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How transparent, the flurry of anti-Israel sentiment of recent submissions.
And, to what events do we owe thanks for this drivel? No doubt, the bloody and deplorable carnage unveiled in Gaza. Mind you, Israel has withdrawn to its pre-1967 border in the southwest. As Fatah and Hamas fight it out, and butchering murderers reign supreme, there is only one truth that we can glean from these scenes as they unfold. Bloodlust. Plain and simple. Exhibit A to the fact that those bent on slaughter care not the creed of their victims.
The shovel has been presented, and the digging of their own graves has commenced. Unfortunately, for many so interested, the blame-Israel-first rhetoric is now truly put to the test.

Brad Freedberg, Denver

READER COMMENTS

I wonder when they will want the Israelis back?

Israel still controls the Gaza Strip, because it controls who can leave and enter. It controls whether food and other supplies can enter and whether farmers can get their produce to markets outside the Gaza Strip. It also continues to bomb at will and to break the sound barrier nightly. In the recent clashes between Hamas and a faction of Fatah, it supplied weapons to Fatah. So acting as though Israel is some poor bystander that is being unjustly faulted is really kind of idiotic.

Yes, Sharon B, Palestinians in Gaza wondered if they wouldn't be better off with the settlers in Gaza. Israel bombed them less when it had to contend with the possibility that it might kill Jews. It has had a much freer hand now that the settlers are gone.

I agree with Brad's criticism of the "blame-Israel-first" approach. But I wonder if he is one of those with the "blame-Israel-never" approach. The Palestinians are ripe for many criticisms; it is as though they haven't yet learned to be a civilized people. But Israel's approach over the years has been to create a sewer for the Palestinians to live in.

Sharon B,
You understand yet those who immediately responded to your opinion still want to blame Isreal for all the trouble.
Facts are facts, Palestinians commit acts of violance first. Isreal retaliates. But because Isreal is supported by America these idiots want to demonize Isreal.
Maybe they should spend a little time in the middle east with these poor hapless ingrates know as muslims. After a little abuse from them maybe they will wise up to who is the real villians.
Isreal does not arbetrarily target imnocent civilians and kill them for fun.

Shalom

Brad, did you miss the article about how the Israelis are sending some of the tax money the collect from the "occupied Territories" to the Fatah faction. The israelis withheld the money from the duly elected Hamas faction when Hmaas was elected more tha a year ago. Indeed the Israelis have done everything possible to bring about the failure of the democratically elected Hamas.

Brad, are you stupid or ill-informed about what is going on in Israel? From your letter I would doubt that, which means you are a mean person thats uses half-truths and deception to justify your supremacists views and actions. God plays favorites? God likes some people better than others? You and your fellow travelers are just plain evil, hiding in religious clothing.

I think that there is a correlation between the way we used to treat blacks in the United States and the way Israel treats Palestinians. You keep your feet on a people so that they can't improve desperate, impoverished lives and in doing so you suppress the potential for good of that people and you thereby squelch the ambition of that people to improve. You thereby produce a people inclined to crime and desperate acts to try to gain some way to improving their lives. I'd hate to imagine the potential for good that we destroyed by our racist tactics toward blacks. I think the same is true of Palestinians. We talk about man's craving for freedom. We talk less about the rancid effects of denying that freedom.

Dave,

Careful there, buddy. Next thing you know the Anti-Truth League of the Zionist Propaganda Department in the United States will be out there labeling you as an "anti-Semite"

Of course God plays favorites. Of course God likes some people better than others. Read the mythology book.

The occupiers are "Chosen People". And they have a God given set of instructions on how to deal with the people in the territories they occupy.

Truth,

Von Clauswitz stated an axiom, one that applies to almost any area of human activity: "The best defense is a good offense."

And the Zionists occupying the area of the Mediterranian litoral once known as Palestine are perhaps the best exemplars of that axiom today, with the most offensive treatment of the non-Zionist inhabitants of the occupied territory possible, all in the name of "defense of Israel."

The Arab world has enough money and influence to make Palestine and Gaza into little paradises, but letting them remain poverty stricken "makes Israel look bad.

Until Israel puts guns in the hands of Fatah and Hamas and turns them to face, and kill each other, this is a Palestine problem.

;Were not talking that living conditions drove them to kill each other are we.

That sounds like the old argument against government housing. That they let them become slums because they can`t live anywhere else.

Gangs that fight each other, inner city or Arab are not caused by outsiders.

Israel has a lot to answer for but not this violence.

Sharon: "Gangs that fight each other, inner city or Arab are not caused by outsiders."

Thank God that many people recognize, for example, that the way we treat inner city youth has a great deal to do with the problems that many of them cause. It's tempting to say, "it's all their fault". It's also foolish and insures that there will be no improvement. Of course, we can say "let them eat bread", but the problem is that they will eat our bread.

"Let them pull themselves up by their own bootstraps". The problem is that many of them have no boots.

Truth, true, but the Palestinians are grown men with guns. They could stop shooting each other any day now and build a decent society.

Religion is making them insane.

I don`t say "It`s all their fault" in any area but this.

Read Desmond Morris`s book "The Human Zoo" for an eye opening view of inner city gangs.

Response to Brad Freeburgs' statement "Mind you, Israel has withdrawn to its pre-1967 border in the southwest ". Israel has imprisoned all of the people in the Gaza strip by creating the largest concentration camp in the world. And it is all subsidized by American Taxpayers' Dollars, as bush spouts platitudes about "they hate us for our freedom and our democracy".

Sharon: "Truth, true, but the Palestinians are grown men with guns"

Not many years ago, those grown men were children living in squalor, without hope and without freedom.

Kill em all, I'll sort them out.

Truth, so now they kill their brothers? That will give them hope and freedom.? I understand their hatred of Israel, I do not condone it, but I understand it. But this.?

I surely don't understand a lot of the killing that goes on in the world, whether it is Palestinians or Iraqis or Irish killing each other, or sexual predators or despotic dictators who kill wholesale. But we have to deal with those things and so many other things we don't understand. And trying to find ways of eliminating or minimizing such things is better than ignoring them and just saying "crazy people will be crazy people". If there is anything we know, it is that what these crazy people do affects all of us in a big way. If we run across a crazy person, of course we try to treat him, or in rare instances, her. The same is true of crazy groups, which are much more dangerous.

Truth, when people kill over religion, there isn`t much outsiders can do.

Looks like Islam is starting into a reformation on it`s own now. Most religions seems to tear themselves apart eventually.

But I don`t see Islam giving up the sword, on us or each other for a long time to come.

This is so sad and so much a waste.

Old Grouch,

What a shame you dont get off your high horse and teach us little ignorant people all your wisdom. You are so superior to the rest of us little religious bastards. My with all that universal knowlegde you have the world would be such a utopia. Buut ahh at last you won't share your intellect eccept in the drivel that you spew forth in these columns.
What a shame that society is based on religion. Are morals and our values. Shoot even the laws were founded in religion ..... the ten commandments and hanarabis code.

10:01 PM

Ah! But I am trying to teach you. However, those who don't want to learn, won't.

By the way, it's Hamurabi - proper nouns are capitalized. And I think the word you want is, "except", although that is presumptious on my part. And, just what were you trying to say when you wrote: "Are morals and our values"? The sentence lacks something there. Or is it a matter of your religion making it not necessary to even bother to learn how to write English?

Even those you describe as "us little ignorant people" can learn simple basics; if they apply themselves that is. You don't have to remain "ignorant" if you do not choose to do so.

Old Grouch
thanks for your appropriate response and comments.

The case of Israel Palestine is about land, but right wing Christians and Jews distort religion and collapse its teachings with their political agendas.

Occupation of Palestinian lands violates the Golden Rule, and no religious teaching nor political agenda can justify it.

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