"It doesn't take much strength of character to suggest that Israel stop its harsh retaliation for Palestinian based terrorist attacks, when the suggestion comes from the safety of distance and lack of familial or national kinship."

For those people in Israel who say this it does require enormous strength of character, as it does for those people in the Palestinian territories, or Arabs in Israel, or who say the same thing in reverse. And there are such people.

Those from outside have no right to express their support for such people? Maybe if that were also to apply to the people who declare their fervent support for those with the guns and the bombs and the gunships and the bulldozers, and who express that support in tangible form by supplying arms and assistance, that might be a good idea

For thirty years we had atrocities and reprisals in the country I live in, and the same justifications were given for carrying them on. I was working in a pacifist newspaper and I remember we had a bomb outside, and noone ever knew which side planted it.

And the reprisals always made things worse, and much of the time no doubt they were intended to. The purpose of the atrocity was to provoke the reprisal, and the purpose of the reprisal was to provoke the counter-reprisal. Talk about deterring the other side was a load of hooey, and everyone knew that.

And in the end for the most part we've got past that. Or at least I hope we have, because there's no certainty about it. Some day there will be peace in the Holy Land. Every reprisal, by either side puts that day further and further away.