I've got plenty of numbers, Bill H.

You seem to have the quite the archive----is this obsessive on your part? Pray tell.

You'll probably never believe this, but I never really had an opinion on this subject prior to 2002, except to pretty much accept, without question, the prevailing attitudes towards Arabs and Muslims (and Palestinians) that were the norm in the areas where I lived during the period of my growing up years when such things can become inculcated. Most of my friends were Jewish, I lived in an area with a sizable Jewish population, and when there were Arabs present, such as some exchange students at my high school, I avoided them along with the rest of my friends. And I never really questioned the legitimacy of any of the stereotypes that abound in the US about Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians. If you do a search on my screen name, you'll see that I never even posted to any threads on the subject of the Middle East prior to spring of 2002. I just didn't know much of anything about it. And I shared the anger of US and Israeli Jews whenever Palestinian "terrorists" killed innocent people.

In spring of 2002, I saw things on my TV coming out of the Israeli incursion into the Occupied Territories that I couldn't believe were possible. I saw Israeli snipers shooting at unarmed old Palestinian women in the street. I saw a Palestinian man sitting in his living room with the bodies of his dead sister and brother-in-law, whose bodies had begun to subside into shapeless masses because the man couldn't leave his apartment to remove the bodies. He'd been there for two or three days with the bodies of his dead family. I would never have believed these things could possibly be committed by the government of Israel.

Then I started listening to and reading the words of the people who were trying to justify these things. They kept saying that all of the Palestinians hate all of the Jews, and that they are brought up and educated on this hate. And I started noticing that the only people I was hearing and seeing expressing hatred towards anyone else were the people who hate Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs. This didn't add up. So I started asking questions. And then I started finding answers on my own. And I found the Jewish human rights organizations. And the things I was learning from them made everything add up for the first time.

And ever since then, everything I have learned has come about because of people like you and the others on this thread and numerous other threads who ask me questions and who say things that don't add up to me. If it weren't for the other people in this forum who keep starting threads like this one and challenging me in them, I guess I wouldn't have much of an archive at all.

I'm not going to get those quotes or those numbers I mentioned tonight. I'm tired. I'll work on it tomorrow.