And without Mr. Hitler, there wouldn't be any Israel in the first place...which has to be one of the most ironical (but predictable) results of a criminally insane policy of naked aggression in all recorded history.

Experience has shown that when you try to wipe a people out, they often have a way of coming back even stronger than before. It may also demonstrate this in the case of the Palestinians and the Arabs generally...given time. Israel (and its backer, the USA) could succeed in achieving what others have failed to do since Mohammed.

Consider the parallels: Hitler and his supporters in the 1930's and 1940's saw the German people as a people who had been unfairly attacked from all sides by a host of enemies (the Allies in World War I), a people who had been brutally wronged (by the treaty of Versailles and the war reparations, and the loss of German lands in several border areas). He felt that to recover those lost lands was a sacred mission.

Having already recovered most of them, by bluffing, he was not satisfied yet, but decided that the expanding German population needed more "living room"...on its borders to the East, mainly. This room would be taken by force, if other means failed, and occupied by German settlers when the local "subhuman" population (the Slavs) had been subdued or driven out or killed. This led eventually to his attacks on both Poland and the Soviet Union and embroiled him in an endless series of military conflicts with virtually all his neighbours.

He also believed that the Germans were a "Master Race"...a "chosen people" would be another way to put it. This belief of his amounted to a deep religious conviction. It was clear to him that Germans were morally and in every way superior to Slavs and most (if not all) other people.

He also believed that the Germans had SUFFERED unjustly, and that therefore they were entitled to revenge, retaliation, and whatever stern measures were needed to secure them their proper place in the world...no matter what the price might be to others affected by this expansionist policy.

Although he was surrounded and heavily outnumbered by his enemies, he had an elite military force, better equipped and far better trained than most of its opponents, with superb discipline and great patriotic fervour. This allowed him to defeat his enemies time and time again in lightning fast campaigns, making maximum use of air power and tank warfare under brilliant and unorthodox commanders...blitzkrieg warfare. The Luftwaffe was the most experienced and deadly air force in the world in 1939-40, and the German tank tactics were second to none. First you wiped out the enemy air force with a surprise attack, then you broke through with tank divisions and encircled and destroyed their armies.

The only problem for this well-oiled war machine was...it simply had too many enemies. It couldn't kill or occupy all of them...although it certainly tried to. Its enemies increased with every year, their numbers swelled with embittered fighters from the conquered areas, keen on striking a blow of vengeance.

In the end, Hitler achieved only the complete isolation and total destruction of his own Nazi regime.

Does any of this sound familiar? Move it ahead into the post World War II era...up till now.

The Israelis will never succeed in killing all the people they have alienated, unless there is a nuclear conflict that kills pretty much everyone in the region, Israelis included. Nor will the Palestinians succeed in killing all the Israelis, except at the very same horrific price...their own destruction.

Hitler was a man with a bitter grievance. His "people had SUFFERED!" He created a paranoid state that came to power through terrorism, stole land, and wrecked havoc on its neighbours. He also created another people with an even bigger and more bitter grievance...the international Jewish community, following the almost unbelievable travesty of the Holocaust. These were a "people who had SUFFERED!"

Those people in their turn have created a paranoid state that came to power through terrorism, stole land, and wrecked havoc on its neighbours, and continues to do so.

In doing so, they have created another people with a bitter grievance...the Palestinians and Arabs in the Middle East...who were already embittered by previous Turkish, French and British imperialism in any case...truly a "people who have SUFFERED!" (The usual story...)

The Palestinians and Arabs are not yet well organized enough to create a modern elite military state which can defeat its enemy (Israel) by blitzkrieg, but they are paranoid, they are committing terrorism, and they are on the same destructive path by which their enemy and his enemy before preceded them.

There are no good guys in this story, but there sure are a whole lot of innocent bystanders and victims of the violence that has been unleashed.

It's a mistake to assume that one side is good and the other side is evil. Both sides are acting by the law of the jungle...and he with the best military forces dominates the conventional battlefield...using tanks and airplanes to commit acts of vengeance and terror, while he with the weaker military resorts to snipers and suicide bombers to commit similarly pointless and hideous acts.

It won't end until we demolish the mythology of "good guy/bad guy" that inflames the thinking on both sides...and find a genuine will for peace on both sides.

It won't end until they each stop thinking they're better than the other guy is...until they each comprehend that the other guy has SUFFERED just as much as they have and is not a subhuman monster.

That would be a quantum leap in perception, but I do not necessarily believe it's completely impossible. The great powers, like the USA could help the process immeasureably by playing a genuinely neutral and helpful role in negotiations...and not continually arming the comabatants against each other. (But that would be bad for business, so I don't think you'll see it happen...it might happen if the situation becomes too dangerous to tolerate, however.)

- LH