[SeattleUte]

Waters, kindly cease the "you Mormons think" epithet. I get your point but that brush is too broad here.

Let me draw the logical conclusion from Ox's detailed points for you: Israel is a reflective liberal democracy subject to the whimsy, opinions, and collective conscience of its constituents. (Aside: this factor has evolved and changed over time, becoming more or less hawkish in response preceived good or bad faith on "Palestinians'" part.) Within Israel and the greater Jewish community and among Israel's friends there is an ongoing difference of opinion and free debate about how to deal with the Palestinian problem. In contrast, the Palestinians comprise a military dictatorship imbued with a warrior cult and implacable hatred for the West and particularly Israel. The purpose of its existence is to annihilate Israel, which in addition to being the only democracy in the Middle East, and the only country there except arguaby Turkey with a secular ethos at its core, holds special historical and symbolic significance to the West.

You are kidding yourselves if you think this dispute is between Israel and a bunch of poor, wretched brown people huddled in tents on its border. Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, etc. all wage war constant war against Israel in the name of "Palestine." Waters and Lebowski, you woud be their appeasers.

Oxcoug said no "occupier" in history has been surrounded by hostile forces. This is not technically correct. See, e.g., Napoleon's army in Russia. It is, however, highly unorthodox to call a soverign nation an occupier where it is surrounded by overwhelming hostile nations and would have no place else to go were it to leave. It would be abandoning its own country.

Thus, I would like those who are anti-Israel here to explain precisely the extent to which Israel is an "occupying nation" in the same sense Germany was occupying Poland.

(Aside: there was once a huge Jewish population in Poland. No more. And those that weren't murderd emigrated to the U.S., Isarael and elsewhere and so far as I know haven't asked for anything from Germany.)