aside from all this circumstantial stuff, israel is the country which dropped cluster bombs on 350 sites in lebanon, leaving as many as 100,000 unexploded devices lying around in the south of the country. they did this 72 hours before the ceasefire became effective, obviously wishing to inflict the maximum amount of damage possible in the last minute. these figures came straight from an un official.

the un also confirmed that israel is responsible for the majority of breaches of the conditions of the ceasefire. they also called israel immoral. right on.

this leaves littles to the imagination as to what the 'new reality in lebanon' that israelis talk about really entails. and, when the billions of military aid which pour in from america have done their job, and lebanon and palestine are broken, will they stop? who's next on america's dirty work list?

i'm probably gonna receive a barriage of 'you don't know what its like for them' and 'you're being judgemental', but i'm afraid that i'm way beyond caring with this. if people want to sanction blatantly assymmetrical warfare then thats up to them but i'm out.

Janimal, in another thread, on what it means to be human, in the religion section, you and I discussed "paying attention" to (or being aware of) our environment.

I'm sad to say that I am out of touch with what's really going on in my country and in the world.

Even in America, we're becoming more polarized, I think.

There are things about the policies of America that I do not like. And those of other countrie in the world, also.

And yet, I live here. And I want to continue living as many more years as I am able and enjoying life.

We all have a bit of "arrogant humans" in us, I'd bet. I wonder, no matter how well-read we are, how we can see the world as it really is, rather than how we've been taught or as we are told that it is?

I certainly don't know how we can pull it together for all the people of the world.

thats a beautiuful line, and not seeing what is really there is at the heart of why governments get away with murder and destruction. i live in cornwall, which is officially part of england (though we don't like to think so), and therefore part of the uk. i love living here - its still one of the most beautiful places i've seen, but as to what the uk stands for politically, that is where i start to hate my country.

it's very hard to get away from all that stuff - therer aren't many countries out there which are politically sound - if any - and i'm not sure that moving to them would achieve anything. better for the uk's and americas of this world to have the criticism come from within. if enough people keep yelling maybe one day the us government will see that they are now seen by ordinary people all over the world as our greatest threat to peace. as a pragmatist i believe they already know but don't give a stuff as long as the cash keeps flowing.

These are comments from another thread.

The page references are given and some responses have already been posted.

right on. you could call it a failed attempt at a state.

Eish. Was this guy in the Borat movie by any chance?

i thought he had it about right. i've no problem with jews, but the state of israel is a joke. and not a very funny one. btw, whom did marx murder? wasn't he just a theorist who ended up getting murdered himself?

I hope that people will discuss this matter, if they so choose, but I can see that it could possibly turn into an argument, rather than a debate, so I hope that restraint will be exercised if, when & where necessary.

Thanks!

Maybe you don't, but it sure sounds like the Esoterist does, describing Jews as a race of insufferable, snivelling whiners who have exhausted his cheeks. Lots of people whine. The Jews I know are no more prone to whining than anyone else. I somehow doubt that all the people who have come on this forum to whine about Muslims, Mexicans, Blacks and asylum seekers were Jewish.

While I sympathise with the plight of the Palestinians, Israel is really just another tribally-based state suffering the consequences of the erroneous idea that every ethnic group must have its own exclusive homeland. It is just another chapter in the failure of the 19th century European ideal of the "nation state", and it wasn't the Jews or the Israelis who invented that.

Perhaps we could say that the Jews, having themselves been victims of the European ideal of nationalism , should know better than to create their own version of it. But they are just human after all, and since when do we humans learn from our mistakes? History repeats itself because we are ultimately an idiotic species, Jews included. Besides, what are the Palestinians themselves fighting for if not their own bit of ethnically-cleansed tribal turf? It's six of one and a half-dozen of the other, really. They'd probably all be better off if the Ottoman empire was revived.

i guess he did push the envelope there, although, is it not fair to observe that the jews do seem to have a 'woe to us' outlook on the world. the esoterist was right in that there is a world full out there of suffering and not everybody wails about it as much as the jews.

personally i think israel has no excuses. 60 years, not one day of peace, and not one border issue addressed without violence. without american military aid, which gives them a massively unfair advantage, israel wouldn't exist anymore today.