When a post gets you angry it's a good idea to sit back and cool off before you write a response. And then maybe wait a bit before sending it and rewrite it.

And in any discussion about serious stuff where feelings are high, it's far better to avoid any kind of sarcasm. It's like pouring petrol on a smouldering fire.

That post at 03-May-02 - 03:43 PM comes across as being written in anger; and it definitely adopted a sarcastic tone - "I guess that the survival of the Palestinians was uppermost in the minds of their freely elected leader, Yasser Arafat, when his government purchased new Mercedes Benz automobiles for he and his staff. I mean, never mind that the village has no well, the President has to look good as he rides through the refugee camps, right." And so forth.

And from there on things spiralled, with intemperate replies to intemperate replies that turned this thread, which set out trying to take a more constructive approach, into an interpersonal freefire zone.

To quote once more bert's excellent suggestion when he started this thread: "How about some positive suggestions for peace in the Middle East. Regardless of which side you feel compelled to support, if you post to this thread you must have at least ONE positive suggestion that might bring about peace."

And my positive suggestion in this post is that, in order to enable useful discussion te take place, we should abstain from making any use of sarcasm here, and that we should wait and consider before posting a reply to anything that annoys us.