McGrath, you are miscontruing my comments. Nowhere have I advocated violence or force. I've simply said that there is a strong element of middle class narcissist naivete to arguments suggesting that communities like the Palestinians in the OT, should use solely non-violent means to fight the assaults on their communities by the Israeli occupying forces.

Non-violence is always preferable, and all reasonable people know that. But it isn't reasonable, or even necessarily preferable, for us to expect people under military siege to be able to organize a widespread, grassroots non-violent movement and train people in non-violent resistance tactics. I think that is much too much to expect, especially when these communities are awash with guns.

I also disagree that Palestinian armed struggle is futile. It wasn't futile for the IRA, for the Sandinistas, for the ANC, or a lot of other organizations which have won concessions from occupiers and oppressors in the last 25 years using armed resistance. They've all gotten results too.