Indeed, reading Mudcat, it seems that you are always quite upset by us. One day, it is the brutal repression of the Palestinians, the next day is Lebanon. I'm sure if Mudcat had existed then you would have been upset about the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad and the Yom Kippur War and the Sinai campaign. It appears that Jews who triumph and who, therefore, live, upset you most extraordinarily.

Nice smear attempt, Irwin, but no cigar. You are trying to justify what cannot be justified, and so ugly smears are the best you have to work with. But you know as well as I do, that smears like that one have no basis in fact.

My posting history is a matter of public record here in the Mudcat. Prior to the Israeli incursion into the occupied Palestinian areas in 2002, my position was not all that different from that of people like beardedbruce.

If you look at my posting history, you will see that I never posted to any threads about the Middle East prior to the incursion in 2002. And if you read my posts on threads about the Middle East after the start of that incursion, you will see that I have arrived at the position I hold now gradually, and through a long and painstaking process of questioning and investigating.

I arrived at my current position when I discovered that the government of Israel and its policies and practices are morally bankrupt and morally reprehensible, and that I (and the rest of the world) have been lied to continuously by the government of Israel and the Western media about the history of the Middle East, and about what is going on there now.

And you will find that more and more people, many of whom started out like me, accepting the party line coming out of Israel without question for our whole lives, are waking up and seeing what is really going on, and deciding that they cannot support it, and indeed, that they must speak up against it. The numbers are growing because the slaughtering of innocents, and the brutal repression of millions of people cannot be concealed forever, and deep down, most people really do have a conscience (unlike you, apparently).