A Quiz, because it pegged me.

You're one cool kitty with a lazy streak a mile
wide and a fondness for the finer things in
life, like a juicy steak and a comfortable bed.
Congratulations, you're a wereleopard!


What Kind of Were-Animal Are You?
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Israelis and Palestinians

I was reading an article today which tallied up the death tolls in the intifada. Something like 840 Israelis killed and 2260 Palestinians killed.

At first glance it is easy to look at the disparity between these numbers and say "Israel is massacring the Palestinians." But to do so would be to overlook much of what is going on.

One must begin by understanding that the words from Hamas, Al-Aqsa, Islamic Jihad, even from Damascus and Tehran have not been that they want Israel to withdraw from the settlements, but that they wish to eradicate Jews from the region entirely.

Now, let's look inside the head of Ariel Sharon. Come on in with me, there's enough empty space in here for all of us. You see, his "strategy" for dealing with the intifada has been to deal more death to the Palestinians than they deal to the Israelis in the vain hope that the Palestinians will realize they cannot win and back off.

Sharon's strategy is built on a false assumption, however, and that is the assumption that the Palestinians value the lives of their sons, daughters, husbands and wives more than they value the ideal of the utter eradication of the Jews in the region.

The imbalance of this death toll teaches us, more than anything, that the Palestinians hate Jews more than they love life. Until that situation is reversed the death tolls will continue to rise, and do so at the nearly 3:1 ration they are now.

Israel really needs to reach out, to make the territories a place of great comfort and prosperity for the Palestinians living there. Because unlike war, which relies on a willingness to follow orders, terrorism relies on a personal vendetta. Deconstruct the vendetta, and you lose the terrorist.

This last point is why Tehran has flat out refused to allow Israel to assist in Bam to accept aid from either would reveal that neither Israel nor America are the monsters Tehran makes them out to be, and they can't have that.