Richard: My position is, as you can extrapolate from my posts in all threads on this topic for years, equivocal, one of complete ambivalence. But the only place to start is here. Do not, please, be like the yokel in the joke asked for directions and replying "Well, you can't start from here". It's the only place to start, without going into the ins-and-outs, moral or historical, of how we got here. Whether we should admire or denounce those early Russian-Jewish pioneers who just moved in and founded Kibbutz Daganiyah; whether Lord Balfour should have made his 1917 Declaration to reward Weizmann for help in winning WW1; what the British Mandate authorities should have done; whether negotiation was ever possible; what would have happened if the 1948 partition plan had been accepted by all sides ~~ all these are vain conjectures -- as vain as trying to re-establish Celtic rule over Essex.

There Israel is, like it or not. Its enemies are not going to accept its presence. It isn't going to go away.

Hence my reply to Jim a couple of posts back. Here we jolly well are, Nowhere to go from here. But we have got to go somewhere.

So -- somebody's move.

Whose?

And whither?

You tell me...

~M~