionary in the way they treat Israelis and one another.

I think that we must remember that we can't rely on our American/Western values when dealing with conflicts with the Muslim world. Americans tend to think that everyone else in the world looks at things the way we do and thinks the way we do. We think of a 14 year old as a child; yet that is not the case in all cultures. We see children as non-combatants; yet again, that is not the case in all cultures. Islam makes demands that Christianity doesn't. We in the West simply don't understand enough about Arab and Muslim culture - and we should be well-aware of that limitation when reading articles such as this one.

Young Palestinians are encouraged to throw rocks and other debris at Israeli soldiers. Soldiers of any nation who are under attack tend to respond to provocations like this, and when soldiers go into action there is usually violence. While we haven't yet seen young children used in suicide bombings in Israel (we have in Iraq, so I guess it is just a matter of time) there is a culture of "martyrdom" that is glorified by Islam and we have seen young men and women serve as bombs. Does anyone really think that a 20-something person never considered becoming a bomb before their 18th birthday?

What is needed for both Israel and for the Palestinians is PEACE. It is hard work. It will take effort, change and sacrifice from both sides. But regardless of the difficulty or the cost, peace is still a better answer than war. Israeli hard-liners must accept the existence of a Palestinian state on their borders. Islamists and groups like Hamas and Fatah must accept that Israel exists, that it is not going anywhere, that Jerusalem won't be the capital of a Palestinian state and that talk of wiping Israel off the map is just plain ridiculous.

Both sides in the dispute are at fault for something. Both sides have a lot to account for. Both sides bear responsibility for the conflict and therefore both sides have responsibility for ending it. Neither side is going to "win", yet neither will "lose" either. It is hard, but it must be done. The alternative is endless war, endless death and endless suffering. Is that really the world that anyone wants to live in?

There are so many lies on all sides in the Middle East. We should take everything there with a grain of salt. The root of the problem is the horrible mistake of creating countries for a religious group. This is one thing the U.S. got right -- separating religion and government, though some people would like it to be more like the Middle East. The problems in the Middle East will never end until religion is put where it belongs, and education/knowledge are dominant.

Don't you know that Israel is a US military base in the mideast?

How could a people who themselves have suffered so much just for being who they are; who have been so long a nation without land, be so insensitive to their own brothers in the same situation--brothers whom suffer at Israeli hands?

This is obscene. The descendentes of Ishmael and those of Isaac can do no better than kill each other. But then again aren't all humans brothers and sisters? Why would I hurt myself by hurting anybody else?

Isreali's do not torture children. Period. Either the author of this story is a grown person, who looks yougers, or it is made up from whole cloth -- a lie in other words. We know lots of governments lie, don't we? Headed by the U.S.
Sandy A.

Wasn't Gore praising Israel during his speech in NYU a few years ago on the fact that Israel don't torture and the US should follow their model? Apparently, he seem to get his information from AIPAC, which probably states all the processes goes through a legal process. What they didn't tell him is that it is a rubber stamp process that makes torture acceptable.

This is really really bestial, the Israelis should be ashamed of themselves.....

Israeli soldiers regularly use Palestinian children for target practice. Why would they not torture them. Zionism dehumanises non-Jews in general and Arabs in partucular. It feeds on fear of others. It is a virulent strain of nationalism. Israel long ago lost its moral justification for existance. The world should not tolerate Aparthied regimes or support of them.

Apartheid

We thought that with the collapse of white South Africa, the principle of Apartheid had disappeared for ever. Not true! Israel has been practising apartheid for many and many years with the consent and duplicity of most western democracies who behave like the three monkeys deaf, dumb and blind. Israel has its Soweto somewhere in the Negev or somewhere else.

Now we discover (help to IPS) that they torture Palestinian children, but which other media tell us about it? None! Why? Because Israel is such a nice country with so many good people who have suffered so much that it would be blaspheme to criticize it. After all, these Palestinian are terrorists as everybody knows, they deserve what they get. They are the kind to kill innocent people in Israel! Compared to the niceties Israel do to them, i.e. targeted killings, bulldozing homes, killing "terrorists" even when they are five or six years old, destroying the poor infrastructure in Gaza and the west bank…

We are all responsible for what has been happening for the last sixty years in this region. Israel "shares our values"! Isn't it enough for us to keep a blind eye on its misdeeds? Of course, yes! Israel has had a free hand to do whatever they wanted to do. They have, and still do; behaved as a terrorist state and they get on top of it, our absolution. Sadam Hussein in Iraq was punished for far less than that. The bad luck of Palestinian is that they are no friend of America, and worse they are Muslims, a kind of religion not too much liked in western countries.

Where do you think George, Dick, Condie and the rest learned all that they employed in Iraq? It has been working for years in Palestine and no one has been complaining, least of all the United Nations or any of the Western Powers. It is South Africa all over again and we all know where that ended up!

Nora Barrows-Friedman is Sr. producer for "Flashpoints," an investigative news radio program on KPFA-FM in Berkeley, CA.
Her radio reports from occupied Palestine are not to be missed; she also covered the recent Al Jazeera conference in Doha for Flashpoints. All shows are archived here:

http://www.flashpoints.net

Great work Nora!!

Gee, Israel sounds llke us. At least they're not pretending to spread freedom and democracy.