Will this increase or decrease the likelihood of terrorist actions in America, Europe and the rest of the world?

If you were a member of a family murdered in this conflict, would you be seeking revenge?

Should Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, be tried for war crimes if or when this conflict comes to an end?

What will the price of oil be in 4 weeks time?

MrCharts
The difference is that Israel was created atificially from an area known generally as Palestine which was occupied by Arabs.

In 1917 there was the Balfour Declaration, stating that the British Government "viewed with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people"..." it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine".

In 1948 the British left the area and David Ben-Gurion, declared the creation of the State of Israel, in accordance with the 1947 UN Partition Plan which suggested a split of Palestine and Jerusalem to be UN monitored.

Arab League members Egypt, TransJordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq declared war and announced their rejection of the UN partition decision.

The Arabs were poorly equipped and lost the short war.

In 1967 there was another Arab - Israel war which only lasted about 6 days. The result was that Israel annexed land not belonging to them, which they have never given back, Moreover they continue to settle this land belonging to the Arabs.

There is no good reason for Israel being there at all and the Arabs are clearly not going to accept it. partition of countries and terrotories seldom works in the short to medium term. Many are still unresolved ven now after long periods of time such as Ireland, Korea. Israel.

Although the United States supported the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which favored the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had assured the Arabs in 1945 that the United States would not intervene without consulting both the Jews and the Arabs in that region. The British, who held a colonial mandate for Palestine until May 1948, opposed both the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine as well as unlimited immigration of Jewish refugees to the region.

In 1949 Israel drew its own borders, occupying 70% of Mandatory Palestine, fifty percent more than the UN partition proposal allotted them. They have continued to take land ever since.

Jews have lived in the land of Israel for thousands of years.
Over time the population of these lands became very mixed, just like many other countries.
Except it wasn't an Arab or Muslim nation state.
Much of the Middle East (and the Indian sub-continent and other places) is made of nations whose current borders were drawn by British civil servants. Yes, "created artificially" ! Alright for other countries, different for Israel, huh?
So competing peoples/cultures arguing over the same land (again like many situations around the world) gives rise to conflict. The land was divided. Israel agreed, the Arabs did not and made war and lost.
Like all nation states, Israel has done things it shouldn't. Made mistakes of policy and actions. No one and certainly no state is perfect. Oh but with Israel that somehow delegitimises and demonises the country and people. Typical basic propaganda and the mindless fall for it - if they are ripe to do so by the effects of previous propaganda and lies dressed up as fact and/or deep seated biases/hatreds etc.Like all nation states, but most especially democracies, Israel has a population with supporters of the extreme right and the extreme left, the moderate right and the moderate left, and a large percentage in the middle. All views and attitudes reflected.
Show me another democracy in the Middle East............no, thought you'd find that difficult.
Its neighbours threatened to annihilate Isreal, usually attacking her. They lost and in losing they lost land.
Look at a map of the Middle East and see what a tiny sliver of land Israel is.
Go on, just look.
Like much else in that last post, this is one of those blatant lies:
"The result was that Israel annexed land not belonging to them, which they have never given back".
Absolute nonsense.
What about Sinai, won by Israel, and handed back to Egypt in exchange for peace.
No-one has the right to declare an existing nation doesn't have the right to exist (same with a Palestinian state). Outrageous.
What should be done in the minds of those with such a high and mighty self-righteous attitude?
Push the population into the sea. Slaughter them all. Send them back where they came from. Where have we heard all that before.
Israel shouldn't exist. Oh, really.
How about the United States built on war, revolution and terror and the cruelties and seizures of land from the Native Peoples of America.
No, only Israel and its Jewish population doesn't have a right to exist.
Again what dark thoughts lie beneath the surface, huh?
Israel is here to stay.
Don't like it?
Well, too frackin' tough
Richard

Anti-Semitism never really died after the Holocaust, it just became unfashionable. That is no longer the case. In the wake of the Gaza War and with the global economy in a tailspin, disturbing events have been occurring in Britain - events that do not bode well either for the future of British Jewry or for the future of British democracy.


The war in Gaza combined with the global economic downturn has revealed a dark side to British society as demonstrated by the extent to which the British media, intelligentsia and political class have buckled in the face of the Islamic jihad. On average, according to the Observer, there are seven anti-Semitic attacks every single day in the UK attacks that have come in the form of graffiti, vandalism, arson, violent assaults on Jews in the streets, and hate e-mails. Jewish schools have been granted extra protection, and the Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Semitism in British society, continues to issue dire warnings. According to British police, Jews are four times more likely to be attacked because of their religion than are Muslims. As a result, every synagogue service and virtually every Jewish communal event now requires guards to be on the lookout for violence from both neo-Nazis and Muslim extremists. Orthodox Jews have become particular targets; some have begun wearing baseball caps instead of skullcaps and concealing their Star of David jewelry for fear of being attacked.



Melanie Phillips, writing in the Wall Street Journal (Europe) expressed her concern in historical terms: Years of demonizing Israel and appeasing Islamist extremism within Britain have now coalesced as a result of the media misrepresentation of the Gaza War as an atrocity against civilians, in an unprecedented wave of hatred against Israel, and a sharp rise in attacks on British Jews and the authorities have done little or nothing to quell such incitement. In one case, students at Oxford University gleefully proclaimed that in five years, their campus "would be a Jew-free zone," and in another, the London-based Royal Court Theatre is staging a viciously anti-Israeli play by Caryl Churchill suggesting that the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis on the Jews of Europe is now being constructed by the Jews of Israel for the Palestinians the implication being that Jews have forfeited the "right" to "benefit" from the guilt and sorrow spun off by the Holocaust - a "right" now properly transferred to the Palestinians.



You can attack the Israelis/Jews in this fashion because there are no Jewish suicide bombers, but condemning Muslim atrocities - well that's another matter. Recently, Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders was banned from Britain by the British Home Office as a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat because his film Fitna graphically and honestly documented the brutality of radical Islamists and twinned their actions to specific verses in the Quran. As Bat Yeor wrote recently in National Review Online: His crime is maintaining that Europes civilization is rooted in the values of Jerusalem , Athens , Rome , and the Enlightenment and not in Mecca , Baghdad , Andalusia , and al-Quds. He fights for Europe s independence from the Caliphate, and for its endangered freedoms.



In all this, it is becoming clearer with each passing day that Londonistan is no longer a safe place for Jews to practice their religion, nor are many places in Europe which is demographically morphing into Eurabia. In a recent comment in The Spectator, one reader opined: "I for one resent the fact that I can no longer congregate outside my synagogue. I resent the fact that my children attend Jewish school protected by security fences, concrete blocks and guard posts. I resent the fact that my eldest daughter ...... should feel intimidated on campus and questioned in a hostile, finger pointing manner how she feels as a Jewess on the question of Gaza , and if she supports the Israeli actions." And a Birmingham school is investigating reports that twenty children chased a 12-year-old girl (the only Jewish pupil in the school) chanting "Kill all Jews" and "Death to Jews".



Listening to the hatred reflected in the cries of Death to the Jews, one could conclude that it must have been the Jews who were behind the 9/11 attacks, burned down the Danish embassies throughout Europe and the Middle East two years ago over the Mohammed cartoons, planned and executed the suicide bombing attacks on the London tube and Madrid railway stations, decapitated Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg and scores of other infidels, train their children to become martyrs for Allah, use the web to incite hatred and jihad, strap explosives to their bodies and self-detonate in restaurants, subways, pizza parlors, buses, shopping malls, coffee shops, marketplaces, hotels and tourist resorts in France, London, Bali, Yemen, Jordan, Kenya, Algeria, Istanbul, Dar es Salaam, Mumbai and Israel and are waging a vicious religiously-inspired holy war against non-believers.



Yet, I suspect that if the British students who called Israelis Nazis and likened Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto (the idea being that Jews have now betrayed the Holocaust and have somehow become unworthy of benefiting from it), and who attended the seventeen sit-ins and demonstrations held at British universities to protest Israeli massacres in Gaza had chanted "Death to all Muslims" (as they screamed Death to all Jews during the Gaza War), the British Left and civil rights organizations would have been all over them demanding staff resignations, boycotts of their schools and colleges, the arrest of the student organizers, and compensation to the British Muslim community. It appears, however, that only the Jews merit such revulsion.



These actions reflect more than an anti-Israel stance. They represent a sickness gaining prevalence within British society - a sickness reflected by the growing social acceptance of the most ancient of religious hatreds. Neither the British media (that excels in the art of whitewashing Muslim extremism) nor British society generally seem to care much that radical Islamists like Hamas are involved in at least twenty-five conflicts going on around the globe including, but not limited to Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Congo, Ivory Coast, Cyprus, East Timor, India, Indonesia (2 provinces), Kashmir, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kurdistan, Macedonia, the Middle East, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Somalia, Sudan, Russia-Chechnya, Tajikistan, Thailand, Uganda and Uzbekistan.



Nor are they especially concerned (as Phillips points out) that the government of Sri Lanka is attempting to eradicate terrorism by a military campaign in which, according to the UN, an estimated 70,000 civilians have been killed, thousands made homeless, hundreds of thousands displaced, and to which, as food shortages grow, the government refuses to allow access to journalists. Despite all this, there are no sit-ins on British campuses against the Sri Lankans, no violent protests outside its High Commission, no calls to boycott Sri Lankan products and academics, virtually no media coverage and certainly no calls for the obliteration of Sri Lanka.



Nor do I recall any protests against Hamas for firing thousands of missiles at Israeli cities, towns and villages for years, not to mention terrorizing over 250,000 men, women and children who have spent the better part of the past three years running to bomb shelters several times a day. Somehow, the deaths of 1,300 Gazans (two-thirds of whom were terrorists hiding behind Palestinian human shields) have evoked more outrage in Britain than the estimated two million dead in Congo, the tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered by Sunni and Shia terrorists in Iraq, or the massacres of civilians killed by their own governments in Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, Burundi, Chad, Afghanistan, Columbia, Guatemala, Haiti, Guinea, Rwanda and West Bengal.



For a country that never has nor ever will produce a suicide bomber or that has never lobbed missiles on a daily basis into Gaza s cities to be so reviled and hated, verges on international moral turpitude. If anyone should be charged with war crimes in Gaza , it should be Hamas not Israel . But not according to British public opinion. The bottom line seems to be - if you are willing to excuse terrorist attacks against Jews in southern Israel where a tiny democracy is seeking to protect its people against terrorism, its just as easy to turn a blind eye to Jews being attacked elsewhere, even in the streets of London or Birmingham or the suburbs of Paris.



In many ways, Jews are the barometers of the societies in which they live the canary in the mineshaft of democratic societies - which accounts for why the U.S. , Canada and Australia remain resilient, vibrant democracies where minorities continue to thrive. But these countries have become more the exception than the rule. The history of the 20th century suggests that as it has gone with the Jews, so it has gone with democracy, and as it has gone with democracy, so it has gone with the Jews. By that standard, the events surrounding the Gaza War combined with the global economic downturn foreshadow a difficult period ahead not just for British Jewry, but for British (and by extension European) democracy. The results of a recent survey show that 31% of Europeans blame Jews for the global economic meltdown (including more than half of Hungarian, Polish and Spanish respondents) and 40% of Europeans consider Jews to have too much power.



There is little doubt that the Gaza campaign merely provided a pretext to unleash deep-seated anti-Semitism in Britain , across Europe and even prior to the war - to the slaughters in Mumbais Chabad Center . That being the case, there can be no better justification for the existence of a Jewish State than the persecution of Jews outside of it.

I hardly think that the recent Israeli actions and carnage in Gaza and Beirut have endeared it to much of the world. It seems to me that there is little support for the previous and present Israeli governments moral stance or philosophy.

Nor do the present and past actions of Mosad, when they are carried outside Israels borders, help to improve the opinion of the recent administrations.

I understand the hostility to suicide bombers, but when Palestinians dont have the access to sophisticated weaponry of their opponents, it seems to me that it would be an expected form of response. Suicide squads have been used throughout history in one form or another. (Before the expected invasion of Britain by the Germans during WW2, suicide squads were trained in Britain to try and delay any German advance. Members of those squads had little expectancy of surviving. Similar description can be given for many SAS and commando actions during WW2 and afterwards. (Britain thought of them as heroes.)

Using the term suicide is emotive, but the intentions of actions are of a similar nature, as that of Israels recent action in Gaza. It is to instil fear, into the public or population, in order to obtain their ends. Crazy, not nice, but that is the probable motivation and possible outcome.

Although there is obvious world animosity to Israels present actions, I dont think it is directed to the Israeli people (or religion) as such, but directed against their actions and present international political stances. The recent Israeli governments have not served them well.

I think, it is right to introduce the World Wide economic recession, into the present equation. Such events are bound to have the potential de-stabilising effects and can be used to foment social unrest. Looking at the present state of the world, with the level of international hostilities and numerous small wars, I think we are in a very dangerous period. I only hope, that nobody is stupid enough, to light the fuse in the Middle East.

It is unfortunate that the Gaza conflict and other violent episodes on either the Israeli or Arab side have raised the spectre of anti-semitism. I am personally opposed to Israel and have given small amounts of money to Palestinian causes over a 40 year period on and off. However I am not anti-semitic, just anti Israel. I grew up in a very Jewish area of London as my father did and his father did before me (Stamford Hill), I know plenty of jews who almost hate Israel because they don't agree with its formation and the fact that they are associated with it. They also do not like the attention it brings to them and the anti-Jewish feelings it generates. Israel will not be free of violence against them for a long time, certainly not in my life time nor my children's. I agree that Israel should defend themseleves as anyone would. I fully expect that Israel will bomb the reacors in Iran if they get close to making a bomb and I will be pleased that they do so. My only solution is to share all the lands of Palestine, West Bank, Gaza and Israel for all the Jews and Arabs and to relinquish control of Jerusalem. The government to be by a joint body.

I am an atheist and believe that religion does immense harm. The idea that a state should be formed to be a home for any religious group seems absurd. I can see no importance as to whether Jews have lived in the Middle East in the past or historically.

Again, very well said, sivad. On the button as always.
Richard

The Palestinians should have a state of their own.
The Israelis have a state of their own.
The idea expressed in post 1029 for a nation called Utopia is, well..........need I say it.
In the meantime those of us who feel humanitarian sympathy for suffering innocents can contribute financially........ and see some if not all of their very well-meaning money continue to arm Hamas and perpetuate the suffering they seek so much to assuage.
That's the real world.
War needs one side wanting it.
Peace needs two and until that will is there amongst some of the Arab/Muslim nations/groups these terrible things will continue.
Proof Israel wants peace?

One of those blatant lies:
"The result was that Israel annexed land not belonging to them, which they have never given back".
Absolute nonsense.
What about Sinai, won by Israel, and handed back to Egypt in exchange for peace.

Richard

sivad .... an interesting post but scarcely a piece of objective writing, any more than was today's editorial in the Gulf News.

that said, i certainly concur that anti-semitism has always been at best an undercurrent in UK since medieval times ..... but one could say the same about anti-catholicism too.

however, i certainly do not subscribe to the view that the jewish population in UK is under severe threat of GBH or the more subtle forms of intimidation and/or demonisation ..... indeed, that claim might arguably be raised with more conviction by the black population (we in the UK rarely differentiate beteen the particular races!).

perhaps my own and my wife's families, who have been in UK since the turn of 20th century, have been strangely lucky, for we certainly have found little discrimination worthy of more than the disdain it merited (in fact, it has been minimal or less anyway), let alone anything more vicious.

Israel handing back some land does not mean that Israel hasn't taken other land and not returned it.

A couple of points relating to posts: 25 million Russians died in the last war - the Western world tends to forget that when comparing figures.

Also the point about 'terrorists' is always hazy. Were French resistance fighters terrorists when they killed German soldiers in the last war, bearing in mind that the 'lawful' government of France agreed that German soldiers should be on their soil?

Was De Gaulle a terrorist for supporting them and waging war against Germans from the UK?

Unfortunately the word seems to have been degraded and used willy-nilly in recent years. And it tends to be used about anyone who is not on 'our' side.

hi maggot//IT DEPENDS ON WHICH SIDE YOU ARE ON????

I'm familiar with the "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" argument. It's always misused in the context of current events.

The Free French were just that: their target was an invading occupying force, not innocent French civilians. The French resistance (why am I having to say this) played an important role in preparing the ground for the Allied landings.

The Vichy French government was no more legitimate than Quisling's in Norway. During the war, the legitimate Norwegian government sat in what is now the dining room of the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall. King Haakon's portrait still hangs there to this day.

a little question for all you guys ...... what is the difference between Fatah's stance on Israel and that of Hamas? ..... in giving your answer, please advise whether or not you have actually read the manifestos or merely gleaned it from assorted press and media reports

cynic - probably very little difference in their stances, though I have not read the manifestos. I suppose the main difference in background is that there are still hundreds of thousands of 'Palestinians' who can say 'We wus robbed' because they can remember pre-1948.

As MightyMicro implies above there can be a great difference between what is lawful and what is considered 'right'. Israel can point to the UN as their right to existence, while many Arabs will consider the UN action in 'creating' Israel to be unlawful.

An outsider might ask why, if Israel was ceated for Jewish people (though I am still not certain whether that refers to someone of a particular race or someone who follows the Jewish faith), a state could not be created for, say, Roman Catholics, or Mormons, or people with blue eyes, or left-handed people etc etc...

It has always seemed to me that one problem has always, and will always, stem from the fact that many Jews see themselves as extra-special. Is that unfair? Has the rest of the world perpetuated that perception?

Maggot: Mormons do have a State -- it's called Utah. :-)

On edit and on reflection, so do Roman Catholics -- Vatican City.

"It has always seemed to me that one problem has always, and will always, stem from the fact that many Jews see themselves as extra-special. Is that unfair? Has the rest of the world perpetuated that perception? "

I have never met a Jew who thought that about himself or other Jews.
Why on earth would they think that?
Perhaps by saying that you are yourself "perpetuating that perception"

Maggot, Are you thinking of the "the chosen people" mythology? I think this "belief" is part of the problem in the psyche of a minority, but still vocal group of present Israelis forming part of their driving ideology.

Hello Fred - found time in your busy retirement schedule to look at the video in post 821 yet? ;)

PS might have know you would pop up as soon as the chance to have a dig about Jews.

Isaacs, I allow you your personal pleasures, you can read the posting again, if it is so important to you.

My comment was not a dig at the Jews, but observation from listening to a Jewish woman, who used the phrase, when giving justifications for the present Israeli state and its actions.

Also, I have heard and read the statement, the Chosen People, advanced by others, when discussing the ownership of Jerusalem and their "right" (or "belief") to extend the Israeli State.

But you are entitled to understand the content of the postings according to your own constructs.

Also, I would suggest you read the qualifications I made in that post, before tapping the keyboard.