Thank you for posting this. I'm also thinking a lot about what was going on in Gaza before the recent suicide bombing. I've actually read statements in the media that the suicide bombing ended a period of "calm" and "peace". There was no calm or peace for the people of Gaza during the last month.

Someone posted about that "period of calm", and just how many deaths it contained.
I think Israelis hold Arafat responsible for the actions of people like Hamas. I don't see how he would stop them. Sharon, on the other hand...
Of course, the PLO used to murder frequently. Has it stopped?

Israel seems to be acting like a terrorist state, murdering innocent children, old men on donkeys, pregnant women, etc...in the name of security??? I don't think so ! It's sad what the country has degenerated to, I mean the level of inhumanity is appalling.

I'm not defending Israel's misguided attempts to counter suicide bombers, but when arafat is supposedly condemning terrorism he is doing it in english not arabic and he is doing it for the benefit of the west.

The whole "Arafat only does it in English" is a bit old. He's done it in arabic as well, but the point is that whether he's condemned it, he hasn't ordered it.

Hamas commits almost all of the suicide bombings within Israel proper and they are Fatah's political rivals and assuredly not under Arafat's command. Some bombings are coming from the miliant wing of Fatah, but even those seem to be outside Arafat's tenuous hold.

And what's indisputable is that the killings of Palestinians are directly under Sharon's control. So at best (and I don't even accept this much), you have two sides wielding terrorism against innocents.

So why is the United States giving billions of dollars in military support to the Israeli terrorists?

So why is the United States giving billions of dollars in military support to the Israeli terrorists?

Why is the EU giving billions to the terrorist state of Palestine? There are record showing that this money was used to fund terrorists.

First things first. Israel is our sister-democracy; Aratrash and his gang are corrupt murderers. For an article on the role of Aratrash in the 1973 murder of US diplomats in Khartoum, see

http://israpundit.blogspot.com/2003_02_01_israpundit_archive.html#90383957

How come the self-loathing leftists have nothing to say about the latest murder in Haifa, which felled schoolchildren, but have endless tears for those who shoot missiles into Israel?

For more on this topic, see a series of 23 articles against the creation of yet another Palestinian-Arab state in Yesha; the last of this series is posted at

http://israpundit.blogspot.com/2003_02_01_israpundit_archive.html#90370325

I'm not sure what I have to be "self-loathing" about, since I'm not an Israeli murdering children in the West Bank.

As noted, I find that particular adjectival formulation particularly offensive.

Now Nathan Newman, I can't imagine why you'd be offended at someone calling you a self-loathing leftist.
Or am I missing something here? Is there something someone is not telling me? Anyone?
I have to say, if someone means Jew, they should say Jew.

For my own part, as you can tell by my name, I am clearly NOT Jewish. Or am I?
Joseph, would you care to place a bet?

The "self-loathing" applies to the fact that we are all supposed to uphold our democratic system and feel at least a measure of solidarity with our sister-democracies. But the gentleman who runs this site seems to delight in reviling our sister-democracy, Israel, while turning a blind left eye to the persistent crimes of that corrupt murderer Aratrarsh and his henchmen. This is what I call self-loathing.

The fact is, at a time when Arab terrorists murdered 16 people in Haifa, mostly students, the said gentleman has the temerity to talk about "an Israeli murdering children in the West Bank"! To enhance this leftist absurdity, Dr Newman's statement comes at a time when the al Dura myth has been debunked utterly, being added to the trash heap of "the elders of Zion", "Israelis manufacturing toys with bombs to kill Arab children" and similar blood libels.

Shame on you, Dr Newman!

The last I checked, the millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza do not have a vote over their Israeli occupiers. Just as blacks in South Africa and the bantustans had no vote under Apartheid. And just as Indians under British colonialism had no vote.

When larger percentages of the population are denied the right to vote, it is hard to take seriously the democratic credentials of the governing country-- even if they hold elections among some subset of peoples.

In a similar way, the United States is destroying its democratic credentials on the global basis by its stated intention to dominate the world militarily and ignoring the votes of the United Nations.