Jake, you've started again..why make this personal all the time...and assume that I don't know the situation? Seeing as I believe the situation to be a very difficult one for the Palestinian people tell me how its very different.

The gay Palestinians I have heard of are the ones that fled Gaza to Israel and are now touring Europe to share their experiances since the Palestinian population is not accepting is it? Don't make out like its an equal society where women, homesexuals and the mentally ill are treated with even half the respect they get in the West and in Israel. Let's not forget Hamas' use of children with serious learning difficulties to smuggle weapons. There is an interesting charity which works with women who have fled Palestinian homes after marrying a man who they throught believes in the same equality they did but found the reality to be very different.

Finally Jake you started this post with an outright lie. It's simply not true to suggest for one second that the Israeli's who were defending the State of Israel (when the surrounding countries declared war on them) had a larger army...how could they have done when the surrounding Arab countries were so much larger (and still are) and had so many more resources, including weapons.

This is an interesting passage from a BRITISH police report in April 1948 from Haifa:
"An appeal has been made to the Arabs by the Jews to reopen their shops and businesses in order to relieve the difficulties of feeding the Arab population. Evacuation was still going on yesterday and several trips were made by 'Z' craft to Acre. Roads too, were crowded with people leaving Haifa with all their belongings. At a meeting yesterday afternoon Arab leaders reiterated their determination to evacuate the entire Arab population and they have been given the loan of ten 3-ton military trucks as from this morning to assist the evacuation."

The least you owe people is the respect to tell them the truth, opinions are one thing but I dont think we can get anywhere following Mr Said and saying facts don't matter only opinions, somethings are fact and this is one of them!