response 1 of 112:

Oct 15 14:22 UTC 2000

I watched the Town Hall meeting with both sides. They sound like children.
Their children made more sense by asking what the violence was solving.
I think all the adults should be relocated to Pitcairn Island and the
kids should be allowed to live in peace.

response 3 of 112:

Oct 15 17:55 UTC 2000

Doesn't Israel get the biggest portion of US foreign aid? Hey, if somebody was
paying me big bucks, I'd do things to make sure I stayed on the dole, too.

response 5 of 112:

Oct 15 23:48 UTC 2000

  If Israel wants continued support from the west (which they had better
  realize they *need*) they're going to have to do more to keep the moral
  high ground than they've been doing.  Self-defense when you're surrounded
  by enemies is something the USA is willing to support.  Firing missiles
  at Yasir Arafat's home for no apparent military purpose doesn't play as
  well, even when it's Yasir Arafat we're talking about, especially when
  the conventional wisdom says the current mess was provoked by one of your
  own hardliners..

  It's a damn lucky thing for Israel that the American missile destroyer
  was bombed in Yemen this week or the Middle-East image that would be stuck
  in Americans' minds would be the shot of the terrified young boy pinned
  down with his father in an Israeli firefight.  If the bombing *was* the
  work of Arab extremists, which is currently favored as the most likely
  explanation, the bombers mistimed it badly; they could hardly have picked
  a better way to cause anti-Arab anger among Americans and motivate the USA
  to overlook Israel's behavior in the last week or two..

response 7 of 112:

Oct 16 02:17 UTC 2000

Oh..don't bring up the history of the Palestinian coalition with Nazi's, 
you'll end up making sense and liberals don't like that.

response 9 of 112:

Oct 16 13:28 UTC 2000

        Unless I miss my guess, most of the population of Israel wasn't alive
during the second world war.

response 11 of 112:

Oct 16 16:57 UTC 2000

You could say that about anywhere except maybe a few towns in Florida.

response 13 of 112:

Oct 16 18:14 UTC 2000

They just need a good stiff drink.

response 15 of 112:

Oct 16 20:23 UTC 2000

That's a real intelligent viewpoint. While we're at it, let's fund
Hezbollah and condone terrorism worldwide.
I don't find any of it humiliating. I'm infuriated that the Palestinians
blame a visit from Sharon as a reason for starting riots and putting
their own people at grave risk.

response 17 of 112:

Oct 16 20:30 UTC 2000

The crazy thing is that there were signs that this was coming...the
"Palestinian Police" that were training in the hills with automatic
weapons.  There's a crusade against the Jews and most people really
don't care to address that particular point because they are
living in mostly Christian society where values are a little different.

response 19 of 112:

Oct 16 20:56 UTC 2000

They should be pissed at the Turks, then.

response 21 of 112:

Oct 16 22:07 UTC 2000

I understood it. I thought it was appallingly short-sighted. While not an
atheist myself, I agree with Mary's sentiment that holy wars do nothing to
promote tolerance or understanding of faith. The intensity of wars based on
anything other than faith is much less than those based on faith... that's
been true, through countless examples, over all of recorded history.

response 23 of 112:

Oct 16 23:48 UTC 2000

 re #6:

 klg> Why is it provocation for a Jew to go to the site to the Temple,
 klg> but not for the Moslem clerics to incite their people? 

  This is two different questions, why is it provocative, and isn't it
  also provocative for Moslem clerics to incite rioting?  I'm only going
  to answer the first one because the second part is a mini straw-man
  that doesn't really doesn't deserve an answer.  Anyway:  Why it's
  provocative: I can't think of a way to not make this sound flippant
  and somewhat circular but this is meant to be a serious answer - it
  was provocative because the Palestinians would be provoked.  *Why* this
  action would provoke the Palestinians and/or whether it is reasonable
  for them to react in such a way is another question, but can anyone
  doubt that Sharon knew his visit would cause an incident that would
  hamper the "peace process"?

  At any rate, I'm not even arguing that Israeli Jews *were* the ones
  primarily responsible for causing this recent flare-up.  There's more
  than enough blame to go around and the reasons behind the current fracas
  are far too complicated to be explained by a single provocative act by
  a high-profile hardliner on either side..  What I was suggesting in #5,
  and obviously need to spell out a little more explicitly, was that if
  they want to continue to enjoy the support they've had from the USA
  and other western countries, the Israelis can't afford to "fight dirty"
  (whereas the Palestinians' support from their allies is almost not at
  all conditional on "good behavior")  So when the Israelis have lost
  the spin contest over the start of the incident so that most major US
  news sources, with their overly simplistic sound-bite-style analyses,
  are reporting that the violence was provoked by Sharon's visit, then that's
  not a good time to be perceived as engaging in extra, gratuitous violence..