I have another view on this.

Big problems in Syria,lots of press coverage.
Fundraising is going towards the anti-govenment side

Gaza problem has been quiet for some time,out of the news out of your mind and needless to say fundraising is not going to them.

How can the Syrian government get the press away from the Syria problem and carry on doing what they are doing.

Send,with the help of Iran,Egypt more missiles,money to start a new campaign against Israel,Israel will of course respond big time as they have,its now all over the news and Syria is now on the backburner and are carrying on what they were doing before,Syria is not in the news as much,in fact very little.

Now fundraising for the Palestinians has shot up,just go down the Edgeware Road and see so many wearing the black and white scarves and so many shops have charity tins for the children of Palestine.

This is all political and nothing to do with land,occupation or the repression of the people.

Jonny - what is your - and the Israeli general public at larges' - opinion on the more extreme orthodox types who live, and build on, land that isn't theirs and whom the locals don't want to be there?

In England there are called gypsys/pikeys/scum. But ours don't shoot at the locals nor *price-tag their churches, etc.

*price-tagging is defacing, abusing, etc, popular amongst young extreme zionist types.

Edited by Kermit8 (19 Nov 2012 9.51am)

Big chest and massive boobs

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Kermit: As the name infers, price-tagging is a form of reprisal orchastrated by settlers. It is generally a 'priced-tagged' response to a percieved Palestinian crime. It is despised by the general Israeli public. I myself find it abhorrent. However, there is absolutely no moral equivalence to be made between these despicable acts of arson and acts of terrorism perpetuated by Palestinians. i.e. A group of Palestinian youths breaking into a settler home and killing a family of five, including decapitating a 9 month old child.

Although, it is rather unpalatable to a great many, your impression of Israel's occupation of Palestine is as subjective as the settler's assertions to the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) as their original homeland. At the end of the day, they are disputed territories.

I'm broadly pro Israeli, though not its current government. I believe in the 1967 border and compensation with some limited right of return....And of course the shared capital.

I value Israel's version of democracy and institutions over most other middle eastern versions because it is obviously highly influenced by its European origins. I look at Israel and I like what I see.

However, that doesn't mean that it was fair on the region to create an alien state (in their minds) in their region....But you can't turn the clock back. The only way the Jews will leave Israel is if history repeats itself and their state is destroyed....As the Romans eventually decided to do. The problem is that would lead to much wider wars.

Of course disproportionate responses and the failure of rationality in this current action are reasonable points but of course that goes against the nature of war....And this is a war, if an undeclared one by Israel....Hamas don't even bother to lie about it.

No one fights a war of conflict using reasonable force. Indeed apart from the ineffectiveness of it the chief message that gives out is of weakness.

Going back to ancient Greece and the initial war between Athens and Sparta, at the beginning there was talk of a mutual prisoner exchange programme, of fairness between Greeks (though they considered themselves city states).

Guess what, it soon went all out of the window and the atrocities just stacked up.

War is an extreme act of violence, it produces hatred, anger and fear. In such an environment, there is no appetite for the voices of moderates with their words of rationality to be heard.

There is only struggle until one or the other or both decide (for whatever reason) to stop.

That is why it often has to be an outsider who comes in to broker some sort of ceasefire before there can be a chance for the moderates to voice reason.

The peach deal so nearly reached during the Clinton presidency was the best hope. At the moment we are locked into a death spiral where only the binary choices of partial destruction are on offer.

Without a nuclear option there can be no knockout blow.

The use of a nuclear option sees us all in the war, whether some people are anti Israeli or not.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

I'm bored of the news on Syria already. Israel and Palestine lost my interest last century.

Optimistic as ever

Telling us day after day that people who hate each other, still hate each other, isn't news.

I'll be honest, even when they say "... in Scotland..." I think, who cares? Less than 10% of the country that's who.

Optimistic as ever