I have no problem with Jews, or Israel's right to exist... I just have a problem with the behavior and arrogance of the Israeli government. I also have a problem with the constant instigating by militants.

I don't pretend to know all the answers, here... but when both sides are using an essentially religious argument for their misdeeds and their intransigence, I think they're really not interested in solving the problems that face them, and are therefore not deserving of our goodwill. Our picking sides in the conflict hasn't helped anyone except the Israeli establishment. I think that's wrong. I think all sides need to be held accountable. Right of return, and recognition of Israel, in my opinion, are the issues that need to be addressed.

And the 2 million plus Palestinian Refugees have a right to return were they were booted from their homes.

It's the only way to make right; those 2 million folks were booted from their homes.

While Israel cannot absorb that many people as it is - it must be done, and it must be an international effort. It was an international effort to create Israel - and it should be an international effort to right the wrongs that were commited then. You simply can't tell that many people to f-bomb themselves because it's not in Israel's interest to give back to these people what was theirs in the first place... Why do you think the Arabs call the Israeli's oppressors? You think it's totally undeserved? That the Arabs are being dishonest, or are tryong to screw the Israelis out of something? The way I see it - the Palestinians have been screwed, and they get more misery for their misery. The Israelis just want to live in peace in their homeland, and react zealously to any threat... they want to sweep the unfortunate and unfair treatment of the Palestinians under the rug... And it is so unfortunate how Americans always seem to side with Israelis... it only makes them more and more zealous.

Basically - both sides need to make concessions, and the international community needs to come together and pay the price for the way they allowed Israel to establish itself - at the cost of many human lives, and much property. Reparations must be made if Israel wants to live in peace, I fear; the form of these reparations, for many, must only be made in a "right of return" agreement.

I take no side; both sides must lose their pride, and the world must hold each side accountable. Otherwise - there will be no peace. What looks impossibly difficult could be simplified.

Yet in would seem in over 5,000 years of tribal intercourse and untold conquering superpower efforts to bring resolve and peace to a long deeply troubled region and the varying peoples that have claimed and held the same ground, flushing one for the other, from it, have never come close to such a meeting of the minds.

I ponder if now, then I realize, that the Israelis, along with the zealotry of Christendom and likes of Islamic zealotry, such as Al Queda, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Theocracies in Saudi Arabia and in Iran have a vested say in the matter, it is not going happen.

I mean really, three major religions bred from the same mystics of vision all having in common, that a great coming of something is to trumpet the end of time cleansing of the old and bring in the new.

They are all well invested in my mystics to the point of their very existence and being as to the coming of God's utopia, that coming to cleans the world and bring back the innocence and simplicity of mankind to the "Garden of Eden" creation by God and a new beginning of man as intend.

These three are religions of culture and ways of life which are deeply embedded in their societies. Yet all have this common dream that to them without it, they are nothing. So how can they all give it up, as that is what it would take, all 3 religions, at the same time, admitting that it does not take a cleansing of man to begin an end to begin a new beginning?

Odds are in the pragmatics of reality, I would say are about 3 in 100 at best.



size=4] Utopia (from Greek: οὐ no, and τόπος, place, i.e. "no place" or "place that does not exist," as well as "perfect place, inclusive in Greek ideals of a perfect place which does not exist")[/size]


That is all!!

Ahhh.... In all seriousness, ustrader, I appreciate your post... but its far too cynical. It seems to say that you just throw up your hands in the face of the loonies, and that cooler heads cannot win the day... It's unfortunate how the zealots on both sides have the resources and the leadership to get things done, while the cooler heads who believe in peace and harmony have no such leadership or organization.

A good start to finding a resolution to this problem would be to start from an honest assessment of its beginning. The land that is Israel today was not called Palestine at the time the new borders were drawn at the conclusion of WW2. The people calling themselves Palestinians had a problem with "occupation" well before the formation of Israel, and it did not have anything to do with religion. It still doesn't have much to do with religion, that's the excuse they used for bombing Israelis before religious war fell out of vogue, and since have fallen back to the old occupation excuse they were using for bombing their arab brethren pre-WW2. Keep in mind that it is religion and race that binds the disperate groups of arabs against the Israelis, but they were not and are not brothers outside the fight for power over ownership of the Israeli land.

It really doesn't matter what you think about the tactics Israel has employed in the name of national security when you consider it has a free and affluent Arab community that is represented by democratically elected officials (once again Arabs) in its government. I have read and do not find it inconceivable that there are more elected Arab government representatives in Israel than elected Arab officials in any of its neighboring countries. One would hope that that is impossible given the Zionist tendency of Israel, but it is not hard to imagine given the historical and recent actions of Syrian tyrany in Lebanon. The confusion of religious and political rationale for war against Israel were easily demonstrated in the last conflict. Syria supported and made possible the attack on Israel by religious fundamentalists in order to reverse the political oppression of Palestinians. It is not hard to see through that 'smoke' to the Syrian aspirations considering the political position of the Palestinians before part of Syria became Israel. There is no doubt that Israel was imposed upon a population of Arabs, my problem with the occupation argument that it was a selected, autonomous group of Palestinian Arabs because they were in most part unhappy Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian citizens pre-1949 that were not "put upon" any less or more than the rest of the losers of WW2 to include Italy, Japan and Germany.

Good to see you back, iswhatitis. Where you bean?

Thank you for the greeting. Been settling into a new job with a new schedule that leaves less time to write here or any where for now.

Perhaps in this paralysis of these few so called cooler heads embedded in the unproven, never yet seen, hypothesis of peace and harmony as a way of life is a victim of a failed ideology that is incompatible with the pragmatic events and circumstance in our world. Where the abundant evident proves there is NO such utopia that exists but within this few and their Parallel universe of a yet seen achievements in and of a non-existent way of life that encompasses totally this peace and harmony utopia.

A noble goal for sure is this peace and harmony theory of life as an answer to the tools of death and chaos. But as in all goals, to be meaningful, they must be planned and conceived in what is attainable and possible, not as the fragmented dreams of but wisps of smoke, in deed and action, that they are as unattained dreams. Noble, yet in their failure are afar from achievable realities and goals sustained in the actions of human events and circumstances of this world.

Conversely, is it perhaps the reality of those pragmatic human endeavors who seek out and use the tools far from the peace and harmony Lonny’s, in more common familiar interactions to and by the masses than are in this unrealized dream of rationality only thought of by so few, while unseen by the masses of humanity that inhabit this earth.

If in measure achievement and affect, resisting evil and its ways are less accomplished, than is this unrealized and unseen utopia of dreamers, pray tell how so? Perhaps the cynical here is the dreamer who can not achieve in the practical reality of existence and not the other who see and acts in practical reality. For my post was not of dreams of inaction and the unseen but of the pragmatic evidence of what we see men do every day, in the past, in the present and I certain in the foreseeable future when we all not even a memory to any of ours that come after us.

Hope is not a goal and not real, its merely unrealized thought seeking achievement, whereby achievement is realized thought, achieved. Therein lie the contrasting parallels of achievement in those two dichotomies you noted as I laid on the table.


That is all!!

Perhaps this is because the "cooler heads" live in a fantasy world that ignores history. The "zealots" will always prevail. The "cooler heads" talk but never act. You should be thankful that the "zealots" that founded America were indeed successful. Were they not you would not now have a forum to to spew your ignorant "share the land" bullsh!t.

LC, the avatar of the corrupt pig Annan does not suit you.

This would be more fitting your persona..........

I am afraid and somewhat certain that the naive notions of the folks arguing for "cooler heads" believe reason and "splitting hairs" will work with zealots, in absolute absence of recent or historical evidence. They have absloute faith that they will find the silver tongued devil that will soothe all ills and everyone will be elated upon the utterance of the correct sequence of syllables.

The way violent conflict between nations, populations or groups is resolved is through acknowledged victors and losers. There will most definitely be hurt feelings, and those feelings should remain hurt until they are crushed. Crushed through either further violence or humiliation of the ignorance that cultivated them.

I could be wrong but history doesn't show it.

You are a liar and full of sh*t.
Read iswhatis' posts for a little common sense!