Yeah, those phantom Ninjas with their imaginary rockets.

Are you talking about the ones that are fired from an Apache into a market full of civilians?

Fun.

That’s just my opinion …

And Peter, I do agree with much of what you have written. I won’t support the Washington rally because the organizers have done a good job of excluding moderate Palestinians from their rally, pushing the “One State” solution for further Palestinian destruction, and using the 40th Anniversary as a selfish means of promoting their own extremism. I’ve condemned the rallies as one-sided and extremist and filled with anti-Israeli hatred. They haven’t learned anything about the 40 years, only that as long as they reject peace, they can continue to promote themselves. If peace ever came, the extremists would be out of jobs.

Ray Hanania

You see… Israelis love to use terms like the “region” as if they were natives to the region and not implanted themselves by sheer murderous force and through massacres and theft!

Man, it’s people like you that inspire backlash with the way you propagandize conflict and try to recruit allies to help you box your adversaries into simplistic, dehumanized categories. This is a very complicated issue.

Yes, Palestinians have lived there for awhile and have a strong connection to the land. But additionally, the Jewish people have an unbroken patrimony, philology, liturgy, culture, tribal identity, institutions, folklore, oral tradition, and anthropology that connect them to the same land. For three thousand years the only native-born rulers of that land have been Jews. Jews have held the majority population of Jersualem since at least 1830. Jews use native, precolonial names for ancient cities whereas Palestinians use foreign terms. Did you know that the Arab market in Hebron, amongst other things, is built upon land that was stolen from Jews after the 1929 Hebron riots?

This evidence is not all to be rendered inconsequential. It shows that the conflict is not so easily defined as you’d like, and true peacemaking needs to have a balanced view based upon a sense of acceptance.

The international community (UN, ILO, World Bank, etc.) has basically spelled out four general criteria for what constitutes an indigenous community and Jews meet all four for Israel and the West Bank — and yes, that includes Ashkenazi Jews from Russia, Poland, New York, wherever. Since it is glaringly obvious that working with indigenous communities is not your expertise, I suggest you work to harness your abilities to create a sense of belonging for everyone. Let this be your task even if nobody else does it.

Only hate will stop you.

One of your many problems, Ali, along with what seem to be serious anger management issues and a profound lack of respect as to how you speak of others, is that you clearly do not know what the definition of an indigenous community really is. I can tell you this much, it’s not about holding the majority somewhere.

You see… Israelis love to use terms like the “region” as if they were natives to the region and not implanted themselves by sheer murderous force and through massacres and theft!

It would be very productive if Israelis, those who love peace at least, start speaking up to their government to stop treating the Palestinians as foreigners in their own land.

Ironic it is that many Israelis who claim to want peace always laid the blame on Arabs, Hamas, Islam or whatever is convenient to them.

I don’t see a Palestinian army occupying Tel Aviv, nor have ever seen Palestinians demolish a Jewish home or Palestinian settlements springing up like Mushrooms everywhere!

Israel builds Jewish-only highways designed to steal more of Palestinians lands (As if Jews are very special breed that they require their own highways and byways) also build Jewish only suburbs (illegal Jewish settlements built o n stolen Palestinian land) and its laws and supreme court and the entire Justice system is based on the superiority of Jews over all other religions and races especially the Arabs.

A lot of these Jewish only projects are financed by American Tax payers. Many poor Americans have no clue that every Israeli citizen gets about $ 22,000 a year for free from every American who pay taxes to fund his murderous enterprise, called the Occupation.

Hamas existence is a direct result of Israeli racist and occupation policy. Had there been no occupation there would have been no Hamas.

Crazy are the Israelis if they think that the Palestinians are simply going to forget about their stolen country and just fade away. From what I see of the Palestinians and their resolve to regain their rights and recover their country, I don’t think they will be sending the Israelis flowers any time soon.

But seriously Andrew here is the thing. Hamas is representive of all the bad stuff. PLO (which doesn’t excist anymore except in the propaganda of the right wing Zionist world) IJ, PLFP etc are all examples of bad stuff taking place in the leadership orgs of the Palestinian people. For Israel to live up to its claim of democracy, it must liberate the Palestinians.

Also your withdrawal doesn’t lead to peace issues is so flawed. There is no peace either way so why occupy land that isn’t yours? Why waste resources on nut case settlers? Why humiliate people when you don’t need to?

But then again this is the point of this message: Our words are vapid and the actions of Israelis and Palestinians matter. Not a bunch of keyboard slinging know it alls.

What about the PLO, the Arab governments, Iran, and all the other groups and powers that want to destroy Israel?

While you’re at it, why don’t you just wipe us all out? Surely it will end the tedious paranoia that the region is over-ridden by Ninjas trying to kill ‘tha jewz.’

The fact is the United States government should be more involved in the ending of the Israeli occupation.

This assumes that ending the occupation is a goal worth achieving. Currently, I don’t see that it is.

When Jordan and Egypt occupied Gaza and the West Bank, before 1967, Israel had very bad borders, strategically. An invasion was too easy and that fact was often used by the Arabs. So I figure that giving up the occupation before the reason for the occupation has gone is a bad idea (unless we want war).

The retreat from southern Lebanon did not bring more peace, the retreat from Gaza did not bring more peace, and before the occupation the region was not more peaceful either. Where is the hard evidence that an end to the occupation makes anybody’s life any better?

They should also be more involved with the destruction of Hamas.

What about the PLO, the Arab governments, Iran, and all the other groups and powers that want to destroy Israel? What’s so special about Hamas? Their honesty?

I read that Arabs were celebrating the expected death of the Jews in the streets of Arab cities after the military build-up and during the 1967 war. I thus today celebrate the fact that a Holocaust has been avoided. The occupation is a part of it.

If you can tell me why everything will be different now, if Israel withdraws from the West Bank, I will be against the occupation. Until then I support the status quo.

IF the retreat from Gaza or the retreat from Lebanon had given us any positive results whatsoever, I would totally support further withdrawals.