Here's what this supposed leftist said. I put a paragraph what you wrote. Then I responded. You say, That depth of feeling is what drives young men to be that exploding body. The Tel Aviv bombers did not tell their mothers where they were going that morning. The two of them kissed their mothers goodbye in their houses two kilometres apart on the hillside of Nablus, and said, ‘you are the best mother I could ever have. Pray for me.’ Both used the same words. Both kissed their mother the same way. Then they were gone. They exploded themselves within one minute of each other in central Tel Aviv a few hours later. They had been friends since they were small children. I visited the families the next day with volunteers of the International Solidarity Movement.

You try try to defend homicide bombers who massacre Israeli woman and children. Are you sick? They didn't target soldiers. They targeted defenseless Israeli people. If Israel placed bombs in a Palestinian civilian area and massacred 23 Palestinian civilians and injured and maimed hundreds, you would be calling for war crimes. Yet you defend these atrocities. Have you come to the point, where you defending mass murder.

Israel is depriving those poor Palestinians of their rights..ridiculous
Tell me what about those innocent Israeli citizens who are blown up every day by Palestinian terrorists...

Don't they have any rights ...like the most fundamental right that is to LIVE?

Any hardship the Palestinians have suffered is caused by their own refusal to make Peace and stop killing Israeli civilians.

Nothing will change for the Palestinians, because its not about their state its about destroying Israel. The Palestinians live in bad conditions, because their leaders keep them in it, not because of Israel. Its not in the Pal leaders best interest, to normalize life for their people. If they did, there would be no need for them.

Any land the Arabs have lost has occured during their attempts to destroy Israel and murder every Israeli.

The Palestinians were offered a state at Camp David and Taba, but they refused to accept it, because there would also be a Jewish state, that wouldn't be controlled by Arabs.

Finally, the Palestinians are not OCCUPIED by Israel. They all live under the control of the Palestinian Authority and any human rights abuses they suffer are caused by Arafat not Israel. There is some territory that is under DISPUTE but the people themselves are not "occupied". The Israeli army only goes into Palestinian areas, when Palestinians from this area, massacre Jews in shopping malls, disco's, weddings, buses, pizzeria's and cafe's. These Arabs don't say anything about Jewish children being targeted on purpose by Arab terrorists who dreams of having an eternal orgy with 72 virgins.

I must laugh at all your posts- All you say is how bad Israel is, when all Israel is doing is defending herself. When one looks at the many Arab atrocities that have been committed in recent history- you realize one thing.

The Arab world is racist, sexist, poverty stricken, diseased, inbred, filled with religious hatred, ignorant, and celebrates mass murder of woman and children. The Arabs have killed their own with guns, hangings, be-headings, chemical and biological weapons, electrified them, and tortured fellow Arabs to death. Arabs even kill there own woman if there raped or not virgins before they get married. ( Honor Killings ) Do you people ever take responsiblity. I guess its far easier for the Arabs to blame everyone else for there failures

There was never an independant Palestinian State.

NO war in the history of mankind has been fought with the primary goal of attacking civilians, until the Palestinians' current war against Israel. Before this intifada started, 99% of the Palestinian population was living under their own PA rule, so stop your delusional blabbing about 'occupation'.

The Palestinians were offered everything by Barak. 97 percent of West Bank, 3 percent of Israel, all of Gaza and Old City of Jerusalem. That wasn't good for them, because they want all of Israel.

They chose the path of war. They chose the path of suicide bombings deliberately targeting Israeli innocents, noncombatants and children. The goal is obvious to almost all Israelis at this point: Palestinians do not want peace and certainly do not want an end to 'occupation', which is their best PR line. They only want to destroy Israel and kill as many of the Jews as possible, and eventually take it over and establish a 'Palestine' in all of Israel.

There are NO acceptable reasons for suicide bombing attacks against ordinary Jews in synagogue at prayer, against Jews out for a night at a cafe, against Jews at a bus stop. There are NO acceptable reasons for attacks against anyone not involved in combat. IF Palestinian acts were strictly limited to IDF personnel (and God knows there's plenty of those in the territories right now), then and only then could you call it 'resistance'. Meanwhile the IDF sweeps are being justified by the over 20 bomb-making factories discovered in the last two days.

Soon the world will finally realize and accept that there's only one side of this war with genocidal intentions, and it's the Palestinians. They are bringing about their own destruction by choosing a path which only seeks to destroy all the Jews.

The Palestinians COULD have had their own state. Unfortunately, for too many Palestinians the destruction of Israel was in fact, their real goal.

They proved it through their cowardly tactics.

They blew it but sneaking up on two year olds eating ice cream and Pizza and murdering them AS A TACTIC.

In response to you defending homicide bombers who murder Israeli civilians.

You use explanations, ones that repeats Arab propaganda, that Palestinians blow up Israelis, out of frustration, anger, humiliation and desperation. You leave out the point, the people who send these suicide bombers want to see Jews suffer and want Israel destroyed and replaced with an Islamic state. Missing from your article, is any mention of the deliberate and systematic Palestinian inculcation of hatred, violence and rejection of Israel´s very existence - an indoctrination that went on throughout the years of Oslo.

This great, gaping omission renders virtually any account of the roots of Palestinian terrorism essentially false. Suicide bombers are often elevated to heroic status. Their main targets have been Israeli toddlers eating ice cream, teenagers at a disco, school children on buses and mothers and retirees going about their normal lives.
Palestinians seek out and slaughter Jewish children not only because they are unequipped to confront better-armed Israeli soldiers. They kill children because the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian society more broadly, have demonized and dehumanized Jews. The evidence is plentiful and available. Monitoring groups such as MEMRI, (Middle East Media Research Institute), and Palestinian Media Watch regularly translate Arabic articles and broadcasts attesting to the attitudes that enable Palestinians to view Jews, regardless of age and innocence, as deserving of death.

The Palestinians think by a campaign of mass murder against Israeli civilians, will force Jews to leave Israel, so Israel becomes the 22nd Arab dictatorship.
Typical of official Palestinian television fare well before the current violence was a February, 1998 broadcast on "The Children´s Club" that featured little girls singing of wanting to grow up to be suicide bombers in Jerusalem.

Palestinian Authority incitement since September, 2000, when Arafat launched his war, is exemplified by a November 1, 2002 airing on Palestinian television of a sermon by Dr. Mahmoud Mustafah Najem in a Gaza mosque. Najem demands that his adherents hate and defeat the Jews as a religious obligation commanded by Allah.

His racist diatribe claims Allah described Jews "in his book" as being "characterized by conceit, pride, arrogance, disloyalty and treachery..." Jews, he says, are "monkeys and pigs." Najem exhorts his audience: "...Servants of Allah, be you the ones by whom Allah tortures the Jews with harsh torment..." "Allah, render us victorious over the Jews and those who side with them!" "Allah, render victory upon Islam and Muslims."Instead of exposing the role of such odious incitement in driving the terrorist campaign,

Official PA TV: Pressures Exerted on Palestinian Children to seek Shahada - Death for Allah
By Nadav Shragai
Correspondent, Ha'aretz  http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=15324

TV: Child Writes to Mother, "Rejoice over My Death"
"Ask for Death - the life will be given to you." This slogan, which was broadcast on Palestinian television on July 5th of last year, was also the headline chosen by the authors of Palestinian Media Watch as the title of their 40th research report. This report examines the social pressure exerted by the Palestinian Authority [PA] on children to die as "Shahids" [Death for Allah].

The written findings of the report are presented with a CD, which is not easy to watch. The televised evidence, includes educational films specially prepared for children that have been broadcast in the Palestinian Authority, texts from PA schoolbooks, and quotes from statements issued by political and religious figures in the Palestinian Authority.

One particular "educational" film clip, which was broadcast regularly during 2001 and 2002 as often as three times a day, shows a child writing a farewell letter to his mother in which he declares, "Rejoice over my death and do not cry for me," and also "How sweet is Shahada [Death for Allah] when I embrace you, my land." This text is recited over a backdrop of a picture showing the child falling to the ground "embracing" the earth.

One short broadcast shows the most famous child Shahid, Muhammad Al-Dura, whose death was captured on camera, apparently calling to Palestinian children, "Join me in Paradise." A child actor plays Al-Dura in fictional scenes of his life in Paradise, frolicking in an amusement park with a kite and on the beach. "How pleasant is the fragrance of Shahids.I go with no fear or tears," says the fictional Al-Dura. The program begins with the caption, "I am waving not to part, but to say you, 'Follow me.' And is signed: "Muhammad Al-Dura"

The report also displays texts that appear in widely-used school books published by the Palestinian Education Ministry, such as the "Song of the Shahid," which is found in four different publications. In one book, "Islamic Education for the Eighth Grade," on page 176, states that, "The Moslem sacrifices himself for his belief , and wages Jihad [Holy War] for Allah. He is not swayed, for he knows that the date of his death as a Shahid on the field of battle is preferable to death in his bed."

The November 2000 issue of "Al-Hayat Al-Jadida," a PA newspaper, quotes "The sports teacher of Wajdi Al-Hattab," [a 14 year old student] "responded to Allah's call and achieved the Shahada he yearned for."

The teacher relates that, "Wajdi asked me to give out cake when he becomes a Shahid." The newspaper also reports that Wajdi's classmates "swore that they would follow the path of Shahada until the liberation of Jerusalem."

The author of the report, Itamar Marcus, writes that many cultural programs "encourage Shahada and show approval for those who are killed. Many television broadcasts include songs and dances accompanied by photographs of violence and highlight how right it is to die for the sake of Allah."

Marcus gives the example of a song [broadcast 3 times on PA TV] that was composed in memory of Wafa Idris, the first woman suicide bomber. The song was recorded at a concert in Egypt, and it describes Idris as a "flower" and a "heartbeat of pride." "In death, you have brought life to our will," the song continues.

In the past Marcus and his institute issued a comprehensive report into Palestinian study material and helped to expose Yasser Arafat's "Hudaybia Speech," in which Arafat compared the Oslo Agreement with the Hudaybia Pact, which the prophet Muhammad signed expressly in order to break later. This time Palestinian Media Watch also brings relevant quotes from Yasser Arafat, who expresses his pride in the Shahids. In a speech given to children who were attending a summer camp, Arafat states, "You are the peers of Faris Ouda [a youth who planned his own death as a Shahid] Onwards together to Jerusalem." In response, the children call out, "Millions of Shahids marching to Jerusalem."

The report also brings examples of the statements issued by the parents of suicide bombers, in which they welcome their children's deaths, and express their satisfaction and joy. The mother of one boy who was killed states: "Praise to God, the Master of the Universe. I can raise my head up high and I have glory and pride. My son is a Shahid. But it is not just my son. All of the Shahids are my children."
The mother of Abbas Al-Awiwi states, "The greatest mother's day present I received this year is the death as a Shahid of Abbas."

Marcus and his staff also bring quotes from speeches delivered by religious leaders. Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim Madi stated on Palestinian television in June 2001: "Shame upon he who does not educate his children the education of Jihad. blessings upon he who dons a vest of explosives belt on himself or on his children and goes in to the midst of the Jews".

Sheikh Abd al-Razak stated on Palestinian television on 22nd March 2002: "Allah has planted within our youth the love of Jihad, the love of Shahada. Our youth have turned into bombs, they blow themselves up among them [Israelis] day and night."
Marcus and his colleagues have concluded that, having been exposed to such messages, young Palestinian children from the ages of six till nine play "death" games and role-play the dead. Children between the ages of 10 to 13 express the will to die, sometimes in televised interviews, and from the age of 14 some even take part in suicide attacks.

Let me tell you a little about your beloved zionists Joel, these "israelis" think that they can steal Palestine, terrorise its people for over 55 years with gunships and tanks, murder its children and elderly, wipe out its villages and 2500 year old history and think they can get away with it? Palestine and Palestinians are intertwinned and one cannot live without the other which is why you see the creation by "israel" of suicide bombers.

As long as they do not see that the Palestinians have a right to exist on this land, and carry on following the racist ideology of zionism, then israel shall have no future. Not even the most sophisticated american weapons and defences will protect them from a man determined to blow himself up in revenge for 55 years of oppression and death reaked onto his people.

"ssrael" is not above the law, although its leader Sharon, a war-criminal, may think it controls the worlds most powerful country the United States and therefore will get away with genocide. However, the world has awakened and has seen the zionists for what they truly are,parasites and racists. "israel" is isolated, and will be dismantled, and the Palestinians, both christian and muslim may live in peace again and be one with the holy land.

The Palestinians are still living in dreamland and have never accepted the reality of the situation. Most cases of terrorism in the world occur when the political process has broken down. However the arabs began with terror and refuse to come to terms with any political process. After 1967 when Israel offered the territories back for full peace they said No recognition, No negotiation and No peace, even though they were the losers of a war they had started. Then the arab states decided to recognise the suffering Palestinians as a nation so as to be used as a propoganda and fighting weapon against Israel (even though they'd laughed at the idea of Palestinian autonomy when they controlled the territories from 48-67). The Palestinian leadership have never let go of the idea that they can destroy Israel, and their incompetance, corruption, lies and illusions have let their people down so badly. Most Israelis realise that Oslo was a sham and Arafat has failed to transfer from terrorist to statesman. Thats why unfortunately Sharon will remain prime minister, and until the Palestinians get some real leadership, their future looks bleak.

Before your shrill attacks begin, lets get this out of the way - I do not condone the killing of ANYONE.
Now, in your long and rambling piece, you mention several important and relevant facts, such as the [seemingly] ingrained xenophobioa and mysogney of Islamic culture.
This vein of hatred is not exclusive to those that follow Islam.
With me so far?

..."Any hardship the Palestinians have suffered is caused by their own refusal to make Peace and stop killing Israeli civilians." ...
..."Any land the Arabs have lost has occured during their attempts to destroy Israel and murder every Israeli"...
..."The Palestinians were offered a state at Camp David and Taba, but they refused to accept it"...
..."Finally, the Palestinians are not OCCUPIED by Israel"...

To those of us who are neither Jewish or Islamic [nor Christian as it happens - sky ghosts are for the weak minded] these statements are appalling nonsense.
We know about the terror of 47/48/49, when gangs of zionists brutally and randomly murdered men women and children to remove them from land coverted ...
We know about the duplicity and bad faith of the never implimented oslo accords ...
We know about the spark that lit the second uprising - sharons rise to power dictated that he destroy the peace ...
We know about the ex-judicail killings, the land seizure, the poisoning of water supplies, the torture allowed by the highest courts in isreal, the destruction of houses in land coverted by rascist mysogenist fanatical settlers, we know about the economic destruction of a barely viable Palestinian ghetto, we know about the deliberate targetting of civilians by the idf snipers, the 540 children murdered by the idf [540!] ....
It seems you do not.
I say seems, because actually you do know about them, you just don't care, because your sky ghost religion has told you its ok.
In the immortal words of William S Burroughs ..."never trust a religious son of a b***h, not with god hanging over his shoulder telling him how to f**k you over on the deal"
Joel, condemn the killings of innocents from all parties, face up to the history of the DISPUTE or just forget about influencing the DEBATE, because you do yourself no favours in your one-sided 'isreal is totally innocent' crap.
No justice no peace.

Ceri Gibbons, no where in your article did you mention the 23 innocent Israeli civilians who were slaughtered. Someone how you have no anger over them being slaughtered. Palestinian terrorists intentionally target civilians, especially children. Bombs laden with nails and shrapnel, are intentionally detonated in crowds and public places to massacre hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians. This is who you support. Are you Evil?

Then you say, how the Israeli police held up the head of the Palestinian homicide bomber. You made it, like he was degrading him. HELLO, this mass murderer just exterminated 23 innocent civilians and injured and maimed hundreds. His goal was to slaughter thousands of innocent civilians. If Ceri forgets, the people who were slaughtered are the victims, not the Palestinian genocidal homicide bomber. The left have now become Nazis.

Who wanted ethnic cleasing. Lets see what you think, by these statements. On March 1 1944, the Palestinian leader, Hajj Amin Al Husseini who was in Cahoots with Hitler. Husseini said in a broadcast from Berlin: "Arabs Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor." After the 5 Arab Armies attacked Israel in 48, the Arab League Secretary General, Azzam Pasha said, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the massacres of the Crusades". Hajj Amin Al Husseini stated, "I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!" The armies of lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq invaded the tiny new country with the declared intent of destroying it.

Its well known, it was the surrounding Arab countries, that Told the Arab population to leave there Holmes. The Arab Armies requested and ordered, that the Arab population leave there holmes to clear the Area, so that the Arab armies could kill the Jews. According to a research report by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, the majority of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled and "68%" left without seeing an Israeli soldier. How about some more Arab statements. Azzam Pasha regarding the 1 million Jews in the Arab countries. Assam in May 1948 said "There are over one million Jews in the Arab Lands. Their lives will be forfeit as well when we conquer the Jews.

The Real ethnic cleasing happened, when the Arabs kicked out 800,000 Jews from the Arab countries in 48. Israel took in every single of those 800,000 Jewish Refugees, while the Arabs with 22 countries, refuse to take in any of the Refugees they created, when they attacked Israel in 48. The reason the Arab countries dont take in these Refugees, is because they want to use them, for some kind of sick western media propangada. Did you know, that Hajj Amin Al Husseini dispatched a terrorist squad led by Hassan Ali Salameh to Israel during the second World War, with the object of poisoning Lake Kinneret and other water sources to kill all Israeli Jews? They were discovered by the British and prevented from carrying out their murderous Deed. his is well documented in the book "The quest for the Red Prince. Right now as we Speak, Israel has 20 percent of the actual British Mandate borders of 1917. The Arabs have 80 percent. Jordan was part of the British Mandate. The British created Jordan and named the country after the Jordan River in 1922.

The Real Refugees
Most of the world is ignoring the real catastrophe of the past recent era: the brutal expulsion of some 800,000 Jews from Arab countries, and the seizure, by the Arab governments, of over $13-billion worth of Jewish property and assets.

JEWS IN IRAQ

Under British rule, which began in 1917, Jews fared well economically, and many were elected to government posts. This traditionally observant community was also allowed to found Zionist organizations and to pursue Hebrew studies. All of this progress ended when Iraq gained independence in 1932.

In 1941, after Rashid Ali overthrow the Iraqi goverment in 1941 with the help of Hajj Amin Al Husseini. They installed a Nazi puppet goverment. The first thing Rashid Ali and Husseini did, was order a pogram of Jews, where 187 Jews were massacred.
This is exactly what would have happened, if the Arabs would have won the 48 war. This is what Israel's army prevented in 48.
On June 1st and June 2nd of 1941, hundreds of Iraqi Arabs brutally attacked Iraqi Jews in the towns of Al Rusafa and Abu Sifyan. Jews were killed randomly, women and children were raped in front of their relatives, babies crushed, houses set on fire, looting was everywhere.
On June 2,1941: Policemen, soldiers and slum dwellers from Al Karkh entered the scene, and participated in the killing and the looting everywhere. Reports vary official Iraqi reports mention 187 killed,

JEWS IN IRAQ AFTER 1948

In 1950, Iraqi Jews were permitted to leave the country within a year provided they forfeited their citizenship. A year later, however, the property of Jews who emigrated was frozen and economic restrictions were placed on Jews who chose to remain in the country. From 1949 to 1951, 104,000 Jews were evacuated from Iraq in Operations Ezra and Nehemiah; another 20,000 were smuggled out through Iran. In 1952, Iraq's government barred Jews from emigrating and publicly hanged two Jews after falsely charging them with hurling a bomb at the Baghdad office of the U.S. Information Agency.

With the rise of competing Ba'ath factions in 1963, additional restrictions were placed on the remaining Iraqi Jews. The sale of property was forbidden and all Jews were forced to carry yellow identity cards. After the Six-Day War, more repressive measures were imposed: Jewish property was expropriated; Jewish bank accounts were frozen; Jews were dismissed from public posts; businesses were shut; trading permits were cancelled; telephones were disconnected. Jews were placed under house arrest for long periods of time or restricted to the cities.

Persecution was at its worst at the end of 1968. Scores were jailed upon the discovery of a local "spy ring" composed of Jewish businessmen. Fourteen men-eleven of them Jews-were sentenced to death in staged trials and hanged in the public squares of Baghdad; others died of torture. On January 27, 1969, Baghdad Radio called upon Iraqis to "come and enjoy the feast." Some 500,000 men, women and children paraded and danced past the scaffolds where the bodies of the hanged Jews swung; the mob rhythmically chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to all traitors." This display brought a world-wide public outcry that Radio Baghdad dismissed by declaring: "We hanged spies, but the Jews crucified Christ." (Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, p. 34).

Jews remained under constant surveillance by the Iraqi government. Max Sawadayee, in "All Waiting to be Hanged" writes a testimony of an Iraqi Jew (who later escaped): "The dehumanization of the Jewish personality resulting from continuous humiliation and torment...have dragged us down to the lowest level of our physical and mental faculties, and deprived us of the power to recover.".

In response to international pressure, the Baghdad government quietly allowed most of the remaining Jews to emigrate in the early 1970's, even while leaving other restrictions in force. Most of Iraq's remaining Jews are now too old to leave. They have been pressured by
the government to turn over title, without compensation, to more than $200 million worth of Jewish community property. (New York Times, February 18, 1973).

JEWS IN SYRIA

The Syrian Jewish community in 1948 dated to the First Century destruction of Jerusalem, approximately 1900 year earlier. Under Islamic rule, Jews were routinely subject to cruel and inhumane treatment, including forced conversions, routine pogroms and severe commercial and personal restrictions. By early 1947, only 13,000 Jews lived in Syria; 20,000 had fled throughout the course of the previous decade, as Nazi zeal permeated the region and made their lives especially difficult. Immediately after Syria gained independence from France in 1945, vitriolic anti-Semitic propaganda was broadcast on television and radio, inciting the Arab masses to violence. In December 1947, one month after the Partition Plan's acceptance, a pogrom erupted in the Syrian town of Aleppo, torching numerous Jewish properties, including synagogues, schools, orphanages and businesses. Eyewitnesses to the violence noted Syrian firemen and police dispatched to the scene actively participated in the rioting.

A flurry of anti-Semitic legislation passed in 1948 restricted, among other things, Jewish travel outside of government-approved ghettos, selling private property, acquiring land or changing their place of residence. A decree in 1949 went a step further, seizing all Jewish bank accounts. Under threats of execution, long prison sentences and torture, 10,000 Jews were able to depart between 1948 and 1962. A report published in 1981 indicated Syrian Jews were subject to "the Mukhabarat, the [Syrian] secret police, [who] conduct a reign of terror and intimidation, including searches without warrant, detention without trial, torture and summary execution." Due mainly to US influence in the context of the Madrid peace process, all but about 800 of the Jewish community have fled Syria has confiscated all Jewish property aside from those who remain.

JEWS IN LIBYA

A series of pogroms, the worst of which, in 1945, resulted in the deaths of more than 100 Jews in Tripoli and other towns and the destruction of five synagogues.

A savage pogrom in Tripoli on November 5, 1945 were more than 140 Jews were massacred and almost every synagogue looted. (Howard Sachar, A History of Israel).

In June 1948, rioters murdered another 12 Jews and destroyed 280 Jewish homes. Thousands of Jews fled the country after Libya was granted independence and membership in the Arab League in 1951. (Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times).

After the Six-Day War, the Jewish population of 7,000 was again subjected to pogroms in which 18 were killed, and many more injured, sparking a near-total exodus that left fewer than 100 Jews in Libya.
When Col. Qaddafi came to power in 1969, all Jewish property was confiscated and all debts to Jews cancelled.

Although emigration was illegal, more than 3,000 Jews succeeded to leave to Israel. When the British legalized emigration in 1949, more than 30,000 Jews fled Libya. At the time of Colonel Qaddafi's coup in 1969, some 500 Jews remained in Libya. Today, no Jews are believed to live in Libya.

JEWS IN EGYPT

By 1897 there were more than 25,000 Jews in Egypt, concentrated in Cairo and Alexandria. In 1937 the population reached a peak of 63,500.

Friedman wrote in "The Myth of Arab Tolerance", "One Caliph, Al-Hakem of the Fatimids devised particularly insidious humiliations for the Jews in his attempt to perform what he deemed his roll as "Redeemer of mankind", first the Jews were forced to wear miniature golden calf images around their necks, as though they still worshipped the golden calf, but the Jews refused to convert. Next they wore bells, and after that six pound wooden blocks were hung around their necks. In fury at his failure, the Caliph had the Cairo Jewish quarter destroyed, along with it's Jewish residence, in".

In 1945, with the rise of Egyptian nationalism and the cultivation of anti-Western and anti-Jewish sentiment, riots erupted. In the violence, 10 Jews were killed, 350 injured, and a synagogue, a Jewish hospital, and an old-age home were burned down. The establishment of the State of Israel led to still further anti-Jewish feeling: Between June and November 1948, bombs set off in the Jewish Quarter killed more than 70 Jews and wounded nearly 200. 2,000 Jews were arrested and many had their property confiscated. Rioting over the next few months resulted in many more Jewish deaths. Between June and November 1948, bombs set off in the Jewish Quarter killed more than 70 Jews and wounded nearly 200. Jews. In 1956, the Egyptian government used the Sinai Campaign as a pretext for expelling almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews and confiscating their property. Approximately 1,000 more Jews were sent to prisons and detention camps. On November 23, 1956, a proclamation signed by the Minister of Religious Affairs, and read aloud in mosques throughout
Egypt, declared that "all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state," and promised that they would be soon expelled.

Thousands of Jews were ordered to leave
New York World Telegram).

By 1957 it had fallen to 15,000. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, there was a renewed wave of persecution, and the community dropped to 2,500.
By the 1970s, after the remaining Jews were given permission to leave the country, the community dwindled to a few families.

JEWS IN ALGERIA

Like other Muslim nations, Algeria possesses a long history of anti-Semitism, legal and popular. When France took control of Algeria in 1830, the 2500-year-old Jewish community from much of the humiliation and persecution it had sustained under Islamic rule. But the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany augured a reversion to anti-Semitic activities. In 1934, twenty-five Jews were massacred in Constantine. During the subsequent trial by French authorities, evidence revealed the attack was organized by the city's leading Muslim authorities. When the French Vichy government took power in 1940, it immediately stripped Jews of their French citizenry, banned them from schools and declared them 'pariahs.' Only the Allied landing soon thereafter saved the Jews from mass deportation to European death camps. With the fall of the Vichy regime, more than 148,000 Jews enjoyed the full benefits and affluence of French society. A civil war erupted in Algeria, and as it intensified, thousands of Jews fled the country, mostly for France.

Algeria achieved independence in 1962, by which time more than 75,000 Jews had departed. State-sanctioned persecution began the following year with the passage of the 1963 Nationality Code, limiting citizenship to those residents whose father and paternal grandfather were Muslim. The new state confiscated or destroyed Jewish private, commercial and communal property and ordered most of the nation's synagogues converted into mosques. Following a flood of anti-Semitic violence in 1965, the majority of the remaining Jewish community of 65,000 departed. Today, the once vigorous Algerian Jewish community numbers a paltry 300.

JEWS IN MOROCCO

In June 1948, bloody riots in Oujda and Djerada killed 44 Jews and wounded scores more. That same year, an unofficial economic boycott was instigated against Moroccan Jews.

In 1956, Morocco declared its independence, and Jewish emigration to Israel was suspended. In 1963, emigration resumed, allowing more than 100,000 Moroccan Jews to reach Israel.

In 1965, Moroccan writer Said Ghallab described the attitude of his fellow Muslims toward their Jewish neighbors:
The worst insult that a Moroccan could possibly offer was to treat someone as a Jew....My childhood friends have remained anti-Jewish.
They hide their virulent anti-Semitism. A whole Hitlerite myth is being cultivated among the populace. The massacres of the Jews by Hitler are exalted ecstatically. It is even credited that Hitler is not dead, but alive and well, and his arrival unclean. They lay claims to all his belongings, and if he is unwilling, they employ force...The Jews live in outside the town in dark dwellings like prison cells or caves out of fear...for the least offense, he is sentenced to outrageous fines, which he is quite unable to pay. In case of non-payment, he is put in chains and cruelly beaten every day. Before the punishment is inflicted, the Cadi[judge] addresses him in gentle tones and urges him
to change his faith and obtain a share of all the glory of this world and of the world beyond. His refusal is again regarded as penal obstinacy. On the other hand, it is not open to the Jew to prosecute a Muslim, as the Muslim by right of law can dispose of the life and the
property of the Jew, and it is only to be regarded as an act of magnanimity if the Jews are allowed to live. The Jew is not admissible as a witness, nor has his oath any validity.". By 1948 there were some 270,000 Jews in Morocco. In an atmosphere of uncertainty and grinding poverty, many Jews elected to leave for Israel, France, the United States, and Canada.

Jews in Yemen

In 1922, the government of Yemen reintroduced an ancient Islamic law that decreed that Jewish orphans under age 12 were to be forcibly converted to Islam.

In 1947, after the partition vote, Muslim rioters, joined by the local police force, engaged in a bloody pogrom in Aden that killed 82 Jews and destroyed hundreds of Jewish homes. Aden's Jewish community was economically paralyzed, as most of the Jewish stores and businesses were destroyed. Early in 1948, looting occurred after six Jews were falsely accused of the ritual murder of two Arab girls. (Howard Sachar, A History of Israel).

Finally, nearly 50,000 traditionally religious Yemeni Jews, who had never seen a plane, were airlifted to Israel in 1949 and in 1950 in Operation "Magic Carpet.". Since the Book of Isaiah promised, "They shall mount up with wings, as eagles". The Jewish community bordered
"The Eagles" contentedly; to the pilots consternation some of them lit a bong fire aboard, to cook there food.

JEWS IN TUNISIA

Jews suffered once more in 1956, when the country achieved independence. The rabbinical tribunal was abolished in 1957, and a year later, Jewish community councils were dissolved. In addition, the Jewish quarter of Tunis was destroyed by the government. Anti-Jewish
rioting followed the outbreak of the Six-Day War; Muslims burned down the Great Synagogue of Tunis. This caused massive immigration of Jews.

However you may say the Arabs treated the Jews living in their countries, it is still infinitely more humane than the way that the zionist fascists have murdered, maimed and terrorised the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, the Palestinians. They welcomed the jews into Palestine with open arms as their religous "cousins", and in return the Jews committed the attrocities at Deir Yassin and Kfar Qassim, bringing the beginning of zionist goals to ethnically cleanse the country. The zionists have polluted this once holy land, and once again they will incur the revenge of God upon them.

Phew what a lot of info ... some of it very good - thanks joel, I'm beginning to see you with some respect [if only for your tenacity].
However, you have still failed to make out the case for collective punishment etc etc.
You also failed to mention the collabortion between zionists and the third reich.
You have mistakenly put the horse before the cart in regards to the terrorisation of the INDIGENOUS PALESTINIAN population and the reponse from other arab nations [of which I'm no fan].
Perhaps you haven't heard of the stern gang and their 'work'[sic]. Or perhaps you prefer not to?
The list of treatment [of jews] handed out by the muslim states makes very depressing reading and no amount of wishing or spin can remove this ignoble stain on their history.
However, religion be damned if the jews haven't gone full circle and adopted the position of abuser [so often the case that the abused turns to abuse themselves] to a largely defensive and desparate population.
I personally have gone from being a stuanch ally and defender of israel, based on the sentiments of pity and solidarity for the oppressed, to one who is thoroughly disgusted at the pervasive attitude of aggression and inhumanity displayed by the ignorant zionazi majority[?]/leadership of israel. It is no less and no more than racism - xenophobia - and needs addressing by everyone in israel.
People need to treat other people as equals and not have some sky ghost sneeking over shoulders claiming ... its alright go on your better than they are, after all I'm YOUR god aren't I? ... Nor can the position of .. them first ... be justified its you [I] first.
Anyway Joel, let us you and I continue talking, I feel that you have a perspective that IS lacking from the debate at the moment ... perhaps I can assist your thinking also?
Peace.

Joel, all you are doing is saying, their terrorism is wrong but ours is right.
what about the King David hotel bombing in the 40's?
what about he murderous rampages of the irgun and haganah?
the collusion of sharon with the lebonese in the massacres of sabra, shatila? the blatant thumb-nosing of the UN and all of its resolutions?
terrorism, state or otherwise is wrong. but to come out and call people evil or anti-semetic cuz they don't tow the zionist line is wrong.
anti-semtism is wrong, yes, but its no excuse to defend the israeli states actions to the palestinian people.

Daniel, you obviously dont know a thing about Sabra and Chatilla.

Sharon had nothing to do with the killings at Sabra and Chatilla. Not one single Israeli killed any Arab there. The person who ordered the killings, was Elie Hobeika, not Ariel Sharon.

Right after Sabra and Chatilla, Hobeika switched sides to the Syrians. It was then learned by Hobeika's bodyguard, Roger Hatem, Elie Hobeika was a Syrian agent in the 82 War. Roger Hatem wrote a book called, from Israel to Damascus. You can read the book on his website.  http://www.israeltodamascus.com/

Hatem documents, how Hobeika ordered the killings at Sabra and Chatilla to make Israel look bad, so Syria could control Lebanon. The only reason why the Christians went along with Hobeika's orders, was to avenge the thousands of Christians, who were killed by the PLO in Damour Lebanon and because the Lebanese Christian President Gamayel was just killed by the PLO.

2nd, in 1985, the Syrian backed Amals Shiites, attacked the same Sabra camp and killed 650 Arabs. Ofcourse when Arabs kill each other, no one cares. What Hatem documents in his book. Sharon told Hobeika, only to go after the armed PLO gunman in Sabra. Sharon made very clear to Hobeika, not to target any civilians. Hobeika agreed to the orders. Then Hobeika gave his own orders to his men. Kill anyone they see in Sabra. Hobeika did this, to make Israel look bad, so Syria could control Lebanon.

If the Arabs are so concerned about the people killed in Sabra and Chatilla, why did Syria and Lebanon protect the person who ordered the killings. (Elie Hobeika). Why didn't Syria or Lebanon prosecute Hobeika. Maybe there worred, he might tell the truth. Which is, Hobeika under orders from Assad was responsible. Ariel Sharon had nothing to do with what happened. What you had in Sabra and Chatilla was Arabs killing Arabs. Sound familiar.

Examples of how Arab Dictatorships and Muslim Countries react to violence. When the PLO tried this tactic of riots and violence against King Hussein in 1970. Unlike Israel, Hussein used full force against the PLO Terror. In one week, 20,000 Arabs killed each other.
1 million Muslims kill each other in the Iran Iraq War.
1 and half million Black Christians massacred in Sudan, by the Arabs in North Sudan.
In Indonesia, 300,000 East Timories murdered by Indonesia.
Assad Butchers 22,000 of his own people in Hama Syria in 1982.
Thousands of tourists massacred in Egypt since 1992.
125,000 Afghanistans kill each other since 1989
100,000 Algerians have butchered each other since 1992.
150,000 Lebanese kill each other in there 15 year civil war.
Saddam gassed and killed 200,000 Kurds since 1987. Click on this link, to learn what happened to the Kurds.  http://www.halabja.org/HRIphotos.htm
Pakistan kills 1 million Bangladeshi muslims in 1971.
The PLO kills thousands of Christian Lebanese in the Lebanon civil war.
Syria, Assad in 1980, Jails 600 opposition forces. 6 months later, he tells them, they could all leave there Jail cells. As they leave the Jails, Assad has his military massacre all 600 people.
During the 8-year war between Iran and Iraq, Iran sent children (holding tickets to Muslim Paradise) running across minefields to clear the way for the Iranian soldiers.
The Arab nations and Arafat in particular cynically use their own civilians as human shields by putting children, women and unarmed men in harms' way. They deliberately enlisted them to become involuntary extensions of their planned violence, especially when the televised 'war' shows children and women as victims and martyrs.

Within the 52-year conflict between the Arab nations and Israel, documented history indicates that civilians were consistently used by the Arabs in various ways to advance the war goals of the Arab nations. Civilians were often used as 'Human Shields. The use of civilian Human Shields was fairly common during the six wars initiated by the Arab nations against Israel.

Israel reacts, only after it has been attacked by Arab and Iranian killers. Why is it that the PLO or other terrorist groups, who hide and fire from civilian areas are never blamed? Did i forget to mention, an Egyptian pilot crashed a plane and kills 216 people in 1999.

I advise everyone to read this article. Its so brilliant.

 http://www.frontpagemagazine.com

Why Israel Is The Victim And The Arabs Are The Indefensible Aggressors In the Middle East
by David Horowitz, Monday, December 23, 2002 (The Palestinians are a community of suicide bombers: they want the destruction of Israel more than they want a better life)

ZIONISM is a national liberation movement, identical in most ways to other liberation movements that leftists and progressives the world over --and in virtually every case but this one -- fervently support. This exceptionalism is also visible at the reverse end of the political spectrum: In every other instance, right-wingers like Patrick Buchanan oppose national liberation movements that are under the spell of Marxist delusions and committed to violent means. But they make an exception for the one that Palestinians have aimed at the Jews. The unique opposition to a Jewish homeland at both ends of the political spectrum identifies the problem that Zionism was created to solve.

The "Jewish problem" is just another name for the fact that Jews are the most universally hated and persecuted ethnic group in history. The Zionist founders believed that hatred of Jews was a direct consequence of their stateless condition. As long as Jews were aliens in every society they found themselves in, they would always be seen as interlopers, their loyalties would be suspect and persecution would follow. This was what happened to Captain Alfred Dreyfus, whom French anti-Semites falsely accused of spying and who was put on trial for treason by the French government in the 19th Century. Theodore Herzl was an assimilated, westernized Jew, who witnessed the Dreyfus frame- up in Paris and went on to lead the Zionist movement.

Herzl and other Zionist founders believed that if Jews had a nation of their own, the very fact would "normalize" their condition in the community of nations. Jews had been without a state since the beginning of the diaspora, when the Romans expelled them from Judea on the west bank of the Jordan River, some 2,000 years before. Once the Jews obtained a homeland, Judea itself seemed a logical site -- and were again like other peoples, the Zionists believed anti-Semitism would wither on its poisonous vine and the Jewish problem would disappear.

Here is what happened instead.

2. The Beginnings

In the 1920s, among their final acts as victors in World War I, the British and French created the states that now define the Middle East out of the ashes of the empire of their defeated Turkish adversary. In a region that the Ottoman Turks had controlled for hundreds of years, Britain and France drew the boundaries of the new states, Syria Lebanon and Iraq. Previously, the British had promised the Jewish Zionists that they could establish a "national home" in a portion of what remained of the area, which was known as the Palestine Mandate. But in 1921 the British separated 80 percent of the Mandate, east of the Jordan, and created the Arab kingdom of "Transjordan." It was created for the Arabian monarch King Abdullah, who had been defeated in tribal warfare in the Arabian Peninsula and lacked a seat of power. Abudllah's tribe was Hashemite, while the vast majority of Abdullah's subjects were Palestinian Arabs.

What was left of the original Palestine Mandate between the west bank of the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea had been settled by Arabs and Jews. Jews, in fact, had lived in the area continuously for 3,700 years, even after the Romans destroyed their state in Judea in AD 70. Arabs became the dominant local population for the first time in the 7th Century AD as a result of the Muslim invasions. The Arabs were largely nomads who had no distinctive language or culture to separate them from other Arabs. In all the time since, they had made no attempt to create an independent Palestinian state west or east of the Jordan and none was ever established.

In 1948, at the request of the Jews who were living in Palestine, the United Nations voted to partition the remaining quarter of the original Mandate to make a Jewish homeland possible. Under the partition plan, the Arabs were given the Jews ancient home in Judea and Samaria; now known as the West Bank. The Jews were allotted three slivers of disconnected land along the Mediterranean and the Sinai desert. They were also given access to their holy city of Jerusalem, but as an island cut off from the slivers, surrounded by Arab land and under international control. Sixty percent of the land allotted to the Jews was the Negev desert. Out of these unpromising parts, the Jews created a new state, Israel, in 1948. At this time, the idea of a Palestinian nation, or a movement to create one did not even exist.

At the moment of Israels birth, Palestinian Arabs lived on roughly 90 percent of the original Palestine Mandate in Transjordan and in the UN partition area, but also in the new state of Israel itself. There were 800,000 Arabs living in Israel alongside 1.2 million Jews. At the same time, Jews were legally barred from settling in the 35,000 square miles of Palestinian Transjordan, which eventually was renamed simply "Jordan."

The Arab population in the slivers called Israel had actually more than tripled since the Zionists first began settling the region in significant numbers in the 1880s.The reason for this increase was that the Jewish settlers had brought industrial and agricultural development with them, which attracted Arab immigrants to what had previously been a sparsely settled and economically destitute area.

If the Palestinian Arabs had been willing to accept this arrangement in which they received 90 percent of the land in the Palestine Mandate, and under which they benefited from the industry, enterprise and political democracy the Jews brought to the region, there would have been no Middle East conflict. But this was not to be.

Instead, the Arab League representing five neighboring Arab states declared war on Israel on the day of its creation, and five Arab armies invaded the slivers with the aim of destroying the infant Jewish state. During the fighting, according to the UN mediator on the scene, an estimated 472,000 Arabs fled their homes to escape the dangers. They planned on returning after an Arab victory and the destruction of the Jewish state.

But the Jews -- many of them recent Holocaust survivors -- refused to be defeated. Instead, the five Arab armies that had invaded their slivers were repelled. Yet there was no peace. Even though their armies were beaten, the Arab states were determined to carry on their campaign of destruction, and to remain formally at war with the Israeli state. After the defeat of the Arab armies, the Palestinians who lived in the Arab area of the UN partition did not attempt to create a state of their own. Instead, in 1950, Jordan annexed the entire West Bank.

3. Refugees: Jewish and Arab

As a result of the annexation and the continuing state of war, the Arab refugees who had fled the Israeli slivers did not return. There was a refugee flow into Israel, but it was a flow of Jews who had been expelled from the Arab countries. All over the Middle East, Jews were forced to leave lands they had lived on for centuries. Although Israel was a tiny geographical area and a fledgling state, its government welcomed and resettled 600,000 Jewish refugees from the Arab countries.

At the same time, the Jews resumed their work of creating a new nation in what was now a single sliver of land. Israel, had annexed a small amount of territory to make their state defensible, including a land bridge that included Jerusalem.

In the years that followed, the Israelis made their desert bloom. They built the only industrialized economy in the entire Middle East. They built the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. They treated the Arabs who remained in Israel well. To this day the very large Arab minority, which lives inside the state of Israel, has more rights and privileges than any other Arab population in the entire Middle East.

This is especially true of the Arabs living under Yasser Arafats corrupt dictatorship, the Palestine Authority, which today administers the West Bank and the Gaza strip, and whose Arab subjects have no human rights. In 1997, in a fit of pique against the Oslo Accords, Palestinian spokesman Edward Said himself blurted this out, calling Arafat "our Papa Doc after the sadistic dictator of Haiti and complaining that there was "a total absence of law or the rule of law in the Palestinian autonomy areas."

The present Middle East conflict is said to be about the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza strip and about Israels refusal to "give them up." But during the first twenty years of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel did not control the West Bank. In 1950, when Jordan annexed the West Bank, there was no Arab outrage. Nor did the Middle East conflict with the Jews subside.

The reason there was no Arab outrage over the annexation of the West Bank was because Jordan is a state whose ethnic majority is Palestinian Arabs. On the other hand, the Palestinians of Jordan are disenfranchised by the ruling Hashemite minority. Despite this fact, in the years following the annexation the Palestinians displayed no interest in achieving "self-determination" in Hashemite Jordan. It is only the presence of Jews, apparently, that incites this claim. The idea that the current conflict is about "occupied territories" is only one of the many large Arab deceits -- now widely accepted -- that have distorted the history of the Middle East wars.

4. The Arab Wars Against Israel

In 1967, Egypt, Syria and Jordan attacked Israel for a second time and were again defeated. It was in repelling these aggressors that Israel came to control the West Bank and the Gaza strip, as well as the oil-rich Sinai desert. Israel had every right to annex these territories captured from the aggressors a time honored ritual among nations, and in fact the precise way that Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan had come into existence themselves. But Israel did not do so. On the other hand, neither did it withdraw its armies or relinquish its control.

The reason was that the Arab aggressors once again refused to make peace. Instead, they declared themselves still at war with Israel, a threat no Israeli government could afford to ignore. By this time, Israel was a country of 2 or 3 million surrounded by declared enemies whose combined populations numbered over 100 million. Geographically Israel was so small that at one point it was less than ten miles across. No responsible Israeli government could relinquish a territorial buffer while its hostile neighbors were still formally at war. This is the reality that frames the Middle East conflict.

In 1973, six years after the second Arab war against the Jews, the Arab armies again attacked Israel. The attack was led by Syria and Egypt, abetted by Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and five other countries who gave military support to the aggressors, including an Iraqi division of 18,000 men. Israel again defeated the Arab forces. Afterwards, Egypt and Egypt alone -- agreed to make a formal peace.

The peace was signed by Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, who was subsequently assassinated by Islamic radicals, paying for his statesmanship with his life. Sadat is one of three Arab leaders assassinated by other Arabs for making peace with the Jews.

Under the Camp David accords that Sadat signed, Israel returned the entire Sinai with all its oil riches. This act demonstrated once and for all that the solution to the Middle East conflict was ready at hand. It only required the willingness of the Arabs to agree.

The Middle East conflict is not about Israels occupation of the territories; it is about the refusal of the Arabs to make peace with Israel, which is an inevitable by-product of their desire to destroy it.

5. Self-Determination Is Not The Agenda

The Palestinians and their supporters also claim that the Middle East conflict is about the Palestinians yearning for a state and the refusal of Israel to accept their aspiration. This claim is also false. The Palestine Liberation Organization was created in 1964, sixteen years after the establishment of Israel and the first anti-Israel war. The PLO was created at a time the West Bank was not under Israeli control but was part of Jordan. The PLO, however, was not created so that the Palestinians could achieve self-determination in Jordan, which at the time comprised 90 percent of the original Palestine Mandate. The PLO express purpose, in the words of its own leaders, was to "push the Jews into the sea."

The official charter of the new Palestine Liberation Organization referred to the "Zionist invasion," declared that Israels Jews were "not an independent nationality," described Zionism as "racist" and "fascist," called for "the liquidation of the Zionist presence," and specified, "armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine." In short, "liberation" required the destruction of the Jewish state. The PLO was not even created by Palestinians but by the Arab League -- the corrupt dictators who ruled the Middle East and who had attempted to destroy Israel by military force in 1948, in 1967 and again in 1973.

For thirty years, the PLO charter remained unchanged in its call for Israels destruction. Then in the mid-1990s, under enormous international pressure following the 1993 Oslo accords, PLO leader Yasser Arafat removed the clause while assuring his followers that its removal was a necessary compromise that did not alter the movements goals. He did this explicitly and also by citing a historical precedent in which the Prophet Muhammad insincerely agreed to a peace with his enemies in order to gain time to mass the forces with which he intended to destroy them.

6. The Struggle to Destroy Israel

The Middle East struggle is not about right against right. It is about a fifty-year effort by the Arabs to destroy the Jewish state, and the refusal of the Arab states in general and the Palestinian Arabs in particular to accept Israel’s existence. If the Arabs were willing to do this, there would be no occupied territories and there would be a Palestinian state.

Even during the "Oslo" peace process -- when the Palestine Liberation Organization pretended to recognize the existence of Israel and the Jews therefore allowed the creation of a "Palestine Authority" -- it was clear that the PLO's goal was Israels destruction, and not just because its leader invoked the Prophet Muhammad's own deception. The Palestinians. determination to destroy Israel is abundantly clear in their newly created demand of a "right of return" to Israel for "5 million" Arabs. The figure of 5 million refugees who must be returned to Israel is more than ten times the number of Arabs who actually left the Jewish slivers of the British Mandate in 1948.

In addition to its absurdity, this new demand has several aspects that reveal the Palestinians genocidal agenda for the Jews. The first is that the "right of return" is itself a calculated mockery of the primary reason for Israels existence -- the fact that no country would provide a refuge for Jews fleeing Hitler's extermination program during World War II. It is only because the world turned its back on the Jews when their survival was at stake that the state of Israel grants a "right of return." to every Jew who asks for it.

But there is no genocidal threat to Arabs, no lack of international support militarily and economically, and no Palestinian "diaspora" (although the Palestinians have cynically appropriated the very term to describe their self-inflicted quandary). The fact that many Arabs, including the Palestinian spiritual leader -- the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem -- supported Hitler's "Final Solution" only serves to compound the insult. It is even further compounded by the fact that more than 90 percent of the Palestinians now in the West Bank and Gaza have never lived a day of their lives in territorial Israel. The claim of a "right of return" is thus little more than a brazen __expression of contempt for the Jews, and for their historic suffering.

More importantly it is an __expression of contempt for the very idea of a Jewish state. The incorporation of five million Arabs into Israel would render the Jews a permanent minority in their own country, and would thus spell the end of Israel. The Arabs fully understand this, and that is why they have made it a fundamental demand. It is just one more instance of the general bad faith the Arab side has manifested through every chapter of these tragic events.

Possibly the most glaring __expression of the Arabs bad faith is their deplorable treatment of the Palestinian refugees and refusal for half a century to relocate them, or to alleviate their condition, even during the years they were under Jordanian rule. While Israel was making the desert bloom and relocating 600,000 Jewish refugees from Arab states, and building a thriving industrial democracy in its allotted sliver, the Arabs were busy making sure that their refugees remained in squalid refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, where they were powerless, right-less, and economically destitute.

Today, fifty years after the first Arab war against Israel, there are 59 such refugee camps and 3.7 million "refugees" registered with the UN. Despite economic aid from the UN and Israel itself, despite the oil wealth of the Arab kingdoms, the Arab leaders have refused to undertake the efforts that would liberate the refugees from their miserable camps, or to make the economic investment that would alleviate their condition. There are now 22 Arab states providing homes for the same ethnic population, speaking a common Arabic language. But the only one that will allow Palestinian Arabs to become citizens is Jordan. And the only state the Palestinians covet is Israel.

7. The Policy of Resentment and Hate

The refusal to address the condition of the Palestinian refugee population is and has always been -- a calculated Arab policy, intended to keep the Palestinians in a state of desperation in order to incite their hatred of Israel for the wars to come. Not to leave anything to chance, the mosques and schools of the Arabs generally -- and the Palestinians in particular -- preach and teach Jew hatred every day. Elementary school children in Palestinian Arab schools are even taught to chant "Death to the heathen Jews" in their classrooms as they are learning to read. It should not be overlooked, that these twin policies of deprivation (of the Palestinian Arabs) and hatred (of the Jews) are carried out without any protest from any sector of Palestinian or Arab society. That in itself speaks volumes about the nature of the Middle East conflict.

All wars -- especially wars that have gone on for fifty years produce victims with just grievances on both sides. And that is true in this one. There are plenty of individual Palestinian victims, as there are Jewish victims, familiar from the nightly news. But the collective Palestinian grievance is without justice. It is a self-inflicted wound, the product of the Arabs xenophobia, bigotry, exploitation of their own people, and apparent inability to be generous towards those who are not Arabs. While Israel is an open, democratic, multi-ethnic, multicultural society that includes a large enfranchised Arab minority, the Palestine Authority is an intolerant, undemocratic, monolithic police state with one dictatorial leader, whose ruinous career has run now for 37 years.

As the repellent attitudes, criminal methods and dishonest goals of the Palestine liberation movement should make clear to any reasonable observer, its present cause is based on Jew hatred, and on resentment of the modern, democratic West, and little else. Since there was no Palestinian nation before the creation of Israel, and since Palestinians regarded themselves simply as Arabs and their land as part of Syria, it is not surprising that many of the chief creators of the Palestine Liberation Organization did not even live in the Palestine Mandate before the creation of Israel, let alone in the sliver of mostly desert that was allotted to the Jews. Edward Said, the leading intellectual mouthpiece for the Palestinian cause grew up in a family that chose to make its home in Egypt and the United States. Yasser Arafat was born in Egypt.

While the same Arab states that claim to be outraged by the Jews treatment of Palestinians treat their own Arab populations far worse than Arabs are treated in Israel, they are also silent about the disenfranchised Palestinian majority that lives in Jordan. In 1970, after Yasser Arafat tried to overthrow King Hussein goverment, Hussein massacred thousands of PLO militants. But the PLO does not call for the overthrow of Hashemite rule in Jordan and does not hate the Hashemite monarchy. Only Jews are hated.

It is a hatred, moreover, that is increasingly lethal. Today, 70 percent of the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza approve the suicide bombing of women and children if the targets are Jews. There is no Arab "Peace Now" movement, not even a small one, whereas in Israel the movement demanding concessions to Arabs in the name of peace is a formidable political force. There is no Arab spokesman who will speak for the rights and sufferings of Jews, but there are hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel and all over the world who will speak for "justice" for the Palestinians. How can the Jews expect fair treatment from a people that collectively does not even recognize their humanity?

8. A Phony Peace

The Oslo peace process begun in 1993 was based on the pledge of both parties to renounce violence as a means of settling their dispute. But the Palestinians never renounced violence and in the year 2000, they officially launched a new Intifada against Israel, effectively terminating the peace process.

In fact, during the peace process -- between 1993 and 1999 -- there were over 4,000 terrorist incidents committed by Palestinians against Israelis, and more than 1,000 Israelis killed as a result of Palestinian attacks more than had been killed in the previous 25 years. By contrast, during the same period 1993-1999 Israelis were so desperate for peace that they reciprocated these acts of murder by giving the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza a self-governing authority, a 40,000 man armed "police force," and 97 percent of the territory their negotiators demanded. This Israeli generosity was rewarded by a rejection of peace, suicide bombings of crowded discos and shopping malls, an outpouring of ethnic hatred and a renewed declaration of war.

"In October of 2000, with the help of Clinton, Israel offered Arafat an independent Palestinian State, 97% of the West Bank all of Gaza, Arab sections of Jerusalem and 3 percent of Israel. Arafat refused and the Palestinians started their homicide/suicide bombings and their latest attempt to destroy Israel."

In fact, the Palestinians broke the Oslo Accords precisely because of Israeli generosity, because the government of Ehud Barak offered to meet 100 percent of their demands, including turning over half of Jerusalem to their control -- a possibility once considered unthinkable. These concessions confronted Arafat with the one outcome he did not want: Peace with Israel. Peace without the destruction of the "Jewish Entity.

Arafat rejected these Israeli concessions, accompanying his rejection with a new explosion of anti-Jewish violence. He named this violence -- deviously -- "The Al-Aksa Intifada," after the mosque on the Temple Mount. His new jihad was given the name of a Muslim shrine to create the illusion that the Intifada was provoked not by his unilateral destruction of the Oslo peace process, but by Ariel Sharon's visit to the site. Months after the Intifada began, the Palestine Authority itself admitted this was just another Arafat lie.

In fact, the Intifada had been planned months before Sharon's visit as a follow-up to the rejection of the Oslo Accords. In the words of Imad Faluji, the Palestine Authority's communications minister, "[The uprising] had been planned since June 2000, three months before Sharon visited the Temple Mount. Faluji said Sharon's visit had nothing to do with the Intifada and Arafat used it as an excuse to start his war against Israel.

9. Moral Distinctions

In assessing the Middle East impasse it is important to pay attention to the moral distinction revealed in the actions of the two combatants. When a deranged Jew goes into an Arab mosque and kills the worshippers (which happened once) he is acting alone and is universally condemned by the Israeli government and the Jews in Israel and everywhere, and he is punished to the full extent of Israeli law. But when a young Arab enters a disco filled with teenagers or a shopping mall or bus crowded with women and children and blows himself and innocent bystanders up (which happens frequently), he is someone who has been trained and sent by a component of the PLO or the Palestine Authority; he is officially praised as a hero by Yasser Arafat; his mother is given money by the Palestine Authority; and his Arab neighbors come to pay honor to the household for having produced a "martyr for Allah." The Palestinians are the first people - to elevate the killing of woman and children as a national movement. The Palestinians are also the first people, to tell its people when you slaughter Israeli woman and children, you will be rewarded with 72 virgins.

It is not only the methods of the Palestine liberation movement that are morally repellent. The Palestinian cause is itself corrupt. The "Palestinian problem" is a problem created by the Arabs, and can only be solved by them. In Jordan, Palestinians already have a state in which they are a majority but which denies them self-determination. Why is Jordan not the object of the Palestinian "liberation" struggle? The only possible answer is because it is not ruled by Jews.

There is a famous "green line" marking the boundary between Israel and its Arab neighbors. That green line is also the bottom line for what is the real problem in the Middle East. It is green because plants are growing in the desert on the Israeli side but not on the Arab side. The Jews got a sliver of land without oil, and created abundant wealth and life in all its rich and diverse forms. The Arabs got nine times the acreage but all they have done with it is to sit on its aridity and nurture the poverty, resentments and hatreds of its inhabitants. Out of these dark elements they have created and perfected the most vile anti-human terrorism the world has ever seen: Suicide bombing of civilians. In fact, the Palestinians are a community of suicide bombers: they want the destruction of Israel more than they want a better life.

The Arabs have been obsessed with destroying Israel. This is morally hateful. It is the Nazi virus revived. Nonetheless, the Palestinian cause is generally supported by the international community, with the singular exception of the United States (and to a lesser degree Great Britain). It is precisely because the Palestinians want to destroy a state that Jews have created -- and because they are killing Jews -- that they enjoy international credibility and otherwise inexplicable support.

10. The Jewish Problem Again

It is this international resistance to the cause of Jewish survival, the persistence of global Jew-hatred that, in the end, refutes the Zionist hope of a solution to the "Jewish problem." The creation of Israel is an awe-inspiring human success story. But the permanent war to destroy it undermines the original Zionist idea.

More than fifty years after the creation of Israel, the Jews are still the most hated ethnic group in the world. Islamic radicals want to destroy Israel, but do so Islamic moderates. For the Jews in the Middle East, the present conflict is a life and death struggle, yet every government in the UN with the exception of the United States and sometimes Britain regularly votes against Israel in the face of a terrorist enemy, who has no respect for the rights or lives of Jews. After the Al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center, the French ambassador to England complained that the whole world was endangered because of "that shitty little country," Israel. This caused a scandal in England, but nowhere else. All that stands between the Jews of the Middle East and another Holocaust is their own military prowess and the generous, humanitarian support of the United States.

Even in the United States, however, one can now turn the TV to channels like MSNBC and CNN to see Ariel Sharon who is the elected Prime Minister of a democracy equated politically and morally with Yasser Arafat who is a dictator, a terrorist and an enemy of the United States. One can see the same equivalence drawn between Israel's democracy and the Palestine Authority, which is a terrorist entity and an ally of America's enemies Al Qaeda and Iraq.

During the Gulf War, Israel was America's staunch ally while Arafat and the Palestinians openly supported the aggressor, Saddam Hussein. Yet the next two U.S. Governments Republican and Democrat alike strove for even-handed "neutrality" in the conflict in the Middle East, and pressured Israel into a suicidal "peace process" with a foe dedicated to its destruction. It is only since September 11 that the United States has been willing to recognize Arafat as an enemy of peace and not a viable negotiating partner.

The Zionists efforts created a thriving democracy for the Jews of Israel (and also for the million Arabs who live in Israel), but failed to normalize the Jewish people or make them safe in a world that hates them. From the point of view of the "Jewish problem," which Herzl and the Zionist founders set out to solve, it is better today to be a Jew in America than a Jew in Israel.

This is one reason why I myself am not a Zionist but an unambivalent, passionate American patriot. America is good for the Jews as it is good for every other minority who embraces its social contract. But this history is also why I am a fierce supporter of Israel's survival and have no sympathy for the Palestinian side in the conflict in the Middle East. Nor will I have such sympathy until the day comes when I can look into the Palestinians eyes and see something other than death desired for Jews like me.