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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve kammerer who wrote (2533)	10/20/2003 6:47:48 PM
From: rrufff	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22250

I agree that the vast majority of Palestinians want peace. The problem on both sides is with leadership and refusal to look forward. Given blame on both sides, who is really to blame? You say one thing, I say another. I'd prefer that everyone decry terror tactics and go to the negotiating table. I don't agree blindly that Israel is always right. However, I also understand that what I say from the safety of the US is easy. I'm not sure I could be as "objective" if I were living with the terror on a daily basis. Quite frankly, the terror tactics do not help the Palestinians and many Arab leaders are starting to realize this. Their position, no matter how one measures it, is worse now than it was prior to the beginning of the latest jihad and ramping up of suicide tactics. Your use of "your ilk" may have some personal meaning to you but it is an expression of bigotry, would you not agree? The rest of your post As to Russians identifying religious groups - I don't know enough about it. However, given anti-Semitism and hatred of other groups under Stalin, I wonder why anyone would defend this practice. Why is it necessary to identify anyone by a religious belief? It can't lead to anything good. I agree that it is not an example of something happening just to Jews. The holocaust happened and it must never happen again. The horrors under Stalin (not just to Jews) happened and we can't look away. It should be memorialized and remembered constantly. (I'm not demeaning other terrors such as Kosovo, Liberia, etc., but OT for this thread.) As far as the Stern gang, I'll admit that I have studied the issue from one side. From what I've read, and a poster "cut and pasted" the Isreali version today, they at least tried to warn civilians before blowing up the King David Hotel. But again, I would not want to have to defend what happened. Certainly, there were atrocities on both sides, actually all sides when you consider some actions of the British. There was much blame to go around. Bringing up these actions in a way to somehow justify the intentional targeting of civilian targets by leadres who coerce other people's children to become suicide murders just doesn't make any sense to me and shouldn't to you if you are a member of humanity.

To: steve kammerer who wrote (2533)	10/20/2003 7:01:55 PM
From: Machaon	Respond to of 22250

You wrote:<font color=blue>"And would accept compensation in return for right of return and would accept Israel getting out to 67 borders and all "settlements" out."<font color=black> The Palestinian terrorist groups, including Arafat's killers, want Israel destroyed, and they want the Palestinian State "in place" of Israel. Considering that, if Israel would pull back to the 67 borders, what would insure that the terrorist groups would not continue their attacks against Israelis, as they did before 1967? The 1967 borders placed Israel's cities well within reach of terrorist attacks, and up until 1967 there were constant attacks against Israel from the West Bank hills overlooking Israel's cities. Should Israel get any compensation from the Arab countries for the five wars that the Arabs waged against Israel, in attempts to destroy Israel and kill all Jews? If you were living in an area, completely surrounded by people who wanted to kill your family, would you help them by giving them the means? us-israel.org MYTH : “Israel can withdraw from the West Bank with little more difficulty than was the case in Sinai.” FACT : Several pages of Israel's peace treaty with Egypt are devoted to security arrangements. For example, Article III of the treaty's annex concerns the areas where reconnaissance flights are permitted, and Article V allows the establishment of early-warning systems in specific zones. The security guarantees, which were required to give Israel the confidence to withdraw, were only possible because the Sinai was demilitarized. They provide Israel a large buffer zone of more than 100 miles. Today, the Egyptian border is 60 miles from Tel Aviv and 70 from Jerusalem, the nearest major Israeli cities. The Sinai remains sparsely populated desert, with a population of less than 250,000. The situation in the territories is entirely different. More than two million Arabs live in the West Bank, many in crowded cities and refugee camps. Most of them are located close to Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It is important for Israel that the West Bank not fall into the hands of hostile neighbors. The infiltration in recent years of terrorists from the Palestinian Authority who have committed horrific acts such as suicide bombings illustrate the danger. Despite the danger, Israel has withdrawn from more than 40 percent of the West Bank since Oslo, and offered to give up 95 percent of it in return for a final settlement with the Palestinians. Israel will not, and cannot, however, go back to the pre-1967 borders as demanded by the Palestinians and the Arab states. The agreements Israel has signed with the Palestinians, and the treaty with Jordan, contain many specific provisions designed to minimize the security risks to Israel. The violence of the "al-Aksa intifada," however, has shown that the Palestinians are not prepared to fulfill their signed commitments to prevent terrorism and incitement. “It is impossible to defend Jerusalem unless you hold the high ground....An aircraft that takes off from an airport in Amman is going to be over Jerusalem in two-and-a-half minutes, so it's utterly impossible for me to defend the whole country unless I hold that land.” —Lieutenant General (Ret.) Thomas Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War