To: sylvester80 who wrote (447439 ) 8/25/2003 6:02:09 PM From: Machaon Respond to of 769667 MYTH : "Israel is pursuing a policy of genocide toward the Palestinians that is comparable to the Nazis' treatment of the Jews." FACT : "This is perhaps the most odious claim made by Israel's detractors. The Nazis' objective was the systematic extermination of every Jew in Europe. Israel is seeking peace with its Palestinian neighbors. More than one million Arabs live as free and equal citizens in Israel. Of the Palestinians in the territories, 98 percent live under the civil administration of the Palestinian Authority. While Israel sometimes employs harsh measures against Palestinians in the territories to protect Israeli citizens – Jews and non-Jews – from the incessant campaign of terror waged by the PA and Islamic radicals, there is no plan to persecute, exterminate, or expel the Palestinian people. In response to one such comparison, by a poet who referred to the "Zionist SS," The New Republic's literary editor Leon Wieseltier observed: The view that Zionism is Nazism — there is no other way to understand the phrase “Zionist SS” — is not different in kind from the view that the moon is cheese. It is not only spectacularly wrong, it is also spectacularly unintelligent. I will not offend myself (that would be self-hate speech!) by patiently explaining why the State of Israel is unlike the Third Reich, except to say that nothing that has befallen the Palestinians under Israel's control may responsibly be compared to what befell the Jews under Germany's control, and that a considerable number of the people who have toiled diligently to find peace and justice for the Palestinians, and a solution to this savage conflict, have been Israeli, some of them even Israeli prime ministers. There is no support for the Palestinian cause this side of decency that can justify the locution “Zionist SS.”" us-israel.org