No, DougR, I didn't hold the view I have now until recently. I never in my life thought I would hold the view of the Israeli government that I hold now.

When I first started looking for information, I was trying to find an alternative explanation for the behavior of the Palestinians than the popular idea that they are just hateful and evil. My training in the field of psychology (admittedly all at the undergraduate level) has taught me that destructive behavior has a reason, and when the reason is found, ways can be found to deal with the behavior.

But everywhere I looked, all I could find was hateful language from supporters of the current regime in Israel, and hardly any hateful language from Palestinians. So that made me think that there was more to the situation than we have been told here in the US.

And the more I have looked, the more horrified I have become with what is going on in Israel and Palestine. The first search I did was "Palestinian homeland" + "Jordan". That was where I found the article that made reference to the article by Christopher Hedges. I did a search on "Christopher Hedges" + "children", and I found the name of name of Bet Shalom. I did a search on "Bet Shalom", and I found the piece by Tad Matsui, and the piece by Neta Golan. (And several others that support what they are saying.)

I wanted to find out if there was any substance to what someone said about someone having already found evidence of war crimes in Jenin, so I did a search on "Jenin" + "war crimes", and I found the piece by Amnesty International. And several others, such as the one in the Amnesty International site that talkes about the concientious objectors in Israeli prisons.