Simply Politics & News

[sortagreen]

I think the problem here is that you're hearing the victor's side of the story.

It would be wrong of me for instance to suggest without evidence that Israel started out with a massive ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians, razing villages and slaughtering the ones who wouldn't go... and that the present day "Palestinian problem" springs from this act. Fortunately I don't have to suggest this most obvious of facts without evidence, since the Israelis kept good records along the way and a cursory reading of such Israeli historians as Benny Morris, Simha Flapan, Tom Segev or Shabtai Teveth might at least put a dent that sense of it you seem to have internalized.

Read this piece. It's very well sourced out of the archives... It's a bit long but it's a pretty good read.

http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Famous-Zionist-Quotes/Story638.html

A couple of other points:

The Saudis have proposed a 2 state solution based on the 1967 boundaries, that the Arabs and Iranians would recognize... up to and including full diplomatic recognition and exchange of ambassadors. What holds up this process?

If you really believe that Iranians would kill all the Jews, how do you explain the communities of Jews that thrive within Iran, their temples directly across the streets from Mosques?

I was raised with the story of Israeli victimhood too. But as time goes on and Israeli siezes more and more land and pushes its Arab population and neighbor onto smaller and more arrid plots of desert... you have to stop and think for a moment. This isn't about religion. It's about land, water, power and control. It's ethnic cleansing, and it's a crime against humanity.