Mrrzy,

Any white person who lives in the Americas is living on land conquered from the red men. Hell, Texas and California were subsequently conquered from the Mexicans.

Any white person living in Australia is living on land conquered from black men.

Go back into the history of any country and there's a history of conquest. It was only in the 7th century A.D. that the first Arab conquerers arrived in what we now call Israel/Palestine. Jews were there thousands of years beforehand.

Big Mick,

If you look at history, you will see that prior to the 20th century, Jews were treated much better in Moslem countries than in Christian countries. That, of course, changed completely following World War II.

After the creation of Israel, more Jews were forced out of Arab and Moslem countries than there were Palestinians who were forced out, or fled from, Israel. The difference is that those forced out of Arab and Moslem countries were absorbed into the citizenry of Israel while the Palestinian refugees were forced into squalor by the Arab governments who encouraged them to leave.

Not all Palestinians left Israel in 1948. Those who stayed enjoy much greater rights and freedoms than in virtually any of the surrounding Arab countries. Today, there are 1,000,000 Palestinian Arabs who are citizens, who vote and elect members of the Israeli Knesset and who are exempt from military service because Israel does not want to force anyone to potentially fight their own relatives.

The United Nations partitioned Palestine in 1947. Rather than accept a Jewish and a Palestinian state, the Arabs massed their armies and attacked when the British left in 1948.

From 1948 until 1967, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza were part of Jordan and Egypt. The Arabs could have created a Palestinian state on that territory at any time. They did not. Rather, they maintained the stance that Israel would be defeated in a coming war and "the Jews would be driven into the sea."

When Israel reached peace settlements with Egypt and Jordan, those countries washed their hands of their former territories and the Palestinians therein.

18 months ago, Arafat could have accepted Israel's peace settlement. Or, he could have said that the offer brokered by President Clinton was the basis for further negotiations. Instead, Arafat walked away and began the terrorism that has escalated until today.

When Israelis saw the return of terrorism, they got scared and elected the warrior Sharon as prime minister. Arafat and his friends in Hamas have known all along that Sharon will respond with a heavy hand to every attack. They have known all along that many more of their children will probably die as a result. That is their game. They score points on the bodies of their dead children.

If Arafat was a Ghandi or a Mandella, things could have been so different. What Arafat has succeeded in doing has been to destroy the very large Israeli peace movement.