Excellent post!

sbk told you to stop calling other posters that stupid phrase. Grow up!

Please point out where SBK addressed me personally to stop calling some of you, supporters of terror, I might have missed it.

I have tried to point out what the definition of terror is but you say you (If I remember well) do not look at any site/link that is posted by a person with a view different than yours.

I have posted some links to interesting clips and books in other topics and again you refuse to look at any of them.

This is outside the box where I expected people to be able to look at issues from different angles without prejudice.

My little experiment showed that you and your fellow crusaders are full of it, prejudice that is.

Your last response to my question just seems to confirm that.

Alex

I have tried to point out what the definition of terror is but you say you (If I remember well) do not look at any site/link that is posted by a person with a view different than yours.

I have posted some links to interesting clips and books in other topics and again you refuse to look at any of them.

I have looked at most of your nutty links just to have a laugh, so I'm not sure what you are on about and sbk did tell you to stop using that phrase very recently, but it is your responsibility to look for her post. As to your mythical "experiment" that you mention over and over again, but never describe, it sounds like another hallucination.

Please show me where SBK told me to stop using:That" phrase.

My little experiment showed that you guys are prejudiced.

The fact that you not even noticed that, shows how ignorant you people are.

Again you did not answer my question, I wonder why.

Because I have already answered it several times and will not bother doing it again.

Do your own searching.

I think it was a mistake not to recognize Hamas after the election. In a democracy, people have to learn (slowly) that they are voting for <deleted>. We should have let Hamas ruin life for the Palestinians without the US and others help. Let the people see for themselves that they voted the wrong way so they can vote the bums out next time. Otherwise, Hamas is just given a convenient excuse to use with the electorate. All of this doesn't mean that Israel shouldn't protect itself, they should.

What 'next time'? It's like most dictatorial parties - vote them in once - no more elections on a level playing field.

I have worked with many Palestinians over the years, engineers, business owners, labourers. All have a very strong hatred for Israel - will never say anything good about any Israeli government, left or right. It is a knee-jerk reaction that seems to have been with them all their lives. This is not just those from refugee camps, but those still in their ancestral homes, still with property, educated in UK or US. Just about every Palestinian I have associated with.

Well, I agree, but democracy doesn't happen overnight and it does take a lot of hard work. If Hamas goes the standard dictator route like you imply, then I guess someone would probably arrange for them to lose power in another way.

Please show me where SBK told me to stop using:That" phrase.

My little experiment showed that you guys are prejudiced.

The fact that you not even noticed that, shows how ignorant you people are.

Again you did not answer my question, I wonder why.

It wasn't SBK, it was Toptuan. But go ahead, continue to ignore his warning. He obviously hasn't noticed so far...

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/391340-obama-backtracks-over-ground-zero-mosque/page__st__25

Posted 2010-08-24 00:59 Post #32

"Supporters of terror" aimed at other forum posters is a bit heavy-handed, bordering on flaming. Please tone down the rhetoric toward other TV members and discuss the issue on its own merits. I know It's Bedlam, but even in Bedlam we try to be nice to each other.

Regards,

Toptuan

For the Moderating Team

Please show me where SBK told me to stop using:That" phrase.

My little experiment showed that you guys are prejudiced.

The fact that you not even noticed that, shows how ignorant you people are.

Again you did not answer my question, I wonder why.

It wasn't SBK, it was Toptuan. But go ahead, continue to ignore his warning. He obviously hasn't noticed so far...

Posted 2010-08-24 00:59 Post #32

"Supporters of terror" aimed at other forum posters is a bit heavy-handed, bordering on flaming. Please tone down the rhetoric toward other TV members and discuss the issue on its own merits. I know It's Bedlam, but even in Bedlam we try to be nice to each other.

Regards,

Toptuan

For the Moderating Team

I will say when the evidence is posted of Blatant child beating and abuse at the hands of the IDF and shooting of a handcuffed blindfolded prisoner at point blank range the Pro Israelis on here rather than comment on it they take the stance of the Isralei government and ignore it as if its not real or redirect to some Hamas atrocitie to try and excuse it.

Like i said before Hamas are terrorists and nobody would expect anything less from them but Israel to avoid being called terrorists have to stop acting like terrorists.

Definition of terrorist

the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear

I think it is quite acceptable and truthful to call Israelis terrorists as they completely MATCH the dictionary definition of one shown above and therefore it would not be incorrect (politically maybe) to call supoorters of Israel supporters of terrorists.

Please show me where SBK told me to stop using:That" phrase.

My little experiment showed that you guys are prejudiced.

The fact that you not even noticed that, shows how ignorant you people are.

Again you did not answer my question, I wonder why.

It wasn't SBK, it was Toptuan. But go ahead, continue to ignore his warning. He obviously hasn't noticed so far...

Posted 2010-08-24 00:59 Post #32

"Supporters of terror" aimed at other forum posters is a bit heavy-handed, bordering on flaming. Please tone down the rhetoric toward other TV members and discuss the issue on its own merits. I know It's Bedlam, but even in Bedlam we try to be nice to each other.

Regards,

Toptuan

For the Moderating Team

I will say when the evidence is posted of Blatant child beating and abuse at the hands of the IDF and shooting of a handcuffed blindfolded prisoner at point blank range the Pro Israelis on here rather than comment on it they take the stance of the Isralei government and ignore it as if its not real or redirect to some Hamas atrocitie to try and excuse it.

Like i said before Hamas are terrorists and nobody would expect anything less from them but Israel to avoid being called terrorists have to stop acting like terrorists.

Definition of terrorist

the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear

I think it is quite acceptable and truthful to call Israelis terrorists as they completely MATCH the dictionary definition of one shown above and therefore it would not be incorrect (politically maybe) to call supoorters of Israel supporters of terrorists.

If the Pro-Israelis are supporters of terrorists, and the anti-Israelis are (obviously) terrorists themselves, doesn't that make us all buddies?

Atrocities for only one of the sides here is not only policy but openly celebrated (Hint: they can't buy chocolate at their local café). Palestinian children TV shows teach them to wear suicide belts in order to blow up other children and their mommies. What do Israelis children TV shows teach, how to shoot someone throwing rocks at you? Uh, no.

Please show me where SBK told me to stop using:That" phrase.

My little experiment showed that you guys are prejudiced.

The fact that you not even noticed that, shows how ignorant you people are.

Again you did not answer my question, I wonder why.

It wasn't SBK, it was Toptuan. But go ahead, continue to ignore his warning. He obviously hasn't noticed so far...

Posted 2010-08-24 00:59 Post #32

"Supporters of terror" aimed at other forum posters is a bit heavy-handed, bordering on flaming. Please tone down the rhetoric toward other TV members and discuss the issue on its own merits. I know It's Bedlam, but even in Bedlam we try to be nice to each other.

Regards,

Toptuan

For the Moderating Team

I will say when the evidence is posted of Blatant child beating and abuse at the hands of the IDF and shooting of a handcuffed blindfolded prisoner at point blank range the Pro Israelis on here rather than comment on it they take the stance of the Isralei government and ignore it as if its not real or redirect to some Hamas atrocitie to try and excuse it.

Like i said before Hamas are terrorists and nobody would expect anything less from them but Israel to avoid being called terrorists have to stop acting like terrorists.

Definition of terrorist

the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear

I think it is quite acceptable and truthful to call Israelis terrorists as they completely MATCH the dictionary definition of one shown above and therefore it would not be incorrect (politically maybe) to call supoorters of Israel supporters of terrorists.

If the Pro-Israelis are supporters of terrorists, and the anti-Israelis are (obviously) terrorists themselves, doesn't that make us all buddies?

Atrocities for only one of the sides here is not only policy but openly celebrated (Hint: they can't buy chocolate at their local café). Palestinian children TV shows teach them to wear suicide belts in order to blow up other children and their mommies. What do Israelis children TV shows teach, how to shoot someone throwing rocks at you? Uh, no.

Almost clever, but as flawed as "The friend of my enemy must also be my enemy, the enemy of my enemy must be my friend".

Besides, no matter how much you'd like it to be so, the Anti Israel lobby in this forum is against the Israeli political and military machine for the atrocities, slow-genocide and apartheid that they commit; very distinctly NOT supporting terrorism.

I wonder if there are children's TV shows (plural) that teach the children how "to blow up other children and their mommies". A couple of links are in order after that remarkable accusation.

I have no idea what Israeli TV shows teach the children....I do know there are Israeli kindergartens that indoctrinate the Zionist ideology.

I wonder if there are children's TV shows (plural) that teach the children how "to blow up other children and their mommies". A couple of links are in order after that remarkable accusation.

Oh, so NOW you want proof for accusations? OK, let the Palestinian people come on here and demand some. But before I provide anything, they'll have to get in line behind you and the multitude of proof you are behind in providing not least of which are your accusations of racism. You know, from what I remember reading on TV over the years, Thai law has an interesting perception of slander and who can be taken to court over it - including TV if you are to believe some of the mods.

btw - I love how you ask for links from TV shows (plural) because you know there is at least one out there.

I see this going downhill rather fast so I am going to say this once. Keep it civil

If you guys if you don't learn to cut the vitriol here I am going to recommend this entire forum be shut down because you can't mind your manners.

Whilst I am inclined to agree sbk, I think that would just cause this incessant bickering to spill out into other parts of thai visa, such as bedlam.

Just a thought like.

Yes, where they would then be suspended. Just another kind of thought.

I hope that it is OK to mention that most of the so-called "conservatives" that I have corresponded with on here with do not think that these non-Thai political threads should be here in the first place.

Believe it, or not, we get no pleasure from these ridiculous arguments that have never convinced anyone on either side. We only post here to point out that there are plenty of members who do not agree with all the insulting, loony, far-left-wing nonsense that was being posted here with no response before we decided to join in. I for one would be happy to have these issues forbidden as they were in the past. Nothing is going to be settled here anyway.

By the way, we do not seem to have any problems getting along on the regular forum as long as foreign politics are not brought up. If we are all suspended, there will virtually no posts at first, but it is very, very likely that eventually others will take our place. Someone is going to tire of all the B.S. that is posted in OTB. After all, there was a good reason why the Bear Pit political forum on TV was gotten rid of long ago.

I hope that it is OK to mention that most of the so-called "conservatives" that I have corresponded with on here with do not think that these non-Thai political threads should be here in the first place.

Believe it, or not, we get no pleasure from these ridiculous arguments that have never convinced anyone on either side. We only post here to point out that there are plenty of members who do not agree with all the insulting, loony, far-left-wing nonsense that was being posted here with no response before we decided to join in. I for one would be happy to have these issues forbidden as they were in the past. Nothing is going to be settled here anyway.

By the way, we do not seem to have any problems getting along on the regular forum as long as foreign politics are not brought up. If we are all suspended, there will virtually no posts at first, but it is very, very likely that eventually others will take our place. Someone is going to tire of all the B.S. that is posted in OTB. After all, there was a good reason why the Bear Pit political forum on TV was gotten rid of long ago.

Well thats how Israel gets away with everything censorship the best answer when you cannot get away from clear evidence presented just censor it and silence people.

I am very happy to have a debate on a subject and to be proven wrong if i am indeed wrong but in this case no pro israeli has commented on the evidence I presented to prove me wrong and it seems the word terrorist is reserved only for the use of Americans and british when the terminology includes other nations actions also but not politically correct to use it.

UG is right after spending a lot of time these past few days looking at many many youtube video of both sides propoganda the hatred from both sides is horrific and what stands out even more after seeing all those disgusting videos of both sides its is even more clear that Israel acts just as bad if not worse than the Palestinians the fact that the US supports them unconditionally is quite astounding based on the evidence of there crimes and i can understand why they are a target of terrorists because they practice double standards.

I was happy to discuss things but these problems have been in the middle east for centuries and its never going to change but one thing has changed and that is my pro israeli stance has been changed to palestinian sympathiser and I guess based on the news reports its not just me.

Dont get me wrong I beleive Hamas would love to catch me and behead me as an infidel but that cannot change my view as a human being when you see trained Isralei solgiers beating up children in palestine or them shooting handcuffed prisoners at point blank range for fun.

I believed Israelis should conform to International standards as the US or the UK does and if there people do wrong they are prosecuted for there crimes,

I now realize thats not the case

I didn't know that Hamas was known to behead people at all let alone for being infidels. You learn something new everyday.

UG is right after spending a lot of time these past few days looking at many many youtube video of both sides propoganda the hatred from both sides is horrific and what stands out even more after seeing all those disgusting videos of both sides

You suddenly appear here and post a few videos of things we have discussed a million times already and now you are convinced that we can not refute your opinion. What a laugh. Sorry, but we are tired of going over the same things over and over again with no results on either side. It is just a waste of time and you certainly are not going to change your agenda.

I have posted page after page of historical facts showing that - even in modern times - the Jews have as much right to the land as the so-called 'Palestinians" - there has never been such a people or such a country - and not one person has been able to refute any of it. Why don't you go back to some of those posts and give it a try.

As far as your claim that Israel is "as bad as the Arabs". Well maybe, but since the Arabs have started every war and refuse to make peace, they pretty much have gotten what they asked for.

I believed Israelis should conform to International standards as the US or the UK does..

Haven't you been reading your buddies' posts at all? Thanks for a good laugh!

No worries SBK, we are here to exchange views and try to look from different perspectives.

I am sure I can have a good time with UG and all others like Chuck and Kohee and exchange our views during a personal meeting.

There is no flaming here SBK, we just try to understand where everyones believes come from.

It might look like a heated up discussion but really we are just exchanging views and thoughts.

I hope you all agree.

Kind regards,

Alex

I am very happy to have a debate on a subject and to be proven wrong if i am indeed wrong but in this case no pro israeli has commented on the evidence I presented to prove me wrong

What evidence? You have posted accusations and videos showing some bad things that happen in every war and admitted that the Arabs commit plenty of atrocities - after we posted the same kind of crap - but decided that Israel is still at fault for some reason only known to you. That is not evidence of anything other than another bloke with an opinion that is not based on much.

But UG, do you agree that the boat was in international waters when the IDF entered the ship?

If you do not agree please tell why.

I already have answered this question numerous times.

International Waters or not, it doesn't matter when the ships approaching have ill intentions.

International Waters or not, it doesn't matter when the ships approaching have ill intentions.

I agree wholeheartedly.

However, I don't call intending to give deprived children some chocolate and much-needed medicine an "ill intention".

If the Israeli's had not deprived these people of basic human rights and simple pleasures in the first place, there never would have been a need for the ship to make the attempt.

I don't recall anyone being able to adequately explain why nutmeg, pencils, chocolate, dates, medicine, etc should be so rigourously blocked from reaching Gaza.

If the Palestinians were not shooting all the rockets into Israel, trying to kill civilians, they would not have created this problem for themselves. They never get anywhere with their hatred, but they never seem to learn.

Israel has already stopped ships from bringing in weapons, but the Jew-haters want them to drop the legal defensive blockade. No wonder they have to ignore the "useful idiots" (their friend Stalin called them that) of the world. It is too bad that other countries allow them to dictate policy.

Krauthammer: Those troublesome Jews

Charles Krauthammer

Friday, June 4, 2010; A19

The world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.

But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel -- a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.

In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded ("quarantined") Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.

Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.

Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.

Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that?

But even more important, why did Israel even have to resort to blockade? Because, blockade is Israel's fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself -- forward and active defense.

(1) Forward defense: As a small, densely populated country surrounded by hostile states, Israel had, for its first half-century, adopted forward defense -- fighting wars on enemy territory (such as the Sinai and Golan Heights) rather than its own.

Where possible (Sinai, for example) Israel has traded territory for peace. But where peace offers were refused, Israel retained the territory as a protective buffer zone. Thus Israel retained a small strip of southern Lebanon to protect the villages of northern Israel. And it took many losses in Gaza, rather than expose Israeli border towns to Palestinian terror attacks. It is for the same reason America wages a grinding war in Afghanistan: You fight them there, so you don't have to fight them here.

But under overwhelming outside pressure, Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgencies -- and therefore withdrawal, by removing the cause, would bring peace.

Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land -- evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.

(2) Active defense: Israel then had to switch to active defense -- military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (to borrow President Obama's description of our campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew.

The result? The Lebanon war of 2006 and Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded the land-for-peace Israeli withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the U.N. Goldstone report, which essentially criminalized Israel's defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli -- the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war -- effectively de-legitimized any active Israeli defense against its self-declared terror enemies.

(3) Passive defense: Without forward or active defense, Israel is left with but the most passive and benign of all defenses -- a blockade to simply prevent enemy rearmament. Yet, as we speak, this too is headed for international de-legitimation. Even the United States is now moving toward having it abolished.

But, if none of these is permissible, what's left?

Ah, but that's the point. It's the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who've had quite enough of the Jewish problem.

What's left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last week, the Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel's possession of nuclear weapons -- thus de-legitimizing Israel's very last line of defense: deterrence.

The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.

[email protected]

Skip the lecture on Israel's 'risks for peace'

By George F. Will

Thursday, August 19, 2010; A17

JERUSALEM

In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America's eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take "risks for peace."

During Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's July visit to Washington, Barack Obama praised him as "willing to take risks for peace." There was a time when that meant swapping "land for peace" -- Israel sacrificing something tangible and irrecoverable, strategic depth, in exchange for something intangible and perishable, promises of diplomatic normality.

Strategic depth matters in a nation where almost everyone is or has been a soldier, so society cannot function for long with the nation fully mobilized. Also, before the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel within the borders established by the 1949 armistice was in one place just nine miles wide, a fact that moved George W. Bush to say: In Texas we have driveways that long. Israel exchanged a lot of land to achieve a chilly peace with Egypt, yielding the Sinai, which is almost three times larger than Israel and was 89 percent of the land captured in the process of repelling the 1967 aggression.

The intifada was launched by the late Yasser Arafat -- terrorist and Nobel Peace Prize winner -- after the July 2000 Camp David meeting, during which then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to cede control of all of Gaza and more than 90 percent of the West Bank, with small swaps of land to accommodate the growth of Jerusalem suburbs just across the 1949 armistice line.

Israelis are famously fractious, but the intifada produced among them a consensus that the most any government of theirs could offer without forfeiting domestic support is less than any Palestinian interlocutor would demand. Furthermore, the intifada was part of a pattern. As in 1936 and 1947, talk about partition prompted Arab violence.

In 1936, when the British administered Palestine, the Peel Commission concluded that there was "an irrepressible conflict" -- a phrase coined by an American historian to describe the U.S. Civil War -- "between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country." And: "Neither of the two national ideals permits" a combination "in the service of a single state." The commission recommended "a surgical operation" -- partition. What followed was the Arab Revolt of 1936 to 1939.

On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations recommended a partition plan. Israel accepted the recommendation. On Nov. 30, Israel was attacked.

Palestine has a seemingly limitless capacity for eliciting nonsense from afar, as it did recently when British Prime Minister David Cameron referred to Gaza as a "prison camp." In a sense it is, but not in the sense Cameron intended. His implication was that Israel is the cruel imprisoner. Gaza's actual misfortune is to be under the iron fist of Hamas, a terrorist organization.

In May, a flotilla launched from Turkey approached Gaza in order to provoke a confrontation with Israel, which, like Egypt, administers a blockade to prevent arms from reaching Hamas. The flotilla's pretense was humanitarian relief for Gaza -- where the infant mortality rate is lower and life expectancy is higher than in Turkey.

Israelis younger than 50 have no memory of their nation within the 1967 borders set by the 1949 armistice that ended the War of Independence. The rest of the world seems to have no memory at all concerning the intersecting histories of Palestine and the Jewish people.

The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state since the Romans arrived. And if the Jewish percentage of the world's population were today what it was when the Romans ruled Palestine, there would be 200 million Jews. After a uniquely hazardous passage through two millennia without a homeland, there are 13 million Jews.

In the 62 years since this homeland was founded on one-sixth of 1 percent of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called "the Arab world," Israelis have never known an hour of real peace. Patronizing American lectures on the reality of risks and the desirableness of peace, which once were merely fatuous, are now obscene.

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Many possible Israeli concessions would be suicidal

By George F. Will

Sunday, August 22, 2010; A15

JERUSALEM 'Twas a famous victory for diplomacy when, in 1991 in Madrid, Israelis and Palestinians, orchestrated by the United States, at last engaged in direct negotiations. Almost a generation later, U.S. policy has succeeded in prodding the Palestinians away from their recent insistence on "proximity talks" -- in which they have talked to the Israelis through American intermediaries -- and to direct negotiations. But negotiations about what?

Idle talk about a "binational state" has long since died. Even disregarding the recent fates of multinational states -- e.g., the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, the former Czechoslovakia -- binationalism is impossible if Israel is to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people. No significant Israeli constituency disagrees with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: "The Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel's borders."

Rhetoric about a "two-state solution" is de rigueur. It also is delusional, given two recent, searing experiences.

The only place for a Palestinian state is the West Bank, which Israel has occupied -- legally under international law -- since repelling the 1967 aggression launched from there. The West Bank remains an unallocated portion of the Palestine Mandate, the disposition of which is to be settled by negotiations. Michael Oren, now Israel's ambassador to the United States, said several years before becoming ambassador:

"There is no Israeli leadership that appears either willing or capable of removing 100,000 Israelis from their West Bank homes. . . . The evacuation of a mere 8,100 Israelis from Gaza in 2005 required 55,000 IDF [israel Defense Forces] troops -- the largest Israeli military operation since the 1973 Yom Kippur War -- and was profoundly traumatic."

Twenty-one Israeli settlements were dismantled; even the bodies of Israelis buried in Gaza were removed. After a deeply flawed 2006 election encouraged by the United States, there was in 2007 essentially a coup in Gaza by the terrorist organization Hamas. So now Israel has on its western border, 44 miles from Tel Aviv, an entity dedicated to Israel's destruction, collaborative with Iran and possessing a huge arsenal of rockets.

Rocket attacks from Gaza increased dramatically after Israel withdrew. The number of U.N. resolutions deploring this? Zero.

The closest precedent for that bombardment was the Nazi rocket attacks on London, which were answered by the destruction of Hamburg, Dresden and other German cities. When Israel struck back at Hamas, the "international community" was theatrically appalled.

A senior cabinet member -- Moshe Yaalon, strategic affairs minister and possible future prime minister -- says "our withdrawals strengthened jihadist Islam," adding, "We have the second Islamic republic in the Middle East -- the first in Iran, the second in Gaza: Hamastan."

Israel's withdrawals include the one that strengthened the Iranian client on Israel's northern border, in southern Lebanon. Since the 2006 war provoked by Hezbollah's incessant rocketing of northern Israel, Hezbollah has rearmed and possesses as many as 60,000 rockets. Today, Netanyahu says, Israel's problem is less the Israel-Lebanon border than it is the Lebanon-Syria border: Hezbollah has received from Syria -- which gets them from Iran -- Scud missiles capable of striking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. A leader of Hezbollah says, "If all the Jews gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."

Because upward of a million immigrants have come from the former Soviet Union, today one-sixth of Israelis speak Russian. Israel has Russian-language newspapers and television. Russian Israelis are largely responsible for Avigdor Lieberman being foreign minister. Yoram Peri, professor of Israel studies at the University of Maryland, says these immigrants "don't understand how a state that can be crossed in half an hour by car would be willing to even talk about relinquishing territories to its seemingly perpetual enemies." These immigrants know that Russia's strategic depth -- space -- defeated Napoleon and Hitler.

Netanyahu, who is not the most conservative member of the coalition government he heads, endorses a two-state solution but says that any West Bank Palestinian state must be demilitarized and prevented from making agreements with the likes of Hezbollah and Iran. To prevent the importation of missiles and other arms, Israel would need, Netanyahu says, a military presence on the West Bank's eastern border with Jordan. Otherwise, there will be a third Islamic republic, and a second one contiguous to Israel.

So, again: Negotiations about what?

[email protected]

I am very happy to have a debate on a subject and to be proven wrong

Read these articles with an open mind.