Theos-Talk Archives (October 2002 Message tt00243)

Steve Stubbs wrote:
> Some points:
> (3) It is Israel which waged war against the Arabs in 1967 and seized
> the West Bank.

Just because the soldiers weren't wearing uniforms does not mean that
the Arabs had not been waging war against Israel for several years up to
1967. When the soldiers wearing uniforms started massing at Israel's
borders, Israel finally fought back, won, and kept going until they had
secure borders (except with Lebanon, where Israel's border was about 100
yards south of the bottom of a range of hills; Lebanon did not
participate in the war, and Israel did not take any of Lebanon's
territory. This would not make sense if Israel were the initiator. Note
that this was several years before Syria's invasion of Lebanon, which
was followed by the Israel's involvement in that war. 

> (4) There are a lot of people in Israel who do not belong to the
> Likud Party and neither revere nor respect the Commandant of Unit
> 101. Some of these people think peace in their homes is preferable
> to the "transfer" progfram and the ongoing land grab beyond their
> borders. Regardless of which side of the argument you come down on,
> it is simply a fact that not everyone is of one mind on this.

Up to the point where Arafat turned down Netanyahu's proposal, which
was pretty much as much as Israel considered itself physically able to
give without committing national suicide, that statement would have
covered 40%+ of Israel's population. Unfortunately, the Palestinian's
insistence of nothing less than the destruction of the State of Israel
has changed this, so that only about 5-10% of Israel's population still
believes that. I am even more worried about the number of followers of
the racist and genocidal (and dead) Meir Kahane, which appears to be
growing.

So, what do YOU think Israel should do?

Bart Lidofsky