Solidarity with the Palestinian people and their political organizations.

[baslamak]

SUNDAY, 28 DECEMBER 2008

Solidarity with the Palestinian people and their political organizations.

more at--
http://www.organizedrage.com/2008/12/solidarity-with-palestinian-people-and.html

Organized Rage

[rob9443]

In the short term the best thing the Arabs could do would be to link up with China and come up with an alternative to the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

In the long run the Palestinian diaspora in the Arab world should concentrate on becoming scientists and engineers and obtain technology transfer from China and India just as China obtained technology transfer from the US.

The European Muslim population need to lobby Europe's governments to break with the USraelians on this issue.

By the second half of this century Zion will fall, just as the Berlin Wall did. These outbursts of savagery are the act of a vicious and racist elite that senses that history is moving against them.

[baslamak]

Rob
You make some good points, I have concluded that those who regard themselves as Friends of Israel are doing the Israeli people no favors by acting as cheer leaders for this type of atrocity. The best help they could give to Israel is to pressurize it to accept a two state solution, one part of which would be a viable Palestinian State, and not the Bantustan that Israel's current politicos are willing to accept.

happy new year.

[Brigg57]

the hollow pretensions of the U nited nations are once again being shown to the world over this crisis.

It is not a genuine organisation to halt injustice and war as long as it rtains the pwoer structure created for it by Stalin and Roosevelt at its foundation. The veto power of the Five Great Powers over decisions in the Security Council means that any attempt to halt Israeli  murder falls on US opposition. The US have alrady blamed the slaughter of palestinians on..palestinians. Well, they do provoke, dont they?

According to the BBC news site, warnings of bloodshed made by israel were accompanied by lying assurances that no war plans had been approved by the Israeli cabinet, leading to a failure to evacuate and to such large casualties on the first day.

Analysts say that these attacks are an all-out attempt to kill and harm in the three weeks left to Bush as president. But Obama is likely to be as much Israel's protector as Bush, when the chips are down. He has made it clear that Israel is the US no 1 ally. In the volatile, strategically vital and oil-rich Middle East, Israel is a US fortress, and its existence as an exclusivist Zionist entity depends on the oppression of the Palestinians. All support to Palestinian Solidarity, and to all forces within Israel working to stop the military aggression.

The chances of Jew and Arab living in some sort of peace is contantly imperilled by the exclusivist Zionist ideology. Whatever state system emerges, the dangers of Western control remain as long as Zionism remains in control of the Israeli State. This is not being anti-semitic - many Jews reject Zionism - any more than a rejection of Apartheid in South Africa was anti-White. When Jews reject exclusivist Zionism, then they can hold out a genuine hand of peace to Arabs, and the domination of the US in the region can be effectively challenged.

[willp]

Good post Brigg.
It's worth noting though that not only the US state backs the Zionists' attacks - Zionists Brown and Blair give vital support too. The Labour Party is complicit.

[Free Radical]

Firstly let me express my outrage at Israel's bombardment of Gaza, coming on top of its blockade and its reduction of Gaza to little more than a ghetto.

In the absence of greater support for a secular state for all the people of Israel and Palestine the 'two states solution' appears to be the best prospect.

I have often been very critical of the Labour Party's position on Israel, and the Blair government's postion on the Lebanon assault was shameful. However, the government's position now, while far from ideal, has at least shifted to calling for an immediate ceasefire and support for the EU description of the Israeli action as 'disproportionate' - as Miliband made clear on Channel 4 News yesterday evening. Naturally I believe the UK should go much further in condemnation of Israel's actions and in the search for a truly equitable peace - a genuine and fair two-state solution with Jerusalem as a capital to both Israel and Palestine. But I think it is significant that the UK government position has at least shifted since Blair's departure. (No doubt some will disagree with this analysis).

All now hinges upon the US - as ever - and the policy of the incoming Obama administration. While I am not hugely optimistic about how much policy might shift, the timing of the Israeli attack on Gaza would seem to indicate that Israel itself believes that the incoming US administration will not be as uncritical as George W Bush.

For myself, I have written in strong terms to my Labour MP calling for UK condemnation of Israel's actions. I would urge other comrades to do likewise.

[baslamak]

Anyone notice the Israeli media onslaught yesterday, I notice the Guardian today have moved this story to the bottom of its front page to be replaced by a tale of a cyclist getting Betty's gongs and a maybe, might be not story about surveillance, a worthy tale but not front page at this time. Also there is little in the media about IDF censorship.

The US TV channels interviewed an Israeli spokes person with a US accent and the British had a guy born in England, christ this creep even condemned the Palestinians for spoiling christmas day, which is about as popular in the middle east as bacon sandwiches. They are far more on the ball than the Palestinians.

although it hardly helps the people of Gaza that Fatah and Abbas are sitting this one out, it will be the final nail in their coffin, the word Quisling springs to mind.

[rob9443]

The corrupt and spineless Mubarak regime also has Palestinian blood on its hands. At the very least Egypt could open its border with Gaza. Instead the Egyptian border guards are firing on those trying to escape the slaughter

[Brigg57]

FR,
I cannot agree with you on the 2-state solution, certainly as proposed and accepted by Fatah and Abbas. As Tariq Ali argued in the Guardian, a solution where Arabs aget 20% of the land and Israelis 80%, and where the resources are so unequally distributed, is no solution at all. The long-term conflict which periodically erupts into bloody warfare will continue.

To me, the main problem lies in Zionism, which is not merely violent but whose violence is unusally well-organised and effective. Mossad, its secret police, are among the most deadly in the world. The attacks by the Israeli State on the Arabs are ruthless in their disregard of human life, and their willingness to commit atrocities on the defenceless.

The reason for this violence can never be forgotten, however. What fuels Zionism, giving it such support amongs Jews despite its cruelties, is one thing and one thing only - the Holocaust. That human butcher's shop, with its indescribable suffering imposed on Jews, stands as a reminder to all Jews today that in the end Jews must protect themselves. Anyone who visits the Jewish museum in Prague can only carry away indelible memories of the school satchels and drawings of the young children sent - with fear or smiles on their faces - to the Nazi death-camps. No wonder that Western progressives supported the Zionists in their early years of struggle to establish Israel, much of it on a socialist basis through the Histradut trade union federation and the kibbutzim.

Anyone sympathetic to suffering must recognise the Jewish dilemma, one created by the anti-semitism of the West.

However, this only makes it more important for Jews to oppose Zionism, and to hold out the hand of peace and equality to the Palestinians. None of us should care if those Jews who hold out that hand cal themselves Zionists or not. What matters is the hand of peace and friendship. Offer that, and a real start to the end of aggression and imperialism in the area can be made.

One of the reasons we feel such horror at what is happening inside Gaza is that of all peoples in history, the Jews should know what suffering is, what the importance of comradeship and the call of humanity is. Perhaps it's to the memory of the Holocaust and its mass slaughter that Jews should be calling for an end to 6he slaughter in Gaza.

[rob9443]

Some of the best Israelis, such as the Gush Shalom people do. But they are utterly marginalised. The majority of the Israeli public want to see more dead Palestinians and the politicians are competing for votes on the basis of who can appear tough enough to crush the Arabs.

To be honest Brigg have become so sick and tired of the Holocaust being trotted out by Israeli apologists that I no longer care about being called antisemitic any more. To indulge murderers who happen to be Jewish because of the Holocaust is to me a form of politicial correctness that we should dispense with.

Yes. It happened. So did atrocities against Boer women and children in concentration camps run by the British in the Boer War. Does that excuse apartheid? No. Were we accused of being black racists or self hating whites during the anti apartheid campaign. Not that I recall and if so it certainly didn't cut much ice beyond die hard conservative circles.

Ok the Holocaust was far worse than anything the Boers went through by several orders of magnitude. But the principle is the same.

By the way I heard Mel Mermelstein speak when I was at university and have a signed copy of his book By Bread Alone so I am fully aware of the Nazi horror.

[Free Radical]

Brigg
I agree that the 'two states solution' is far from ideal (any more than it was in Ireland or Cyprus or the Indian subcontinent). But the point is that, pragmatically, it might be achievable in a way that a secular unified democratic state might not be - at the moment. Since the PLO, Israel and even Hamas appear to have accepted this it seems reasonable to me to support it.

I don't think we should romanticise Judaism, nor demonise it, nor expect Jews to behave in a different way to any other group of people. Israel is brutal for several reasons. Principally because there is a vicious struggle going on for the possession of land. Also, frankly, because with US support it is able to be brutal, and also because this brutality suits US foreign policy.

You are right of course about the Holocaust, and I have visited the terrible museum in Prague - set up in the most hideous way by the Nazis themselves as a museum 'to an extinct race'. Europe is deeply scarred by the Holocaust and the Enlightenment seems a ruined project in its shadow.

The Holocaust does not of course excuse Israel's behaviour, neither should it mean that Jews should have a superior moral outlook because of it. I prefer to see the present situation as a moral outrage and I take the position that the targetting (or recklessness with regard to the lives of) civilians is wrong whether it be carried out by the IDF, by Al Qaeda, or by our own war planes dropping high explosives on Afghan villages. We are all diminished by this. And Israel must stop its awful, appalling aggression. Nor do I think that it is right (although it is obviously hugely less effective and smacks more of desperation than anything else) for Hamas to indiscriminately fire home made rockets in the vague direction of cities. The targetting of civilians is repugnant.

[Brigg57]

Rob, FR,

Rob, I don't think the holocaust is a justification for the slaughter now taking place. Quite the contrary. I think Jews should be asking themselves why the Israeli State is so oblivious to human suffering and death, so willing to commit atrocities, given the experience of the Jewish people.

The fact is that the Holocaust is a very powerful motivation for Zionism. Tsipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign minister, is only the latest to argue that the reason for such action is that Hamas denies her right to exist. The virulence and near-fanaticism with which she asserts this points to the collective memory of the Holocaust for all Israelis - left and right.. The resonance this has for Israelis can be denied only at peril. The fact that Arab leaders have in the past expressed their sympathy for hitler, or denied the holocaust, merely adds to this powerful passion.

Nor is it something we can deny. The Holocaust was merely the most terrifying culmination of a history of pogroms and anti-semitic actions which led to Zionism gaining such a strength among Jews throughoput the world. While Jews such as Marx and Trotsky have played a prominent part in the Left, it cannot be denied that the Left itself has a long history of anti-semitism - the identification of usury and Jewish financiers has not been below the arguments of even the best of socialists in the past (even Jaures at the outset of the Dreyfus Affair was tempted to equate the Jews with treason, though to his honour he rallied to Dreyfus when the guy's innocence was demonstrated). It's the Holocaust and the anti-semitism of the past which should lead all progressives to pause before condemining Israel. Anti-semitism, and Zionism as a defence against anti-semitism, are the result of the centuries of the West's hatreds and prejudices.

Yet, in the end, the Holocaust itself has been mythologised to serve the purposes of Zionism, which has always sought to identify itself as an ideology wiht Jewishness itself. When Hannah Arendt, in her brilliant book on the Eichmann trial, revealed that it was the Jewish elders, the conservative leadership within the camps, which cooperated with the Nazi authorities in killing their fellows, she was reviled and shunned within Israel itself. Until that book, her writings on totalitarianism had made her a favoured daughter of Israel; after the book, she found all doors shut. She was seen as betraying the Jewish  people, but she never repented. The brave woman had merely told the truth, a truth which discomforted the exclusivist Zionist ideology which holds that Jews were the innocent victims of the inherently anti-semitic Gentiles.

The horror of the Holocaust should be turned on the Zionists. Of all people, Jews should be aware of human suffering, of the importance of the hand of friendship and solidarity to the victims. They do no honour to the millions of Jews who were butchered by inflicting such cruelties on the Palestinian people.

FR
you may notice that I stressed that I don't particularly care what state system eventually emerges. It's up to the people of the region to decide that, not to us. What I do say is that the reason the two-state solution is such a realistic one is that it would mark a triumph of Israeli aggression,. The Palestinian State would be inherently unequal in land and resources, and its sufferings would be such as to pose a permanaent threat to the Zionist State. Merely settting up a State for Palestinians without justice and equality would be no solution at all, but a recipe for continued warfare. To prevent Israeli incursions, which would merely expose the hollow nature of a Palestinian State, any Palestinian government would be compelled to constantly act as policemen for Israel, repressing any dissent to the injustice which would prevail. The failure of Fatah to succeed in that task was what lay behind the success of Hamas in a rather nasty civil war in Gaza.
Any solution has to be based on satisfying both Jew and Arab, and I don't see the West as doing that by imposing a settlement which satisfies Zionist aggression. That would be a hollow peace indeed.

[rob9443]

Any two state solution acceptable to the Israelis would involve swiping more of the West Bank with their apartheid wall, control of the Bantustan's borders in the name of "security" and an unequal treaty which would allow Israeli to continue helping itself to the West Bank aquifer.  If Obama can succed in twisting the Palestinian's arms into accepting this so be it but you are right Briggs this would be a recipe for more war.

The Irish Free State asserted its sovereignty in WW2 by denying us access to the Treaty Ports, which harmed Britain significantly during the Battle of the Atlantic. That was payback for our murderous policies in Ireland over the centuries. De Valera could get away with it because of the Irish American lobby.

Once America has been relegated to a second rate power, which is going to happen over the course of this century the Israelis will have to come to the table with a meaningful peace offer. Until then there will be nothing but blood and horror in that part of the world.

There are two ways to respond to Zionist abuse of the memory of the Holocaust. One is your response Brigg which is probably more effective. I'm tempted to take the other and dismiss it out of hand as bullshit.  When the oppressor poses as the victim they should be confronted. There's no point in being defensive and feeling the Zionist's pain, these people have no shame.

[Free Radical]

Rob, Brigg

Whilst the importance of the Holocaust can not and should not be denied in any sense - and indeed we should never forget what happened in our dark European history - I don't think it ought to figure in our debate on current events in the Middle East. What Israel is doing now is wrong and it needs to be discussed primarily in its own terms now, just as we would if any other country were doing this to its people or its neighbours. I don't think our standards for judging Israel should be any different to our standards for judging anybody else.

On the question of 'Zionism'. I do not think we should even judge Zionism on the basis of Israeli actions. Sir Jonathan Sacks, Britain's Chief Rabbi has been critical of some of Israel's actions (in his excellent book, The Dignity of Difference) and I do not think it right to judge Zionism upon the basis of Israel's actions now - Zionism is no monolithic movement and I am sure there will be many self-proclaimed Zionists who do not approve of Israel's present actions.

[Brigg57]

Rob, FR,

Rob, I'm not in the position of countering anyone's propaganda. I sometimes worry about whether I've lost that radical gut-instinct (my post on my antipathy to radical poetry worries me as I look at it more for various reasons). But I am interested in trying to understand what's happening, questioning my and others' views, sometimes, maybe often, getting it wrong. But I'm not sure that any of us can look far into the future. Whenever I get into future-guessing, I almost always get it wrong - maybe always.

FR, I admire your sobriety and balance. I've not read Jonathan Sacks, and if he says anything to counteract what I've been writing, I'd be pleased if you let me know.

I don't think we can judge Israel in the same way as other states. Syria, Iraq, Iran have been guilty of some pretty horrific atrocities in the past two or three decades. And to talk of atrocities, then Hamas's victory in the mini-civil war against Fatah in Gaza may not be anything to write any glowing reports home about. Part of the reason for not judging Israel in teh sdame category my well be racist, maybe, though I don't like to think so - that Israel is a Western powere, and Western powers aren't supposed to act like that. But it's more than that. It's Israel's relation to the US Stae and the relation of that State to the Jewish lobby, its deadly efficiency and nuclear weaponry, its fanaticism (fuelled by their version of the Holocaust, whihc I think we deny at our peril) which could well end up wiht a nasty mini-world war at some point, its naked imperialism after the 6-day war.

I do think you're right to point out that Zionism isn't a monoliothic movement. I sometimes wonder why the SWP goes into a monologue about Zionism until I remember Tony Cliff (expelled from palestine by the british, I think) founded it. You may notice I talked about exclusivist Zionism, and that I didn't care whether someone called themselves a Zionist as long as they held out the hand of peace and equality to the Palestinians.

However, Zionism is by its nature an attempt to found a racial-cum-theocratic State. From its origins, it sought to found a Jewish National Home on someone else's land (Uganda, Palestine, wherever), and when you're going to do that it is going to involve brutal force. My undestanding is that Zionists and Communists within the Jewish sections of the death camps were violently opposed to one another, and I know that there are Zionists who draw up lists of Jews who don't identify with them - they are determined to equate Zionism with Judaism, and with the Jewish race, and non-Zionist Jews are the worst traitors. In practice, while there may well have been admirable Jewish settlers in Palestine who did not see the Arab as enemies, it was the militant Zionists who just turfed the Palestinians out of their land, massacring them in the process. Killing was a two-way process (there had been Arab attacks on Jewish settlers as far back as 1929), but the Arabs were settled on the land, and the Zionists were expelling them. I use the term Zionist becausde I do not wish to use the term Jew - the two aren't actually identical.

Zionists are not a monolithic bunch. I've talked with a Zionist who said he really didn't care that Communists and gypsies were killed in the death camps, only Jews mattered. I've also talked with a Zionist, then prominent in the Peace movement in Israel, who was chilled by that statement. It's because of that latter woman that I have hopes within Israel itself, faint as they may be. I feel that international revulsion at Israel's actions - and especially the revulsion of the Jewish community outside Israel - is the key to ending the slaughter. If Jews do not offer the hand of peace and equality at some point, then all we are left with is 'hope' that Rob is right. And if I were a Palestinian, in a point made by Rab on another site, I would not be happy if I only had to rely on that hope. Unlike you, me and Rob, the Palestinian has to live unde that terror.

[rob9443]

One doesn't need a crystal ball to realise that this is not going to be the American century, but the Asian century assuming the human race makes it through the next hundred years in one piece,

I agree with most of what you say about "Zionism" Brigg, which is precisely why I use the term Zion as a synonym for Israel in its current form. Not all Israelis are Jews, by no means all Israeli Jews are Zionists in the sense of supporting a Jewish racism and brutality towards the Palestinians. Many of the most vehement Zionists aren't remotely Jewish, but evangelicals in the US who seriously believe that the conquest of Palestine is foretold in the Bible and is a prerequisite for the Second Coming.

Zionist is the correct term. Alternatively one could use the phrase Jewish supremacy or Jewish state, but those expressions are even more potentially inflammatory for reasons too obvious to mention.

Possibly using words like Zionist is also a mistake and we should just talk about Israelis and Palestinians, but then the question becomes which Israelis?

As far as possible we should condemn Israeli actions in exactly the same way as we would any other government committing similar abuses.

As for why single out Israel, well regardless of whether the situation in Tibet or Dafur is worse "we" as in leading Western governments are not directly responsible for what the Chinese or the Sudanese do. But the US bankrolls Israel and to the extent that the British government supports US policy we should stand against it. There's also the practical reality that Israel is a massive liability for both Britain and Europe. It makes us hatred across the Arab and Muslim world and makes it that much harder to integrate European Muslims and promote a reformed version of Islam. Quite apart from having the potential to trigger a deadly conflict with global repercussions because of the religious status of Jerusalem.

On the last point well yes its no consolation at all to the Palestinians that the balance of power may change in another generation's time but I fear this prospect plus the Islamic religion might offer them at least some hope. Let's face it it's not as if anything else is likely to come to their rescue is it?  Ideally a campaign across the EU for sanctions against the apartheid state might accelerate the process but pressure from the US plus politically correct sensitivity about the Holocaust (sorry but to my mind that's what it amounts to) will prevent it for the foreseeable future

[Free Radical]

Brigg

In Jonathan Sacks book 'The Dignity of Difference' he wrote at some point (I have not been able to find the page on scanning through the book) about his discomfort at some of the actions of Israel. He amplified critical comments on Israel in an interview in 2002 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2218571.stm). They got him into much difficulty.

His book is a remarkable one coming from a conservative, orthodox rabbi. His views are not of the 'left' and include a robust, but immensely thoughtful defence of the market, along with a critique of unbridled capitalism. He also attempts to put environmental concerns upon a moral footing.

At the heart of his book (to which I cannot really do justice in so short a summary) is the notion of the 'dignity of difference' and a vision of religion as a unifying force rather than a divisive one. With its emphasis on forgiveness and tolerance I found it both thoughtful and moving, even though I come from a different position, and a different religious upbriging. (And I don't quite know how to describe my own views on religion currently).

In commenting on Jewish identity and history (page 190, hardback edition), he writes:

"I am a Jew. As a Jew I carry with me the tears and sufferings of my grandparents and theirs through the generations. The story of my people is a narrative of centuries of exiles and expulsions, persecutions and pogroms, beginning with the First Crusade and culminating in the murder of two-thirds of Europe's Jews, among them more than a million children. For centuries, Jews knew that they or their children risked being murdered simply because tey were Jews. Those tears are written into the very fabric of Jewish memory, which is to say, Jewish identity. How can I let go of that pain when it is written into my very soul?

"And yet I must. For the sake of my children and theirs, not yet born. Hating the German people will not bring back to life one victim of the Holocaust. Hating the Palestinians will not bring Israel one step nearer to peace. Loving God more does not entitle me to love people less... I honour the past not by repeating it but by learning from it - by refusing to add pain to pain, grief to grief. That is why we must answer hatred with love, violence with peace, resentment with generosity of spirit and conflict with reconciliation."

I am sure you are correct Brigg that one key to ending the present horrible attack on the Palestinians of Gaza is the response of the Jewish community around the world. And that is one reason why I think we need to be trying to build bridges and keep dialogue open even in the most difficult and apalling circumstances. These kinds of actions taken by the government of Israel unleash a further torrent of hatred and closing of minds and make peace ever further away. They risk destabilising the region and creating hatred around the world. These acts come on top of a blockade of Gaza that has clearly created dispair amongst the people there.

It is hard indeed to keep alive hope of reconciliation and forgiveness in the midst of such apalling acts. But I think it is necessary to try.

[Free Radical]

Rob

The term 'Zionist' is less open to misunderstanding than the term 'Zion' as I point out elsewhere - as Zion is manifold in its meaning, also to Christians and Rastafarians for example as well as Jews. Though I think if we mean Israeli it is better to say so. But I also think, as I have said, that Zionism is not monolithic, just as Judaism is, by its nature, probably less monolithic than any other religion of the Book.

But, I have to say that your phrase politically correct sensitivity about the Holocaust sends a certain chill down my spine. I am sure you do not intend this, but it is as though the Holocaust, the systematic murder of two thirds of Europe's Jews, including one million children, might be somehow placed in the same category as, say, use of the word 'Chairperson' instead of 'Chairman' or somesuch. Is there anything in recent European history that deserves more of our attention than the Holocaust? Can we be somehow oversensitive to it? The pain of the Holocaust is not somehow cancelled out by the pain inflicted upon the Palestinians.

[rob9443]

I'm sorry FR, you make a good point.  I like to feel that I have a way with words, and this can sometimes backfire.

I had better explain where I'm coming from. I know the Holocaust - I heard Mel Mermelstein describe what happened to him and his family when I was at university. But then I see the horror of what is being done to the Palestinians. The Nakba is not of course comparable but it is quite nasty enough and it is ongoing now in the year 2009.

Political correctness, in one of its forms is about treating certain groups favourably and making concessions to them because of the way they suffered in the past.

The Afrikaners suffered terribly in concentration camps run by the British during the Boer War. We know the Irish Famine was pretty fiendish although that happened through callousness rather than deliberate policy. But nobody would seriously argue that either South African apartheid or IRA atrocities were justified because of the way their nations had suffered in the past.

Historical guilt or collective guilt is clearly utterly immoral as well as atavistic.

To indulge Israel in a way other states acting thus would not be indulged because of the Holocaust is an abuse of its memory. The ranting by so many on the Internet and elsewhere about a Second Holocaust and an alleged existential threat to the apartheid state by these pathetically weak Third World guerillas is equally an abuse. It makes me incandescent with rage. It should be denounced loud and clear.

If this were the 1960s or 1970s or 1980s one might defer to the Israelis because the Holocaust was part of the living memory of their leaders and most of their people. But by now in the year 2009 it seems to be that their moral capital is long since exhausted.

As far as possible we should talk about Israel no differently than we would about any other power. I still think Zionist is a useful term. Not all Israelis are Jews, not all Israeli Jews are Zionists and many of the most fervent Zioinists, such as the American evangelicals aren't remotely Jewish.

[Free Radical]

Rob

I agree that Israel ought not be indulged for historical reasons over its attack on Gaza. The Holocaust is an important key to understanding the whole situation of course - not least because it led directly to the founding of the state of Israel. But I do not think it ought to affect our judgement of the current situation either way. I think the Israeli government needs to be judged on just the same basis as any other government - and I think we agree on this.

We in the UK are commiting what I regard as crimes (at least in a moral sense) in Afghanistan and our intervention in Iraq resulted in at least 666,000 Iraqi deaths, predominantly from gunshot. What Israel is doing today in Gaza is offensive and counterproductive.

You make an important point that it is the Christian fundamentalist lobby in the US that is the most important in influencing US policy in the Middle East. This is important because it is often erroneously represented as the 'Jewish lobby' which is in truth tiny and, in most US states insignificant, and, where it is influential, tends to be quite liberal in US terms.

Northern Ireland shows that, where there is a will, the most seemingly intractable problems can be addressed - the solution was not ideal to any one side, and there will be further problems ahead, but it is better than the years of stalemate and suffering. I am sure the Middle East problems could be solved too with a will on the part of the US and the Israelis and everyone else. That will seems to have been lacking on the Israeli and US side for some time. All now hinges on the incoming Obama adminstration I think.