There was hatred of jews long before 1948.

It's pretty easy using "the Google" for even the most inept among us to learn a brief history of the formation of Israel.

In so doing, you will see that no peoples were pushed from what was then Palestine (under British rule) to create Israel. No lands were taken, but much purchased. And with the UN voting and the British acquiescence, Israel was created.

Where did the first story go ? There was a Palestinian woman's story here as well ... hence the title 2 stories ... now hers is gone


WTF

Ok, 200 words or less, illustrate why the United States should waste one more plug nickel
on any of this...?

The problem is you cannot assuage the outrage of people driven from their homes, reduced to killing themselves in order to express their anger by killing a few of the enemy as well, by simply talking. Israel wasn't a deal agreed upon by Palestinians. Nobody asked them.

What Mark saw on television sets in America was an expurgated version of events. It is actually much much worse. I had a friend who visited Israel pro Israeli and left hating Israel after he saw how the IDF conducted themselves with Palestinians.

Mark must first acknowledge that there was so much more to Palestine than we see on television - orchards and olive groves and best of all peace and tolerance. Palestinians are Semites and lived with Jews for eons.

Mark must realize that in the name of some dusty legend similar to the legends of the Greeks or the Norse, the Jews claim Israel. It has no borders since some Jews believe they rightfully should have the land as far as the Euphrates. Many Israels consider Palestinians dirty, unintelligent and sly.

Mark must realize while he was in the IDF he was much like those people in Germany who robbed the Jews. Robbed them of their property, their land, their livlihoods and their lives.

The first step for Mark must be a letter of admission of facts, just as Americans must admit the war in Iraq was based on myth. Iraq was not a threat to America. However, America wanted control of the oil and the region. Eddie Greenspan, a Jew and an American admitted that. Mark must accept the truth - Jews invaded Palestine and would eliminate Palestinians in the wink of an eye if the world weren't watching.

Israel must allow the return of the refugees and draw a border like every country has.

There is nothing particularly remarkable about strife persisting in a region with different people in it. Actually there is not even anything remarkable about strife persisting when it is one people but some subset of them holding onto power.

Through most of history, such enmity has persisted in most places. What is remarkable is when the strife ends. And generally it requires special steps, and a willingness to ignore attacks from the people who profit by strife in the names of the greater peace.

A group like OneVoice is a positive step forward, as are the Buddhist monk marches in Burma. But even these positive steps tend to fail. This would reflect poorly on such steps if there was some other method that ended strife, but there really isn't.

Rivlin does a good job of showing how one side can come to see the other side as less than human. It is too his credit that he is not willing to leave things there and has chosen to work for peace anyway.

It is a pity that more of the commentators do not see the advantage to seeing this as a conflict between two peoples rather than a conflict of one people with the other playing a supporting role in the first's story. And that is true whether the cartoon view is of the Palestinians or of the Israelis.

Robiform;you seem to be unaware of or have forgotten the Oslo Accords!

Negotiations between Israel and Palestine gave an appearance of beginning to approach some sort of Detante.What happened?

While negotiators were about to enter into discussion of resolving the Palestinian Refuges'"Right To Return"Issue,Israel's Hawk Prime minister,Netenyahoo,had bulldozer's start excercizng what he deemed"Right of eminent Domain" and started Bulldozing(with American Armored Dozers),land in the West Bank for a new colony(settlement)of hundreds of Soviet Jews.

This is "negotiating in good faith"?

What happened?A renewed Palestinian Intifada!
Again we have an American-Zionist P.R. campaign of making the victims the perpetrators.

It's been a while since I have looked at an Atlas,and Atlasses are not always accurate.

But if one could look at the borders of Israel as established by the U.N.in 1948 and approved by the U.S.as a member of the U.N. Securety councel(one of five members with veto power),they would find that this area,-The State of Israel-who's purpose was to furnish a residense for between 1/4 and 1.2 million displaced Europeans who happened to be Jewish,was much much smaller than the areas occupied by Zionists or Isrealis today.

The question to ask is,"WHY!!"?What gave these occupiers the right to do this?These are not lands won in military combat!The actual combat was outside Isreal's 1948 borders,in places like the Golan and the Sainai Desert.The Sainai desert has been returned to Egypt but Golan has not been returned to Syria.And more Palestinian land has been confiscated and it's residents victimised!WHY???

What right do dual citizened North American and Europeans have to do this?

A festering sore that will be the impetus for WW III. OneVoice is to be congratulated on its efforts. The conflict is the poster child for unrest in the Middle East. Now Iraq and maybe Iran will provide for more more hatred if the US maintains its present policies of dominating the region for oil. Do we really care about the Israelis? Listen to the Nixon tapes. They have been our foot soldiers. The colonial pursuit of Palestinian property must end.

I'm reading a lot of cynicism in these posts, but I congratulate these young people for coming together to do ANYTHING that might increase the chance for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

Keep working for peace.

I wish I could say that reading this entry gives me any real hope.

I hear a Palestinian girl talking peace and a Jewish Israeli speaking about the need to promote Israel as more than a war zone. I hear the Israeli once again heaping all the blame for the conflict on Palestinians and not once did I read in his piece about the profound daily struggle and suffering being inflicted by Israel on an unarmed Palestinian population. I hear an absence of empathy and an absence of responsibility from the Jewish Israel, I only hear self-entitlement and arrogance which makes me less hopeful about peace and more fearful about a catastrophic confrontation between the world and Israel. If Yaniv Rivlin is indicative of what young Jewish Israelis believe then peace will not come to that generation.

My compassion and outrage stands firmly with the Palestinian people and their indomitable spirit in the face of such oppressive violence and hate from Israel and its supporters.

It's great that there are people on both sides working for peace.

Let's also not forget about Rachel Corrie. She was a 23 year old American peace activist who went to the occupied territories on a humantiarian mission to help Palestinians living under military occupation. She was crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer as she tried to protect the home of a Palestinian doctor, his wife, and three children from demolition.

The bulldozer was sold to the Israeli Defense Forces by Caterpillar, an American company. Witnesses say Rachel was in clear sight of the bulldozer, which ran over her twice, and the only "investigation" ever done was by the Israeli military, which cleared itself of any wrong doing. A call to the US Congress for an independent inquiry was never fulfilled.

There was a play in New York called "My Name is Rachel Corrie," comprised of the journal entries and emails of this young lady that was cancelled (but finally allowed to show) by the New York Theater Company because of extreme pressure by Jewish groups.

Rachel's own words in an email to her family (February 7, 2003):

"I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States--something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here..."

I hope we can all remember Rachel Corrie - she knew the truth. Voices like hers can never be silenced. I hope more Americans take the time to seek the truth.

Thie organization is a sham. I am surprised at Huff for running such an irresponsible piece. It purports to advocate open dialogue, while it allows Israel to keep all the stolen land, regulate water, electricity, and other daily signs of Occupation. Do not think the 40 yr problem of Israeli occupation can be solved by listening to the voice of one uninformed Palestinian girl and one smug settler.

Many years ago,as a young man with very limited knowledge of the world beyond what I had experienced in some combat in the Pacific Theater,what I had seen in Newsreels,heard on the radio and limited actual reading of newspapers,I spent my time working to find a career path.

The opinions I had about a place like Israel were derived mainly from the press and reading authors of best sellers.
The impressions I obtained were that there were attempts being made to establish a place where about a half million displaced European Jews could move to reestablish themselves and set up a small homeland.

I knew absolutely nothing, about the people who were living in the area and would be displaced by this"homeland".It simply did not occur to me that this area was not a population vaccuum!Prior to the "Jewish Homeland"movement.

Nor did it occur to me that this populace of one half million people would explode into over six`million people from all over other parts of the world,people of dual citisenship that would take over ever growing parts of the area and displace and brutalize more and more people of the area.

In the long period between my "salad days"and senior citisenship,thanks in large part to developing a keen interest in something that has evolved into an ever growing "sore spot"on the planet,my opinions have completely reversed!
My sympathies are now and have been for sometime with the people who have been portrayed by our press and public opinion,as the perpetrators,but are the obvious victims of misplaced sentiments,The Palestinians!

It's gonna take a lot more than maudlin sentiment by a couple of idealists to bring balance to the Palestine Israel conflict.It's gonna take something that is next to impossible to achieve,and that is a balanced attitude on the part of American politicians,and foreign policy formers,and ,of course a more balanced behavior on the parts of these people.
If this doesn't occur I kind of agree with other experts,some very very dier consequences are likely to be the outcome!

I ran across an old Time article from the late 1970s with Moshe Diane quoted as saying (paraphrasing actually), "to insure the security of Israel, there can be no separate and autonomous Palestinian state". Not much has changed.

The Israelis set the model for using terrorism to gain full independence in 1948 and after, until their IDF was well established, and now suffer the consequences.

As the US unequivocally supports Israel, it is our consequence as well.

The new 2007 Census of the Republican Party, a recent questionaire/donation mail-out to the party faithful, asks, "Should the Republican Party continue to support the state of Israel?".

What would happen if the resounding answer was, "NO!"? If such an answer arose en mass, then One Voice would stand a much better chance of success.

SEARCHING FOR TRUTH, JUSTICE AND PEACE

ANTI-SEMITISM IS EVIL, just as is anti-any-ethic-group. But what about ANTI-ISRAEL, based on the behavior of that nation?

We Americans need to stop playing word games. For example, if we apply the Webster definition of "TERRORISM" to the already-forgotten recent Middle East war between Israel and Hezbollah, and use OBJECTIVE MEASUREMENTS, then Israel and not Hezbollah was the biggest terrorist in this tragedy, with 50 to 1 non-combatant deaths for Lebanon vs. Israel (2/3 of Israeli dead were soldiers), and an even greater disparity in terms of infrastructure and the long-term suffering of people. Israel could have fought Hezbollah up close and personal, but instead involved over a million innocent Lebanonese in an asymmetrical war using United States-supplied warplanes and smart bombs.

Of course, the word terrorism is reserved for our enemies, and not part of our terms of endearment with Israel. However, before we consign what happened to Lebanon and its people to "collateral damage" and it completely fades from our short attention span, perhaps we can find a more appropriate term to describe ravaged Lebanon, such as "collateral devastation." As the pendulum of action and reaction/cause and effect swings our way, we won't just sit and wonder why these terrible terrorists hate us and want to kill us (they do 9-11, we do Lebanon, and so on).

Human beings think and rationalize in words. For this reason, words decide issues. Many people use words imprecisely or for advantage, and not for truth. The prime example here, anti-Semitism and anti-Israel are not the same thing. If they were the same, then the Israeli government would be infallible. Israeli tough-guy terror (seen often, even on American TV) is about half the reason the United States is hated in the Middle East. Unfortunately, we have to go along too because no one can speak the truth of words and reality. Our one-sided policy in the Middle East is a disaster.