The Fanatics in Iran are hellbent on the path of destruction. Listening to external cooks trying to tell Israel to be a sitting duck of the Fanatics' Mushroom Cloud would be suicidal.

FOR THE INFORMATION ON HOW FAST YOU CAN PRODUCE YOUR FIRST BOMB THE STRIKE DATE ON YOUR FACILITIES WILL BE ADVANCED NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY IT TOOK YOUR NATION EIGHT YEARS TO BATTLE IRAQ AND NOT TAKE ONE INCH OF LAND

In a one day battle. You sure you a retired military officer?? Didn't know they don't teach you history over in the US army. By the way,it took you 12 years to get defeated by a bunch of vietnamese. Remember that one?? And I'm sure you already see what hell your troops are in right now in afghanistan(bunch of rag tags) PS: a new war in the region is out of the question. So cut the blabbering already.

Dear Eitan. Thanks for your thoughtful response, clearly it is impossible to explore all the issues here because they are, lets face it, protracted and deep!! However it would seem that I could boil your point down to this: 'The longer an ethnic group has lived uninterrupted in a land, whether or not they were in governance of that land for the entirety of that time, their claim for governance of that land is directly proportional to the length of their occupation.' That is to say, your point seems to be that there has been a Jewish presence in Israel for 3,700 years and a Muslim presence for a much shorter time, which gives the Jewish people a moral claim to governance. If we are to accept that position then I would say that you should hand the governance of America back to the Native Americans. They have lived in that land far longer than you, my Anglo-sized friend. Since I do not like to differentiate between people on the grounds of race however, I won't be making that point! I appreciate that a debate on the rights and wrongs of handing governance back to the Jewish people is somewhat futile since it has happened, and in that regard I am very much of the opinion that we should 'see what can be done now', You will no doubt be fully aware that the UN takes a vote every year on Israeli policy, having accepted that , under International Law, it is unacceptable to take land by war. Which, of course, the Israeli's have done with our assistance. The favoured solution, mooted every year, is for a two-state settlement with a new Palestine carved out from the occupied teritories. Every year approx. 160 countries vote in favour of this. Every year approx. 8 countries vote against with Israel and the US being the leading two along with Naru, Palau, Micronesia the Marshall Islands and a couple of others. Israel knows full well what the international consensus is. The only countries that don't accept that consensus (that actually matter) are Israel and America. Even without looking to international consensus, there is hardly a commendable argument for killing Palestinian civilians and making further inroads into the occupied territories. You will recall that you once had a very similar attitude to your own native ethnic race. In much the same way that you have now sought to live in relative harmony with the other ethnicity’s in your land (and pay them compensation for your past atrocities), I (and the international community) would argue that Israel should do the same. The rhetoric of Zionism and an esoteric claim to governance is only persuasive to bible-thumping Americans! Your reference to that fictitious work is proof if proof were needed. Everyone else would like the world to try and live in peace. That means multi-cultural peace, because that is the connected world we now live in. It cannot be achieved whilst Israel continues to deny Muslims their right to a Country within the occupied territories. Given that Israel has bombed the UN without apology this is hardly likely, although I am surprised that the proposition is met with so much criticism even from an Amercian!! .

Dear Eitan. If your point is that Jewish people had a hand in developing nuclear weapons, I surely wouldn't disagree. How great this development was is another debate altogether. You show a bias in naming only the Jews who worked on the project, and one Italian (presumably not an Italian Jew). I have it on good authority from a friend at AWE that there were many other non-Jews who played absolutely pivotal roles in the development of nuclear weaponary and I don't think we really need to discuss the bias that your comment entails in any great detail. What is perplexing however is why you would make this point at all. Perhaps to counter my position that the 'West' had given nuclear capabilities to Israel?! If so then I'd say the point clearly still stands because those Jewish people you mentioned were working for Western countries. You go on to list many noble accomplishments of the Jewish people. I do hope that you are not suggesting that those accomplishments were only achievable by Jews. Because, of course, that would be quite racist. CPU's to one side, it was an Englishman, Charles Babbage, who invented the computer. Putting transistors onto a small board is one thing, although it was not a Jew that dreamt up computing with transistors. It was an Englishman, Tommy Flowers in WWII. I am not a racist or a historical imperialist, so I accept that there are plenty of brilliant people all over the world, any of whom may have dreamt up the computer or its latest electronic incarnation. It really is difficult to know why you would tirade about the accomplishments of Jews. I accept and admire those accomplishments but of course people of every creed, nationality and religion have made incredible scientific breakthroughs over the years. I do hope that you appreciate that and also the fact that those breakthroughs were the results of brilliant minds, not of religious or racial ideologies.

Stan, here are my views on occupation, international law, and self-determination: The US needs to either compensate or restore ancestral lands to Native American tribes, from the Seminole to the Gabrielino, for ethnic cleansing and violating the former’s treaties. These crimes can’t be whitewashed by invoking “Manifest Destiny,” or arguing that steering bison off cliffs is a suboptimal use of land and natural resources. On the legality of modern Israel’s presence in the West Bank, I’ll just cite this sentence from the Wikipedia article: Although international law (Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention [4GC]) prohibits transfers of the population of an “occupying power” to occupied territories, media outlets often interpret the law to incur a responsibility on the part of Israel’s government to prevent Jews or non-Arab Israeli citizens from voluntarily residing in the West Bank, including cases where Israelis seek to restore Jewish communities destroyed by Arabs prior to Israel’s statehood, such as in Hebron and Gush Etzion. We’ve already established that no sovereign claimant exists to “retake” the West Bank. As for the UN, I don’t recall any binding resolutions stressing the illegality of actions taken by Sudan (ethnic cleansing of Christians and animists), Syria (300,000 Syrian families transferred from forced agricultural projects), China (forced Han settlement in Tibet), and Croatia (expulsion of Serbs from Krajina), all actual violations of 4GC. The UN is a microcosm of all the world's governmental ineptitude, often strong-armed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference to attack Israel’s legitimacy (or attack Article 18 of the UDHR permitting everyone the right to change his religion), and the arbitrary, racist application of not just 4GC, but an inferred ‘juden raus’ requirement for the West Bank, challenges the alleged universality of international law. On self-determination: The response to a declaration of independence by Ramallah may well be "The Jewish Republic of Samaria and Judea" for the 80% of the West Bank under Israeli military control. However, frequent Ramallah visitor Tony Blair has complained that the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is neither willing nor able to establish the infrastructure of independent statehood, not unlike how Arabs refused to engage in representative democracy, or create public institutions, during the British Mandate. My sense is that we may never hear the PA declare statehood – Mahmoud Abbas would need to become an accountable public office-holder and balance a budget, UNRWA food aid and living stipends may stop flowing to Arabs as world government demand the PA pay for its own lunch, and unemployment would no longer be a world-charity problem, but an existential crisis that could cost Abbas his head. On the points you’ve made regarding British achievements: no one would dispute these. But claiming that Israel is armed only through the auspices of the “West” ignores a leading defense industry responsible for the Merkava tank, the Eitan UAV, Iron Dome, Arrow missiles, India’s spy satellites, and Jericho III IRBMs. And the Centrino chip is a local invention, plus it’s more useful than Babbage’s original computer. I have a few links and books to recommend for you. http://zionistfederation.blogspot.com/2010/04/death-muhammad-zen-ismail-al-farmawi.html explains how many of the blood-libel stories concocted by the Palestinian media agency Ma’an are utter falsehood. Regarding Operation Cast Lead, the UN has backed away from its allegations that Israeli mortars struck the UNRWA compound in Gaza after teachers and staff inside the compound contradicted the claim (http://jta.org/news/article/2009/02/03/1002744/un-backs-off-claim-israel-struck-gaza-school). The problem, of course, is that blood libel never requires a front-page correction of the newspaper making the allegations, as Fatah and Hamas learned from the Muhammad al-Dura hoax.

Disproving the contention that Hamas has not used civilians as human shields: Hamas MP Fathi Hammad is televised admitting that Hamas actively uses human shields in a broadcast on Al-Aqsa TV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0wJXf2nt4Y. Footage of Hamas press-ganging children to be used as human shields can be found at the following URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J08GqXMr3YE On the complicity of the UN in aiding terrorists: The UNRWA has employed known terrorists at its schools, which are documented to function as terrorist academies: "Former top Islamic Jihad rocket maker Awad Al-Qiq, who was killed in an Israeli air strike last May, was the headmaster and science instructor at an UNRWA school in Rafah, Gaza. Said Siyam, Hamas' interior minister and head of the Executive Force, was a teacher for over two decades in UNRWA schools." As for the curriculum at a UNRWA school: "A notebook captured by Israeli officials at the UNRWA school in the Kalandia refugee camp several years ago glorified homicide bombers and other terrorists. Called "The Star Team," it profiled so-called "martyrs," Palestinians who had died either in homicide bombings or during armed struggle with Israel. On the book's back cover was printed the UNRWA emblem, as well as a photo of a masked gunman taking aim while on one knee." Previous UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen has also gone on the record stating, "I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll." http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479940,00.html On the myth of Gaza’s “siege”: 738,576 tons of humanitarian aid were transferred into the Gaza Strip in 2009, with the UN providing $200 million in aid to Gaza in that same period. By contrast, Haiti has received only 5% of that amount from the UN. Gaza receives more aid than far needier and larger populations of actual refugees in countries like Haiti, but Hamas controls the flow of aid once it enters the Strip. Nevertheless, many Gazans will live without ever needing to earn a salary, thanks to UNRWA stipends. In 2009, 10,544 patients and their companions left the Gaza Strip for medical treatment in Israel, and last week alone nearly 500 patients and companions from Gaza entered Israel for treatment. You’ll find a photo of Lauren Booth buying a bottle of pop at the computerized checkout counter of a fully-stocked Gaza supermarket, before calling Gaza the “largest concentration camp on Earth,” at http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2009/03/gaza-weve-been-had.html. I should mention that I live in Israel now. You ought to come see things for yourself before taking anyone’s word for it. While Hamas threatens to murder Christian Arabs for apostasy, and the foreign, Quraysh Hashemite tribe running Jordan imposes genuine apartheid on Palestinian Arabs by barring them from holding public office and rescinding their citizenship, Israel manages to remain a multi-ethnic democracy, where 20% of Haifa University’s student body is Arab, over a third of the nurses, physicians, and patients at Rabin Medical Center are Arabs (based on my counting while there), and Arab Knesset members represent their constituents. Real life here would surprise you, and you’d wonder what other lies you’ve been fed. I used to see the world like you did during college, but for me, the illusions have been shattered.