the roof and laid an egg.

fires the soul.

In the name of unity, Oren is being charitable. Unlike what Oren says, the Israeli Left believes Israel has the right to exist only if it is ruled by "the Enlightened Ones". In their opinion, Israel ruled by the Likud and including religious people is an illegitimate entity that must cease to exist. Look at the facts. The Leftists have no hatred for Samir Kuntar, but do for a loser Haredi who spits. The Leftists do not care who attacked the Gay center if they can't pin it on a Mitnahel. The Leftists don't mind rockets on Ashkelon because that was the price for destroying the Jews of Gush Katif. The Leftists attacked the IDF as war criminals during Cast Lead because the IDF was beating the Islamists.

One more proof that your elevator doesn't go to the top floor

Have fun at your shul, at all the shuls in the world. Taase v'tishma, but don't let the secular hear you.

Dear Marucho, There does not need to be a historical origin for a nation to be born. The USA is a perfect example. It does not have it's own history; it was founded by British settlers. When the USA declared its independence from Great Britain on the 4th of July, 1776, there had never been a United States of America. There was no historical origin of the American nation. It's history was just beginning. The first decades its existence was difficult. The new nation fought repeatedly with Great Britain. There were huge problems with the way the country was organized. Some of these problems were solved with the introduction of the US constitution in 1787. Some were solved by time. One problem, slavery, was solved in a huge civil war between 1861 and 1865, when perhaps a million people died. But now, more than 200 years later, nobody denies that the US nation exists. No one denies the existence of American nationalism. And, oh irony of history, the two nations that once despised each other, the USA and Great Britain, were close allies in the two most horrific wars this world has ever known, WW I and WW II. From enemy to ally, history can be a strange thing. What happened with the Americans is happening with the Palestinians now. They are beginning to form their own nation and their own sense of nationalism. It will take decades, it may fall, but it could be the beginning of something beautiful and important. Just like the USA. Time will tell.

Dear Bluegrass Picker, I understand your opinion. However, if we look at history again, things do not always work this way. You want to claim all of Israel, and ensure that the Palestinians do not get full citizen rights in this country. You may also be open to the idea of all Palestinians moving to Jordan. The Palestinians in the West Bank want their own country there. If that is not possible, maybe they would be open to having Israeli citizenship. I don't think many Palestinians want to leave the West Bank; like you, they are attached to the land where their parents and great-parents were born, where they have always lived, where they feel home is. That is a powerful feeling. If we look at history, such conflicts happen quite often. Sometimes it is ended mass killing, cultural repression and dispersal of one of the sides. This happened with the Indians in America, the Aboriginals in Australia and now with Tibetans. Sometimes there is a war and the two sides split up. This happened with the USA when it fought for its independence from Great Britain, with the Netherlands when it fought for independence from Spain. By the way, the Netherlands lost its Southern, most populated part, in the struggle, that eventually became Belgium). The Baltic Nations and Finland eventually won their independence from Russia/ the Soviet Union. And sometimes the mother country wins by eventually absorbing the population, culture of the rebelling area. Europe is full of such places; Brittany in France, the Basque Country in Spain, Corsica in France. These conflicts all seem settled in favour of the mother country, to one never knows for such whether they might flare up again one day. Israel and Palestine? It can go all ways. Personally, I believe that Israelis are too decent, to morally upright to carry out mass deportations or mass killings. So that leaves either a conclusion where the Palestinians gain their independence, or an absorption into Israel. That latter solution would eventually lead to full and equal rights for Palestinians, I believe. South Africans all gained they full and equal rights, Afro-Americans in the USA all gained their full and equal rights. Time will tell which outcome will prevail. Though whether we will still be there to witness that outcome?

>> The Palestinians in the West Bank want their own country there. I can show you TEN TIMES the Dutch population of Sudanese that wants to be in Netherlands and have citizenship there. And, half the people in Greece want to retire on full pension at age 45. So, I don't care what people "want". Jordan is Palestine. Palestinians can become loyal Hebrews if they want, then they can get Israeli citizenship. If they want to remain as Arabics, they are Residents of Israel who vote by absentee-ballet to Amman.

Dear Bluegrass Picker, Your position is clear. I know that many Israelis think the same way as you. It collides with the position of many Palestinians, I am afraid. So further conflict, presumably for a long, long time, seems inevitable. For what it is worth, I believe that the Palestinians have rights, just as the Israelis have rights. If you are not willing to acknowledge that the Palestinians have valid desires and rights just as much as the Israelis, then the discussion has to end here. Good luck with it all!

Communist Jews created the "Yevsektsiya" in 1917. (the Jewish section of the USSR Communist party). They opposed Zionism - called it as bourgeois nationalism - and instead of pursuing the Zionist's dreams, that is, a future Israel, they created a new socialist Jewish "homeland in E. Siberia, named Birobidjan. Religious Jews were "relocated" to Stalin's Birobidjan. Ever since Marx, Leftist Jews are fighting for "Universalism", which is to turn the world into homogeneous mass of people without Israel and without Jews as ethnicity and culture. All this had been written in Marx's treatise "On the Jewish Question" 1843. It's an astonishing ignorance not having the modicum of knowledge on the Jewish left acrimony toward the idea of a Jewish State. It's over 160 years old saga