Guest has promised that he/she was done with all this several times now, but can't seem to keep the promise. I have a bias, as will be obvious, and I have an identity, which I have not covered up. I know that most Israelis pray for peace and are willing to compromise to get it (that may not have always been true, but it is now). I believe that most Palestinians want vengeance more than they want peace. They want revenge, blood-letting, and sole control, not co-existence. (They allow as how Jews would be permitted to live in their Islamic state once they control it, but they won't be full citizens.) Israel is accused of being insensitive in its dealings w/ the Palestinians, and it certainly has been; it's very hard to be sensitive toward someone who is holding a gun to your head and who hates you utterly. When an Israeli mother's son dies in this war, her heart breaks; she weeps, she grabs her surviving children to her, she grieves forever and she never recovers. When a Palestinian boy blows himself up, his mother celebrates, dances in the street and ululates with joy for his martyrdom, and offers up the lives of all her remaining children. Golda Meir said, "When the Palestinians love their children more than they hate us, then we will have peace." That day has not come and I can only keep praying that it ever will. I have a day job and I can't spend the time that Guest purports to every day doing research on arcane points of history. This isn't about history for me, it is about my family. I don't have time to spend even on just enjoying mudcat as much as I'd like, let alone in reading and writing jeremiads (which I confess this to be) so there is not much point in "ad feminam" attacks on me personally--not that that will necessarily prevent them. But know that I am not likely to see them. BTW, I am politically a fairly progressive liberal on other subjects than this one.