re: #308 steve_davis

It is not apartheid because Israel has palestinian arabs in its parliament. Israel offered the Palestinians East Jerusalem in 1947 for their capital. Palestinians responded by cutting off the water supply to West Jerusalem and spending the next 70 years attempting to drive Jews into the sea. I hope it absolutely eats up Palestinians every time they consider that they could have had a large country in 1948 with a capital in Jerusalem, prosperous countryside filled with orchards, while Israel would be a tiny little nation-state without enough room for an international airport, and that the reason why millions of Palestinians are living in camps is because they and their ancestors were mostly a bunch of religious bigots. Sorry, there’s my two cents’ worth. And yes, Israel has its religious bigots as well, but that’s hardly surprising, considering history. Territorial triumphalism kind of gets baked into everything when every conversation is about land.

No offense, but nobody cares what happenes in 1947. By “nobody” I mean my kids and from what they tell me, legions of their peers. I kind of agree with them. Why should I care about the petty reasons they are fighting when men, women and children are being killed through bombings and starvation?

In a situation where both sides are wrong I feel like we should be doing everything in our power to stop the fighting. That seems to be their postion as well.

I think teleskiguy mentioned a generational divide around here and I think there is some truth to that. Sometimes the broad historical context is used to excuse bad behavior.