I knew that article was a load of nonsense

in wasting American resources and lives in the service of Israeli warcrimes. The best treatment has always been and will always be prevention. Do not antagonize 20% of the worlds population by enabling the killing, maiming, extrajudicial imprisonement, and oppression of millions. Zionists and the military industrial complex are the only benefactors of this foolish policy and spreading hate against Muslims in the west is their most important tool. The average American citizen has a huge incentive in stopping these thugs. It isn't the children of the Zionist buisnessmen and politicians that die and kill in the middle east and these people make money off war while the American economy and the average citizen is being crushed. Every single week, the equivelant of the financial losses of the Gulf oil spill are being wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq and afghanistan were in tatters when the US invaded and will remain in tatters after it leaves. What was accomplished and who does this serve? There is nothing like strating a war to rekindle the flames of hate so that Israel can continue to commit warcrimes in the middle east sheltered by a US population that is increasingly hostile to Muslims. Is it really a surprise that the civilian population of an occupired country will kill and maim an invading army's soldiers? Terrorism is the expected outcome of such actions and in fact the goal of zionists, enabling them to perpetually brainwash Americans to be hostile to Muslims and their interests. When was the last time you heard anything positive about Islam in American media? Is this normal? Is it normal to be completely oblivious to the living conditions of peope under Israeli control? Unfortunately, to the common man in the middle east, the blood of the millions of people killed and displaced because of these wars is not only on the hands of Zionists and the MIC, it is on all of our hands. Truly, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Rally behind the flag suckers!

Love our every article ends up turning into a degenerate forum of Zionist conspiracy shills.

Editors of FP.com & 'True Tell'

I've seen some wonderful ideas be proposed by both authors and commenters of this website and I'm happy and excited that FP.com seems to attract lots of bright minds from all political and ideological camps (the fact that you guys let opposing authors take on each other in a public forum is wonderful and gives us the reader a very comprehensive view of the topic at hand)

But every single article that has one mention of Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, Jews, Arabs, etc features the sputtering, bigoted, and most importantly downright false ravings of anti-Israel fanatics. (see: "True" Tell) I and many others believe that the quality of debate and discourse in the comment sections of this website has been reduced and tensions inflamed by these types of posters.

I am in NO way asking for debate to be censored, obviously both sides of every issue need to be heard, but what people like True Tell are offering isn't a reasoned debate, it's hatred masked as political ignorance.

Thank You
- A concerned poster

The expulsion of Jewish citizens of majority-Arab nations for the most part came well after the founding of Israel and the Nakba. Besides, Palestinians - like those Jews who had property stolen and were forced to leave their nations - have also experienced a great deal of hardship at the hand of other Arab polities: Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, etc. The whole ideal and process of Zionism, though, is the beginning of these problems.

As for US policy toward Hamas and Hezbollah... it's utterly idiotic. Putting them in same category as Al Qaeda? Just another idiotic move from a nation that has exhibited such poor diplomatic leadership.

"Your comments are so so one-sided. I am a very regular reader of FP and I can say that, if anything, there are ridiculous posters of BOTH sides of this issue. There is no doubt in my mind that at least some of the posters on the pro-Israel side are hasbara employed activists whos apparent job is to muddy the debate and sling insults at anyone they disagree with. Just look at the comments on ANY article that Walt posts. So while I do agree with your post that there are some people that sling nothing but BS on both sides of the issue, True Tell does not appear to be one of them. That he disagrees with your position does not make him immediately a bigot."

Good point!

I am a neutral in this debate but I have to say True Tell has made some compelling points that deserve an answer.

He has been slated for using the word genocide and then gives a coherent reply that supports his case.

Pol Pot committed genocide. The Tasmanian aborigines were wiped out in a genocidal manner. The term Genocide certainly covers the treatment of the North American indians by the settlers in the modern-day USA.

I can see, given the points he makes, how the word genocide can be utilised with regard to the Arab population in what is now the State of Israel.

To dismiss his arguments with petty abuse shows intellectual weakness and cowardice.

Maybe some of those who taunt him should have a look in the mirror and perhaps question the beliefs that drive their antipathy.

As it is, I have a question for True Tell.

What type of Islam did the people in Andalusia, Bosnia and Morocco follow in the past.

I have a lot of time for Sufism, for instance, and realise the important role Islam played in the Middle Ages in preserving "modernity" as Christian Europe went backwards.

I am concerned, however, by the rising tide of Wahhabism in Islam.

Islam, which flowered in so many ways – culturally, philosophically, scientifically etc – in previous centuries is now entering a backwards phase, just as Christianity did in the Middle Ages.

This theological lurch backwards seems to be funded by wealthy individuals in oil rich Arab states such as Saudi Arabia. I don't think it is simply a knee-jerk reaction to the rise in Zionism.

This growth of fundamentalist Islam is as much of a problem as Zionism.

I would actually say that I favour Zionism as it is borne of modernity while the politics and theology espoused by the likes of Hezbollah harks back to a mythical past that existed only in the minds of those who lack imagination.

I don't think that's the point he was trying to make. Secular Arab nationalists, not just Western secularists, probably find Zionism preferable to Wahhabist nonsense.

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Avner,

And what is it? - 20%? - of that Israeli population is Palestinian... living in a "Jewish" state. Yes, they have the right to vote. They are also discriminated against, and most of all made to feel like permanent outcasts. As with the religious extremism of Saudi Arabia, the US should not directly support nations with such policies. Open, direct relations, yes. But financial and military support, absolutely not.

Vilkssweden,

The article you link to is good. Mostly valid points, until it gets to the Lexicon. A little crude. Besides, one can get be anti-Israeli without even being anti-Zionist. The most-Jewish force in the world today is Israeli fascism. Read the recent NY Review of Books article on the "Failure of the American Jewish Establishment."

That was supposed to read: "the most anti-Jewish force"

Sinsemillla,

I understand your reservations about the harshness of True Tell's language, I don't see the actual information he's providing as being dishonest or racist. You'd be better off dealing with the history. Buf of course, history's not on Israel's side, is it? : )

Sinsemillla,

If you're just going to say someone is lying w/o explaining how, that's not much worse than blathering about Zionists and the Israel lobby and their nefarious control of US politics. The only information you've pointed to is a Wikipedia article about a UN resolution that's nearly 30 years later than the one True Tell was talking about; the UN had changed dramatically in that time span.

Avner,

You certainly make everything sound nice. Given such a lovely state of affairs, perhaps Israelis will finally figure what they want the borders of their state to be - and what they are going to do about the far-right Israelis who are engaged in the conquest of land on which a further 3-4 million Palestinians live. No-one in the US asks this directly of Israel's supporters, "Is it going to be genocide or ethinc cleansing?"

Any article that can be sent through the Israel/Palestine gate ends up with these comment protagonists exhausted and bloodied as fist fighters in those old Westerns. Most of the contributions, whether accurate or distorted, are irrelevant. What does it matter what Arabs did to Jews or Jews did to Arabs in times past? The point that bothers world opinion is that Jews are, against every effort to prevent it, expanding in disputed land while Palestinians attract increasing sympathy for their worsening predicament. It has little if anything to do with right or wrong, it is a fact that is occurring on the ground; a couple of years ago these ‘fist fights’ would not be have been taking place and the progression from ‘there’ to ‘here’ has been uninterrupted by any blips and now appears all but inexorable; it might quite sensibly be let run its course and “rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad” as the Ayattolah said.

The only pin in the pie is the US which still holds Israel to be one of its geopolitical imperatives, but for which the area would long ere have resolved itself into one state where the talents of the peoples, Jews and Palestinians, might have made a modern Eden.

Zionist expansion, and its consequent effect upon the indigenous Palestinians, is not favoured by any but Jews for emotional reasons and US legislators for reasons of political pragmatism; no one else from Helsinki to Wellington by way of Timbukto would lift a finger to 'shield' Israeli expansion.

However, this thread has again gotten lost in a cul-de-sac distant from the article at its source which was about a leaked memo from a CENTCOM brainstorming session. A nation like the US that possesses no meaningful historical vocabulary to draw on when considering scenarios must depend upon such sessions and it is plain ridiculous, if not dangerous, that they should be taken literally. Mr Saab’s reminder of this is salutary.

Gosh, Vilkssweden,

The question of 3-4 million people being murdered or forced to leave their current homes - not to mention the millions living in refugee camps still - seems a little more pressing than those you ask.

As a matter of principle, the peoples you mention are not less deserving of a state. Perhaps other "Palestinian supporters" (let's work on grammar... supporters of what? - and I'm not Palestinian) think differently. And again, the Jews, in abstract, are not less deserving. They certainly are less deserving on the land in question. The manner in which they've made a state is the problem.

Yes, North Americans and Australians did kill many of the native inhabitants. Now Israel faces a situation wherein they probably can't get away with the slaughter I spoke of, but are nonetheless engaging in policies which would lead to such, or to being expelled.

Supporters of Israel always want to take us back a few thousand years. Seems a litle odd to be criticized for having a perspective that spans only a century or so. Anyway, yes Jews definitely were present - as a tiny minority. They expanded their numbers greatly under British auspices, even as the British did not support the idea of a Jewish state. If the fmr. Ottoman territories had been left to go their own way, no such mass immigrations into Palestinian terrority would have taken place. Perhaps Americans could have abandoned their own anti-Jewish practices earlier and allowed greater Jewish immigration during and after WWII. But of course let's not criticize American anti-Semitism, because extremist right-wingers are your allies these days, yes?

Here we go again with the Jordan agrument. Many of them are still in refugee camps. Jordanians don't want them there. In fact, despite Israel's claims about surrounding a bunch of bullys, the nations that went to war with them were those in which Israelis had forced massive numbers of refugees and are still trying to do the same thing. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to leave and hundreds of cities were destroyed. They deserved both lands. Once you accept this kind of thinking you're displaying, any and every former European colony would have no claim to its own land - because of racist assumptions that "they're all the same" and could just move to another former colony. We begin to see why the Israelis have found few friends across the formerly-colonized world.

If you want to step back and take your "far-sighted" position, you can justify anything. Some of us want to deal with what's happening. I suppose in reaction to Stalin or Hitler, you'd say, "Well, we've had mass-murdering tyrants before..." C'est la vie - la de da. In that case, why don't we fast-forward a few decades and have the Israelis who will eventually give up on the idiotic Zionist project go ahead and come here to the US, where indeed as Helen Thomas rightly said, they belong.

Rant?

Anyway, I'm sure you're busy, looking for places for 3-4 million people to live in Jordan. The 75% is excessive, but so is about everything you're saying here.

Yes, you fail to see how they're different. I know. The arbitrary nature of colonial boundaries has been acknowledged widely, well before your observations.

Your attempt to place the Israeli conquest of Palestine in the past sense is wishful thinking. Part of the overall argument I'm making here is that the Israelis should give up on this war they will ultimately lose; and that it has been costly enough to Jewish people, as they've gone from being leading lights of Western culture to pathetic losers who you often have to treat with kid gloves.

Your attempt to erase Palestinian history causes you to underestimate their significance in history. They'll get both Jordan and Palestine, in short. If you actually knew the history of the region - instead of a severely-limited ideologically-colored narrative that has little room for facts - you'd understand that's not such an unlikely outcome.

Reading Bilal Saab's critique of Mark Perry's article, I came away with the distinct impression that he was really stretching a point to discredit Mark Perry's account of his interactions with the Red Team. Ultimately, he conceded that Perry's report on the content of the Red Team report was accurate, and then claimed, preposterously, that if Hamas and Hezbollah read the Perry article, they will conclude that U.S. counterterror policy is confused and muddled. The idea that there is a rethink of a long-running failed policy is not a bad thing, regardless of what Mr. Saab says. Furthermore, if there is going to be any resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the nearterm, is there any doubt that somehow, Hamas is going to have to be included in the process? Could George Mitchell have reached the Good Friday Accord in Northern Ireland if Sinn Fein and the IRA were permanently excluded from the process? Of course not. There are never perfect parallels, and I would be the last to say that Hamas and the IRA are kindred organizations, but the idea that a healthy debate on the issue of how to deal with Hamas and Hezbollah is somehow going to show our enemies weakness is a really poor bit of tautological reasoning. Both Hamas and Hezbollah, as Mr. Saab presumably knows, are complex organizations, not homogenous, and not purely controlled assets of Tehran. In the case of Hezbollah, they are part of a national governing structure in Lebanon, with conflicting interests, historical backers, and a common front with their rivals, when it comes to Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty. A more sophisticated diplomatic approach, after eight years of Bush-Cheney "diplomacy-free foreign policy" and some false starts under Obama, would be welcome.

The Hezbollah and Hamass are deamons of this planet? . I rather have them killed? . They hate Isreal and Americans . All I can say is they al1 can go to Hell .