The Israelis are not uncivilized people. When they’ve been given the chance to make peace with their neighbors, even when the cost was land concessions, they’ve done so. They unilaterally withdrew from Gaza even though there was no peace agreement, and the Gazans have punished the Israelis for making the first step.

The notion that the Israelis are to blame because they have civilian settlements, in their own unquestioned territory, that is within mortar range of Gaza is revolting. The Israelis are trying to survive. There was a good dovish movement going for several years in the 1990s, which the Palestinians destroyed. Even Israelis who want peace despair of ever getting it because they recognize that in Gaza there is a party, elected by the citizenry, that would murder every Jew in Israel if it could. There is no moral equivalency here. If the Syrians overran Israel their reign would not be restricted to blockades or incursions.

I need a shower.

Upon seeing that my comment has been taken out without explanation or guidance as to why I would point out upon reviewing above comments again it would have been in alignment with comment numbers 22,33,35,43,81,85 and 87.

I believe my comment was no more fierce in opinion than any of these in single expression or combination of expression.

I consider what is taking place in Arab Palestine and in Gaza to be very serious and laden with much danger and death for the defenseless,helpless children and elderly of the West Bank and Gaza. As I believe does Siun.

I am dismayed to see my comment was taken out. Removing comment or site censorship for undisclosed reasons is not what I expected to see practiced at FDL. Who did I offend? What was written that was not within the range of prior comments made in above thread?

I have been visiting FDL for several years. This is a first. A last also.

this is a very emotionally charged issue ..

yes, especially now when there is so much suffering. thanks to you also.

I kept looking for some reason, some justification, something, anything, to prove to me that my country, my government wasn’t just supporting this rouge country and their genocidal sickness and greed for land and resources purely because of the “political” pressure from US jews.

But in fact that is the sole and only reason we support Israel.

i don’t see how you can say there is no other reason based only on that you haven’t found evidence on one.

again, not saying you are wrong. only that i have a different interpretation (although i am far from certain of it) and that what you claim as fact is your conclusion.)

the crusades can’t be the marker .. “something” happened to cause the “crusade” .. so how long ??

The welfare and best interests of our own country were to be the sole criteria on which we operated. “

excellent sentiment .. but we didn’t ply that course .. unfortunately ..

how long has it been since there was true “peace” in the ME ??

a long long time .. since the crusades ??

But I deal only in facts.

And those are the facts.

If you are interested in this issue you could do your own research as I have done or you could wait and confirm my conclusion when you read about it years from now when history and historians examine the issue of the Israeli abberration in the US government.

If you don’t want to go thru 12 volumes on zionism and ME history and Israel and Palestine in the British archives…just start with what US presidents have had to say about Israel and the jewish lobby in their private papers.

http://www.eisenhowermemorial……s/2063.cfm

Of course, nothing in the region would be so difficult to solve except for the underlying cause of the unrest and dissension that exists there–that is, the Arab-Israel quarrel. This quarrel seems to have no limit in either intensity or in scope. Everybody in the Moslem and Jewish worlds is affected by it. It is so intense that the second any action is taken against one Arab state, by an outsider, all the other Arab and Moslem states seem to regard it as a Jewish plot and react violently. All this complicates the situation enormously.

As we began to uncover evidence that something was building up in Israel, we demanded pledges from Ben-Gurion that he would keep the peace.10

We realized that he might think he could take advantage of this country because of the approaching election and because of the importance that so many politicians in the past have attached to our Jewish vote.

I gave strict orders to the State Department that they should inform Israel that we would handle our affairs exactly as though we didn’t have a Jew in America.

The welfare and best interests of our own country were to be the sole criteria on which we operated.11 “

And this is the mildest of what many of them have had to say in private about Israel and their lobby.