Yeah, I can believe that, C. Ham.

I had thought of mentioning the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Bill, in fact I did mention it awhile back....but maybe it was on another thread. Point being: Jews, like anyone else, will riot under extreme conditions of various sorts...and in that case the conditions were about as extreme as it can possibly get. I do believe that a sense of powerlessness, combined with a sense of outrage, is most often the primary thing that causes people to riot.

Aggie, you are quite right. If there was no oil in that region, the West would turn a blind eye and basically not give a damn. Sheer pragmatism is what lies behind most, if not all military alliances. The lengthy Cold War between the Soviets and the West also greatly complicated the situation, as it did in numerous other places.