Israel & Palestine

[robert]

dont believe everything people tell you. The media portray the israel palestinain conflict very one sidedly.I am a frequent traveler to Israel and can tell u that the jewish people live in constant fear of a palastinain attack. The palastinians are constantly called militents when talked about on the news when they are infact terrorists !

[Ahmad]

all that is happening is fighting but its all the jews fault the only weapon against jews is rocks and bombing but jews have weapons from America...........everyday palestinians die but once in a while when someones relative or friend dies they want to get revenge from the bitches.........

[Saul goldstien]

Israel is a creation of white european guilt. nevertheless we are here now. Yes we do have American money and weapons. Yes we do kill and mistreat many native palestinians. But, it goes both ways. The arabs are just as guilty as the jews. The whites just dropped off the jews in palestine and assumed that things would work out. Jews and arabs are both here now, both are violent, both are hateful. The only hope fore peace is for people of goodwill to find a middle ground. We can not use american might or arab retaliation to create a solution. We most forge this peace on our own.

[Lars K]

It's so easy to stereotype Palestinians for being cruel, crazy and evil, and the same goes for israelis. But evil doesn't have country boundaries. A certain percentage of _any_ population have mental capabilities to do evil things, if the circumstances are right. This kind of sociopaths very _very_ often find them selves comfortable with having jobs where they can have power over people. For example Police, Military, terrorist organizations etc.

So I say, to achieve peace, we _have_ to identify these kind of sociopaths (Blair, Bush, Sharon or any terrorist org. member) _before_ they get serious power. We need to understand when a politicians/leaders charismatic behaviour is just a phasade to hide evil thoughts and intentions.
A simple example: I live in Sweden and our prime minister is called Goran Persson. He has a very nice phasade and is extremy good at speaking to people. He almost have a hypnotic effect when he speak. And still, he is an A class sociopath who does not hesitate to harass people he find weak: for example, he has harassed the leader of the "Center" party for some time now. Do we need this kind of leaders? Will this kind of people lead us to peace? I think not. The world needs a new Gandhi.

[Jenny]

Robert, thank you. I am doing in-depth research on the conflict. IT is horrible that the question "will there ever be peace in the Middle East?" could be asked millennia ago, 50 years ago, 10 years ago, or today- always with the same answer. However, the media is certainly not helping in its portrayal of the whole situation. Have you ever heard of the infamous photo of the "Palestinian wounded on Temple Mount" that appeared in the New York Times a few years ago? It was a photo of a bloodied youth and a soldier towering over him with a club, yelling. In fact, this was a Jewish young man who was beaten by a mob and the soldier was running to protect him. Hmmm. That was 4 years ago, but you can find plenty of media bias today as well.

[seb]

I think the situation has been misunderstood. The Palestinians are undeniably targetting Israeli civilians. The militant groups (Hamas etc.) are trying to slaughter as many innocent men women children and babies as they possibly can. Israeli also kills civilians, but always by unavoidable military accidents. The Israeli army only targets those doing everything they possibly can to kill Israelis. The fact that they hide in densely populated towns and cities makes civilian casualties unavoidable, but the alternative is to do nothing and allow their civilians to be turned into butcher meat for political points by the Palestinian militant fanatics.