Had the war against Hezzbolah continued and the poiltical leaderships of many nations had the courage to demand the release of the captives, it would not be necessary to wring hands post hoc. The was a green light from many lands to Olmert's initial war objective to get the captives alive. He and Peretz bear the blame now for failing to find and release them. For that, they need replacements asp.

is a Rider Story for polititians to get the cheap vote , but to date they are not back home. Shameless Polititians !

Here we start again ... A .... licker , he will hang the David's star on his neck and walk around with it ... Carter was rght when he said that any politcian will try to solve the Palistinian - Israeli problem fair he suicide his political future ... and here is it this one show it again ... the same czinareo for the same movie every 4 years but with new actor .

Don't get me wrong, I ceratinly feel sympathy for the families of the captured Israeli soldiers. But these soldiers were uniformed members of the armed forces of Israel and as such, they are legitimate targets in the struggle to remove illegal, foreign occupiers in Palestine. When nation-states, even faith-based and race-based colonial enterprizes, like the Jewish Satate, get into the land-grabbing business, things like these "kidnappings" will naturally occur. The brutal and inhumane Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan has lasted for over forty years and all that has resulted is more hate, more violence and more human suffering. The Israeli approach to peacemaking is a complete and utter failure. The only hope for a stable future in Palestine and the ME region, is to abandon the dubious, 2-state, "apartheid solution" in favor of a negotiated one-state, bi-national state solution. By that, I mean consensual annexation of the OPT (Judea and Samaria) in exchange for full Israeli citizenship for all who now reside there - Arab, Christian or whatever. I don't mean phony, Jim Crow, Israeli citizenship, but fully integrated and fully empowered citizenship for all, in a re-unified, demilitarized Palestine. If that means the end of Jewish supremacy and hegemony in the region, so be it. Theocracy sucks! But don't expect Barak Obama to make waves, his ambition has blinded his vision. Barak is cool with apartheid.

You claim that Israel should become a bi-national state and that this will rid the region of a theocracy. Unfortunately, you forgot to mention that the majority of Palestinians (Hamas+Islamic Jihad supporters - far more than 50%) support Islamic militarism and want a 'RELIGIOUS ISLAMIC Palestine'. In replacing a Jewish majority with an Arab one in such a binational state as you suggest, an ISLAMIC THEOCRACY would be created. What's more, it would be an overt one. Your reference to Jim Crow laws is laughable, because it undermines your call for a binational, (Muslim majority) state. For now, the most that can possibly be argued, and this only if security is completely removed from context, is that there are de facto Jim Crow laws in effect. In stark contrast, in a binational state of your suggestion, Sharia law would be voted into place and that would create OPEN AND DELIBERATE JIM CROW LAWS AGAINST JEWS. Under Sharia law, non-Muslims are CLASSIFIED as second-class citizens. In practice, this classification leads to much worse: they are largely abused and often violently discriminated against (see ME nations such as Morocco, Iraq and Yemen post-1930s). Your argument for a binational state of the sort you suggest indicates that you either a) have no grasp of the regional reality b) only have a problem with discrimination against Arabs, but no such problem with discrimination against Jews.

Thank you, for the opportunity to debate these contentious issues with somebody who is actually "on the ground" in the conflict zone. NL, you claim that, I "either a) have no grasp of the regional reality or b) only have a problem with discrimination against Arabs, but no such problem with discrimination against Jews " Perhaps you are too close to the action to see the conflict in its proper perspective. From my view, that of a concerned US taxpayer, things appear differently. As for my tolerance of discrimination directed at Jews, please show me where I implied or even insinuated that such is the case. Your scary, post-reunification scenario is full of "would be" hypotheticals - you wrote, "In replacing a Jewish majority with an Arab one in such a binational state as you suggest, an ISLAMIC THEOCRACY would be created. What's more, it would be an overt one." Are you using a crystal ball to make these predictions? You added a third, conjured-up "would be" and a "would create ", to bolster your argument; you wrote, "a binational state of your suggestion, Sharia law would be voted into place and that would create OPEN AND DELIBERATE JIM CROW LAWS AGAINST JEWS. Under Sharia law, non-Muslims are CLASSIFIED as second-class citizens." Again, I ask, what prognosticating device are you using to be able to predict these things with such absolute certitude? The one-state or bi-national state concept would only work if there is a Constitutional Guarantee of full-citizenship, equal opportunity, and eqauity before the law for all citizens, regardless of race, creed or ethnicity. The USA could help draft such a Constitutional document, since we US-taxpayers pay the piper, we should get to call the tunes. And the names of the tunes today are Secular Governance, Pluralism, Tolerance, Equal Opportunity and Diversity. The idea of a safe haven for the Diaspora in Palestine, the "Jewish State", is a romantic, utopian notion at best and when that lofty ideal can only be realized through oppression, then Herzl's well-intentioned experiment becomes a dangerous anachronism. Cooler heads need to prevail, on both sides. If, as you claim, some 50% of the Palestinians want a theocratic state, that means that half of the Palestinians are ready for secular democracy, that's encouraging. If only 47 of the 120 Israeli Knesset seats are currently held by ultra-nationalist and ultra-religious MK's, then it may be safe to assume that maybe half of the Israeli electorate is also functionally ready for pluralism and secular governance. That too is encouraging. The key to success for the one-state solution is US support. That's not likely. As long as US policy is orchestrated by and animated by the US/Israeli military/industrial complex, Big Oil, the American "Religious Right" and the Pro-Israel PAC's, the savage status quo, an utter disgrace to humanity, will continue - it's strictly business as usual, regardless of the US Political Party that happens to be "in power".

Your choice of words such as "occupation" betray your political bias. You claim to want honest debate yet stack the deck with negative assumptions. Negatively framing the debate from the start exposes your pro-Pali-jihad agenda.

The answers to your questions were implied in my first talkback, but I'll try again: Given the demographic rates and population comparisons in West Bank and Gaza vs Israel, and given the current percentage of Palestinians who currently support ruling a Palestinian as an Islamic theocracy (see Hamas and IJ charters, for start), it requires no crystal ball to see that, in a few years in a binational state, the majority of voters would be interested in instigating sharia law and having a religious Muslim government (and therefore, vote for such a thing - as voters tend to vote their interests). As such, they would vote in an Islamic theocracy. In an Islamic theocracy, there would be Jim Crow laws automatically, since the sharia law system, as I explained in my first tb, overtly classifies non-Muslims as second class citizens. Thus, I said you didn't understand the reality on the ground because a binational state with such a demographic ( a pro-Islamic-state majority) would not lead to the elimination of a theocracy as you suggested, but rather would create a legally solidified one. In your first tb, you made no mention of any constitution as a security measure against discrimination. Even so, a constitution can be amended, so there is no guarantee to prevent religious law from taking over at some point. A constitution is merely a set of solidified higher laws that require a larger majority of votes to change than normal laws. Nowhere is it written that a constitution must contain the law of equality or must not contain laws referring to religion. As such, I still strongly disagree with your premise that a one-state, binational solution is the way to go to stop discrimination in this particular case.