George. The "historians" you put so much faith in are actually history revisionists who are peddling the Arab anti-Israeli viewpoint which is based on a foundation of lies. You present yourself as so educated, but you are going exclusively to these questionable sources for information. You discard sources that dispute your "facts" and call them "right-wing extremists."

You claim Israel has committed many massacres against the Arabs, but you completely mis-represent what happened in Deir Yassin (the ONLY Jewish massacre in its 54 yr history) and claim "there were many more." Of course you never mention Arab massacres of Jews. Or Arab massacres of Arabs. It is so obvious that you are only interested in points of view that put the Jewish State of Israel in a bad light. And you have really gone out of your way to court and foster the worst of the lot---Wendy Campbell, Alison Weir, Adam Shapiro, historian Edward Said, Stephen Zunes, Tanya Reinhart and others.

I am not saying that the Israelis are perfect or that human rights violations have not been committed by them or by individual Israelis. I'm sure that they have. But when you compare these violations with what goes on almost every day in most Arab countries ---the cloistering of women, the banning of all synagogues, the lack of gay rights, the lack of freedom of speech, the unchecked incitement such as mainstream Egyptian newspapers publishing news articles about how Jews use the blood of baby Palestinians to make their matzos, the lynchings, the honor killings, the suicide bombings, the lack of freedom of the press, etc. Israel looks like a shining light of decency and freedom by comparison.

I only wrote about the home demolitions of suicide bombers in my last posting. There are three other categories of home demolitons. The biggest is homes that were built without a permit, sometimes on land owned by others. This is almost epidemic in Israel and the territories because the Palestinians refuse to cooperate with the Israeli authorities. Its not that they were denied a permit--its that they never applied for one in the first place from "the Racist Zionist State of Israel".

In Santa Cruz county, if you built a house without permits, what would happen to it?

There are a much smaller number of homes demolished which are for security reasons such as the building of the security barrier or for some other strategic defense need of Israel. In these cases, the rightful owners are compensated. That is, IF they have deeds and title to the property.

The last category of home destruction, such as occurred in the homes Rachel Corrie was defending, are hiding tunnels used to smuggle in bombs and arms. In this category are also the homes that are continually used for snipers and other forms of murderous attacks on the Israelis. Israel does not compensate for these.

You claim it was false that the Arab Muftahs called for the Arabs to flee the Palestine of 1947-48, and insist it was "Jewish terrorists" who drove them out.

This is all Arab propaganda.

Thats because all the "historians" who you put so much stock in have called any evidence Israel has of these historical events "Zionist fabrications."

When you say "end the occupation of Palestine" are you talking about ancient Palestine, declared by the Roman conquerors of Israel who destroyed the Jewish temple in 70 A.D. and after a massive campaign to uproot the Jewish resistance, renamed Israel "Palestina" after a Roman word and a pun on the Phillistines, the Israelis mortal enemy? Or are you talking about the British mandate set up after the Brits took over control from the Turkish Ottoman empire who had made the poor choice of backing Germany in WWI? Or are you talking about the nation of Palestine which the UN resolution in 1947 voted in, but was unanimously rejected by all the Arab countries including the Arab Palestinians living in what is now Israel? Or are you talking about the areas given to the Palestinian Authority in the Oslo Accords in 1993? Or are you, as many leftists such as Steve Argue claiming, that the entire nation of Israel is actually "Palestine" and hence you do not recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish nation?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not about Palestinian independence, its not about Israel's land grab (of 0.1% of the mideast!), its not about Israel's humiliation and subjugation of the indigenous Palestinian people. Its not about Israeli "ethnic cleansing". The conflict is about whether a tiny Jewish nation has the right to exist at all. Your efforts seem to be dedicated at making sure it doesn't.