Little Hawk - Seems to me you have your own geo/cultural/economic agenda which is fine, but that observation could've been posted to any BS thread in the mud demesne.

If you sit in your little spaceship 10 million miles out from Earth you can damn 'em all and let God sort 'em out. Rhyming democracy with hypocrisy was not your shining hour (or maybe it was).

GUEST, LO to RA: I am not going to back every Israeli action regardless of consequences. But overall, Israel has practised restraint and proportionate response, the trappings of a democratic society. I too am concerned with the Irish situation, and while there are similarities, I don't think they are point for point the same. Nowhere is Ireland being asked to accept borders that make it a dozen miles wide in its center with long term problems for a proposed Palestinian State which has no coastline and inadequate long term water supply.

And there has been a Palestinian state in the Middle East for some time now. It is called Jordan.