The Palestinian people should emulate the Japanese and German people.

[KlatooBNikto]

The transformation of Japan and Germany from totally devastated countries, physically and emotionally, is the stuff of which miracles are made.From being the most hated nations to the most admired in half a century is a remarkable achievement by any standard.This has been done by giving up dreams of military glory and putting the creative energies of their people into productive uses.

The Palestinians are also a creative people.They are a highly intelligent and educated and cultured people, despite what Israeli propaganda would have you believe. They have lost their lands to a predatory people aided and abetted by a superpower.The best solution for them would be to put the creative energies of the Palestinian people into commerce, technology and enterprise with the help of capital from the oil rich nations of the Arab Peninsula.This would transform the entire psychology of the Middle East and holds the potential of achieving high living standards for the Palestinian people without bloodshed. True, it will mean succumbing to injustice but history is full of such injustices starting with the genocide of our own Native Americans.

In this season of goodwill, our best wishes for a peaceful tomorrow should go to the Iraqi and Palestinian peoples. They have suffered enough.It is time for a new start.

[Bridget Burke]

1. The Germans & Japanese did not lose their land

And they did start that war. Not all the people--but their leaders.

It sounds like you're proposing a Palestinian diaspora. They can learn commerce, technology & enterprise but never have a home.

[KlatooBNikto]

2. I know that it seems cruel to propose a diaspora.But, the daily

bloodshed of innocents and the obvious injustices meted out to the Palestinian people makes it necessary for them to look at alternatives.What makes it a viable solution is that land is no longer a requirement for peoples to retain their cultural identity.So long as they have the ability to communicate with each other ( and we all do in this era of "internets", as Bush would say) and feel welcome in their new homes, they have the potential to rise above the misery inflicted on them.That is the hope that must propel them.

[Kellanved]

7. there are many Germans who would disagree

I do not want to open a line of further comparisons though.

[kcwayne]

3. They don't hjave the advantage of a Marshall plan to spur on commerce

and when the US occupied Japan and Germany, they didn't build walls to keep certain citizens out of redevelopment areas. The US also hired locals to be heavily engaged in all aspects of rebuilding the country.

There is no equivalent situation in Israel. The situation more closely parallels the US treatment of Native Americans in the late 1800s. That didn't work either.

[KlatooBNikto]

4. I believe that the other, and richer, Arab countries have a moral

obligation to provide a Marshall Plan Equivalent for the Palestinian people. I believe if the Palestinian people are given access to the larger markets of other Arab countries and were able to develop the industrial base even from their limited lands, they can produce remarkable results. They have done it in the past as the brain trust of many successful ventures in the Middle East.

[Malikshah]

11. The US and Europe have the moral obligation. The Arab

countries do not.

It was colonialism, pure and simple. East v. West.

It has since taken on more ethnic and religious overtones but in its inception it was a land grab.

[tomorrowsashes]

5. Don't tell people how to resist oppression in their homeland

People have the right to resist oppression in their homeland by any means necessary. Their country is occupied, and their lives are being made miserable by an outside force. I don't think they're really in a position where they want to sit around deciding on the path of least resistance. Some violence by Palestinians is wrong, because it does nothing to help them, and only causes pain and suffering, but it must be understood that you can't preach morality to somebody who grew up in a refugee camp, and had to scavenge for food from the time they were a young child.

[KlatooBNikto]

6. It would be immoral for me to sit around in my comfortable American

home advocating resistance to an unarmed people who face tanks and bullets.As you rightly say, they have been living in refugee camps since their childhood and I would like to see that misery and the daily bloodshed end.That is all.

[forgethell]

8. Does a country

have the right to defend its innocent women and children from murderous suicide bombers? By any means necessary?? Sure you can preach morality to people who grew up in a refugee camp, etc. It's not morality if it doesn't apply in the harsh times, as well as the bad.

Until the Palestinians give up their cherished, but unobtainable, "right of return", they will continue to be occupied. What other choice does Israel have to ensure its own survival as a Jewish state?

[KlatooBNikto]

9. The only reason I have advocated this course of action for the

Palestinian people is to stop the bloodshed and end the suffering of innocent people.I did not say that they were in the wrong.They are weak, and that is a vastly different perspective.

In this issue I do not believe that Israel has the moral upper hand.Especially with Ariel Sharon in the saddle.

[forgethell]

10. I disagree. No combatant

that uses terror weapons such as suicide bombings, no combatant that targets the innocent, as opposed to the inevitable loss of life attendant upon war, has the moral upper hand.

Weakness is not an excuse. They should simply accept defeat, as did the Germans and Japanese, and work to regain their lands through lawful channels.


On edit: But you didn't answer my question: Does Israel have the right to defend its own citizens, or do they not??