I'm reminded of the way that so many English people over the years when it came to talking about Ireland, kept on falling back into attacks on Americans for sending money to the IRA, (or Gadaffi, or whoever), and turned their attention away from what was happening in Northern Ireland, and the process by which it kept happening, and kept on spilling over into England.

Not sending arms into a battle zone, especially to people who are armed to the teeth, indeed seems a good idea - but people are always going to be able to get them from somewhere, and cutting off the supply to either or both sides isn't going to end the bloodshed. (In the last resort, you don't need advanced weapons to kill large numnbers of people.)

In any conflict of this nature, in Ireland or the Holy Land, until the cycle of reprisal and counter reprisal can be broken, the mutual slaughter will go on and on for generations.

Concentrating on blaming the other side is concentrating on the wrong things. There are people on both sides who are totally innocent who have been slaughtered and maimed and had their lives destroyed. And there are people on both sides who are to blame and who, intentionally or not, are acting in a sort of nightmare partnership.

Objective? But surely, musicmic, you complained in your previous posts was about people who weren't involved personally talking about these things. Too objective, you might have said.