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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (54001)	10/23/2002 3:27:57 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I don't know if Israelis are so unique. I suspect that if we had a full list of world atrocities there would be such as these and worse. I don't demonize Israelis. Not at all.. I have no doubt that at a small unit level Israeli soldiers have likely committed acts which are despicable, or at least controversial.. Nor can I believe that some Palestinian children haven't become intentional victims by some immoral act by a rogue IDF soldier. But the greatest crime here is how Palestinian parents have permitted their children to be used as weapons in this war. Used as rock-throwing shields for adult men lurking behind them with rifles and molotov cocktails. Used as human bombs in order to kill Israeli civilians.. And brainwashed into perceiving Israelis as people who don't deserve to live.. Hate breeds hate... And I hardly believe that IDF soldiers who have seen Palestinian children used in such a manner, while adult cower behind them, came into this struggle with a willingness to kill children. If anything, they resent the Palestinian willingness to throw away the lives of their posterity.. They perceive it as a utterly uncivilized behavior... They resent having to fight off children who have the means to kill even more effectively than their adults because they know the Israelis have a weakness for children... I certainly know I would resent it.. In fact, I find it utterly repugnant that the Arab mindset could, in any form, permit children to be used as weapons... Just as I find it utterly repugnant that suicide bombers would seek to kill civilians, blow up buses, and target Israeli children in Discos, rather than fighting man to man.. The Israelis are not the only ones being poisoned. The Palestinians are losing an entire generation to this brainwashing that is occurring.. A generation of children will never be able to accept a life where they can live in harmony with Jews. But no matter how many instances of atrocities we see by Israelis, I feel confident that Jews can reach a form of detente with Palestinians. There are times that I think it might have been in Israel's favor to just abandon the West Bank completely, knowing that Arafat would have seized upon such an opportunity to engage in some intolerable action such as inviting Iraqi or Saudi troops to enter the West Bank.. Then Israel could have justifiably claimed that Arafat was seeking to wage war against Israel and launched a pre-emptive strike against them, state to state, rather than state against semi-autonomous entity. The bottom line is that both sides will be forced to live with one another. The Palestinians cannot economically survive without access to Israeli jobs and markets, as well as infrastructure. But the Palestinians have some serious "issues" to be resolved before they will ever be ready to accept such a situation. And those issues come in the form of Hamas, PFLP, and the use of PA territory to wage a terrorist war bent upon Israeli destruction.. And the world is going to have to come to grips with the fact that groups like Hamas and PFLP create an atmosphere of intolerance, especially in Gaza where they control most of that territory, are an impediment to achieving peace between the two peoples. After all, when was the last time you actively saw major Israeli political factions bent upon the utter destruction of the Palestinian people?? Why does the world tolerate such rhetoric from militant Palestinians, while raging at any specific action by an Israeli where they display obvious racist tendencies toward Palestinians?? Hawk