Steve wrote: "No amount of desire for peace on Becky Johnson's part will change the fact that the Palestinian people are oppressed and the Zionist government is the oppressor. U.S. support for the oppressor is prolonging the war."

BECKY: Your knee-jerk charges of oppression ignore the fact that the checkpoints, the security barrier, and the incursions into Jenin and Gaza were ALL TO STOP THE TERRORISM that the PA agreed to stop when it signed the Oslo Accords. You blame Israel of breaking agreements, but the first phrase of the first line in the first paragraph of Bush's roadmap for Peace calls for the PA to stop the terrorism in their own community. It is the PA that has not kept its word. The "oppression" you shout about is nothing but necessary security measures Israel must take to protect its own people.


STEVE WROTE: "...there will not be peace for either the Palestinian or the Hebrew speaking population until the Israeli state is abolished and in its place a socialist and democratic secular nation is built with federated republics of Palestinian and Hebrew speaking nationalities that have a separation of church and state where the civil rights of all nationalities are guaranteed."

BECKY: First, they are the Israelis not the "Hebrew-speaking people." Your language betrays your intent to delegitimize the Israeli people. Jews have lived in the area for 3,300 years and have a legitimate right to live there.
You make false claims that the Palestinians are the indigenous people who were "driven out" by the new Israeli govt. The facts of course are quite different.

First, the vast majority of Arabs fled on the advice of their Arab leaders. 2nd, most Arabs in the region are as newly arrived as the Israelis are, and 3rd, the population on the West Bank has increased 3-fold since 1967 so the Israelis are obviously not driving anyone out now.

Israel right now is a democratic, socialist, yes, SECULAR nation. The only thing Jewish about Israel is that any Jew who wishes to move there, will automatically be granted citizenship.
Other than that, Israelis have free medical care and a number of other socialistic programs so that Israel has virtually no homeless people.

All citizens have the right to vote whether they are Jewish or not. Your DEMAND that Israel be destroyed is very dangerous. Your call to continue the intifada is a call for more war, more killing, more death. Israel is all right now how it is.