Turn off the CD player and think for yourself.

I’m sorry, Zionists disregard human rights? How about the terrorist son-of-a-bitch who blew himself up outside a Tel Aviv nightclub last week? Is that not a violation of human rights? And yet, Mohammed, you implicitly applaud bombers like that!

When the rappers say “I’m not against peace/peace is against me,” isn’t it possible that peace is against them because peace requires them to stop supporting genocidal terrorism?

“Ceasefire” must be an Arabic word that means “reloading”. It certainly doesn’t mean that Palestinians stop their deliberate attacks on civilians. Of course, if any terrorist is killed in the process, then murderous anti-Semites like Mohammed Abed will cry that Palestinian rights are being violated. Divest from the Jews, before they defend themselves again!

Mohammed, don’t pretend to be among the Palestinian suffering. You are a British social elite who has never once lived with the Palestinians. You’re a propaganda spreading brat.

Looks like it’s about time to not read the badger herald anymore. Everytime I see an article my Mohammed or Fayyad I am putting it back on the rack.

“In 1948, after Israeli forces ruthlessly uprooted 800,000 Palestinians from their homes”

Wasn’t it their Arab brothers who convinced them to leave so as not to be in the way of their war of annihilation? Weren't they convinced it was just a temporary move, until all the Jews were killed? Aren't they still trying to kill all the Jews?

I can tell by your respond that you put the Herald on the rack! SO what are you doing here???

Seriously, can the Herald please institute a policy to only discuss Israel/Palestine twice a semester or so? I wish these articles added to the debate on campus, but they never do. Ever. It’s the same old crap with mean people on both sides who hate each other and refuse to recognize their own flaws.

Mohammed- Even if by chance a few cowardly schools divest themselves from the multinational corporations in question, you can rest assured that the US government will never under any circumstances allow Israel to succumb to your terrorist brothers.

Perhaps instead of worrying about divesting, you should worry about investing in the people you claim to care about. You are right to feel defensive and ashamed about the accomplishments of tiny Israel as compared to the entire Arab speaking world, but instead of lashing out, why don’t you implore your people to work?

I would like to contrast the lyrics from the Palestinian rap group DAM with those of Li’l John in the song “CULO” when he said:

“feel me, let me see you do that dirty dance, dirty dance mami / feel me, let me see you touch your toes or shake that thang and talk with your ass / feel me all my chicos, all my jamaicans, all my blacks, all my haitians / feel me cause they know im gonna run till they kill me”

I think what he is trying to say here is STOP BLOWING UP BUSES.

http://www.petitiononline.com/sf101584/petition.html

Ah, I see Fayyad now has a tag-team partner. With 60-plus posts to his column yesterday, I guess he figured he couldn’t stand alone. What a wimp!

I love reading their articles!! Keep up the good work. Both of you!! It is fun reading stupid peoples responses as well. I did not know we had that many slow and disqualified students in Madison. UW- Madison needs to become more selective in processing applications for admission. We have too many of them struggling in comprehending these great articles.

“disqualified?”

Pot to kettle, pot to kettle. Come in kettle.

Wait, there are palestinian rappers? i couldn’t read the rest of the article, i was laughing too much… that was enough for me!

I still hate fat chicks

I learned something today. American= Jealous! They cannot stand international intelligence by any means.

“struggling in comprehending these great articles”

What’s to comprehend? It’s simple propaganda:

Palestinian = good Israeli = bad

Drive the Jews into the sea is the solution, that they resist is the only problem.

ps. Most land titles are, at bottom, “by right of conquest” (like Britain and the Normans, or Hungary and the Huns).

Palestinian rappers? Hey, what about those Palestinian baseball pitchers I’ve heard so much about over the years?

Mohammed, the readers are actually poking fun at you and Fayyad because they are tired of your non-stop exhortations that we American college students waste our time caring about a bunch of down-and-out losers halfway around the world that most of the Arab world doesn’t care about either. I’m talking the Palestinians, of course, the same little shits who cheered the Sept. 11 attacks.

Give me one good reason why any American should care about what happens to a bunch of “poor, oppressed” assholes, who asked for everything the Israelis did to them. You never once in your article provided one shred of evidence to substantiate you argument. And when you and Fayyad do provide evidence, it’s always a link to a website that is clearly biased.

We don’t care because we don’t have to. And that doesn’t make us any less human, it just means that we have the right to place our sympathy and support where we feel it is most needed.

Tag Team back again…

Why can’t we hear about Syria and Lebannon? That sounds like a much more pertinent issue in world events right now.

“Wasn’t it their Arab brothers who convinced them to leave so as not to be in the way of their war of annihilation? Weren't they convinced it was just a temporary move, until all the Jews were killed? Aren't they still trying to kill all the Jews?”

In no particular order, the answers to your questions are yes, yes, and yes.

"Propaganda" you are the one who enjoys innovating misleading information and creating a party line. They never produced or stated a specific party line. The only thing that attracts American mind is simple propaganda. That's their maximum limit of considering and understanding global issues.

If you hate this article, sign the petition

http://www.petitiononline.com/sf101584/petition.html

“If you hate this article, sign the petition http://www.petitiononline.com/sf101584/petition.html”

Please. If you hate this article, then WRITE YOUR OWN. This is the opinion section, and Mohammed wrote his opinion. If YOU want your opinion heard, then contact the Herald about writing your own.

While I think that Mohammed’s position here is ludicrous, I value reading it to know where he and people like him are coming from. How can you argue with those you disagree with if you don’t know their position?

It’s one thing to have an opinion, it’s another thing to spread Mein Kampf disguised as humanitarianism

“How can you argue with those you disagree with if you don’t know their position?”

We know his position. That’s why we’re disagreeing with him.

“The only thing that attracts American mind is simple propaganda. That's their maximum limit of considering and understanding global issues.”

To the contrary! You must not confuse drunken, shallow-minded rednecks with well-educated Americans. We do understand world issues. Just because we disagree with your position on one or more issues does not mean that we don’t understand.

Honestly, we’d like it very much if you would simply find some other way of occupying yourself besides harrassing those who think as they choose. Or, to put it more succinctly, We’d like you to FUCK OFF!!!

“We know his position. That’s why we’re disagreeing with him.”

I’m talking about the poster who advocated boycotting the Herald because it prints material they disagree with, instead of constructively debating it.

“I’m talking about the poster who advocated boycotting the Herald because it prints material they disagree with, instead of constructively debating it.”

We’re tired of debating. We’re also tired of idiots like you. That’s why we make fun of you.That’s also why we advocate boycotting The Badger Herald. They suck. They totally suck. The Palestinians suck. Maybe that’s why they never have anything new or intelligent to say, because there’s too much sucking going on. Their brains are getting sucked right out of their heads.

‘Mohammed, don’t pretend to be among the Palestinian suffering. You are a British social elite who has never once lived with the Palestinians. You’re a propaganda spreading brat.’

Actually, I know him. His family was expelled from Palestine in 48 and then lived in refugee camps like all the other Palestinians who had their homes and land stolen. None of these people were ever allowed to return. This might explain why his stateless family did what they could do and eventually found their way to Britain. He still has family in the West Bank and Gaza but can’t visit them. British social elite! he probably wishes!

Why don’t you address the arguments he makes instead of attacking him as a person? If you think you are justified in your views, then please address his arguments. Otherwise, any rational person will simply assume you having nothing of substance to say. This goes for all the people attacking him personally.

“Why don’t you address the arguments he makes instead of attacking him as a person?”

What do you think he’s doing when he equates Zionism with racism? Don’t you think he’s attacking anyone personally, namely Israelis and Jews who only want a place where they can live without fear of genocide?

If he can’t take it then maybe he shouldn’t dish it out. Fair is fair.

Yeah, the only thing getting in the way of the Palestinians and piece are those couple million heathens who won’t just let themselves be driven into the sea already! The bastards…

Why are you bringing up his personal life. That is no one’s business. It is not our business to dig in someone’s personal life. Get to know your self fist. He has a family and good for him. God knows what your background is?

“Yeah, the only thing getting in the way of the Palestinians and piece…”

Piece of what? Did you mean “peace”?

“Get to know your self fist.”

WTF you doin with your fist?

“Looks like it’s about time to not read the badger herald anymore. Everytime I see an article my Mohammed or Fayyad I am putting it back on the rack.”

Well no shit. Of course a narrow-minded prick like you would not want to see anything but pro-Israeli bull shit.

“I think what he is trying to say here is STOP BLOWING UP BUSES.”

And I say, STOP SHOOTING CIVILIANS.

I come from a family of laborers. I have no criminal record, I do not pick my nose, I wear clean underwear, I have a few hundred in the bank, I had only one cavity at my last check-up and I don’t fart in class. It is, therefore, that I am morally upstanding enough to criticize Mohammed’s anti-Zionist view. I think he is a douchebag and he will never graduate on time, let alone at all. I believe he is totally biased against Jews and Israel’s right to exist, and he should get no nookie because of that.

Shame on him. He is evil. He is an apostate of Hell and should be forcibly returned to the bowels of the Earth immediately. He and his minions have festered on the surface for far too long. Be gone from our midst, O vile one! Ye hath no rightful place among righteous mortals! Thou art but a vile, putrid stench which must be purged! Cursed are thee, for thou hast spoken blasphemy of thy neighbor to all humanity. By sword and by gall he hath swayed the multitudes with putrid and vile speech, he speaketh lies and deceit to all with ears to hear.

Turn all ye away from his baseless and scornful diatribes, for he is indeed a liar. A liar! Smite him down and damn him, for his only refuge is the naivete of those unaware of his true nature. Let him not triumph! Banish him! BANISH HIM!!

“To the contrary! You must not confuse drunken, shallow-minded rednecks with well-educated Americans.”

And then you go on to say

” We’d like you to FUCK OFF!!!”

You don’t strike me as an educated American. That’s simply redneck quality that indicates you’re not civil enough to engage in clean discourse.

“We’re tired of debating. We’re also tired of idiots like you. That’s why we make fun of you.”

No, you make fun of us because you have nothing better to say. Grow up.

you pro israeli kids are funny.

“And I say, STOP SHOOTING CIVILIANS.”

The Israelis aren’t aiming at civilians, they try to minimize harm to civilians, unlike the Palestinians whose main objective is to kill and maim as many civilians as possible.

Maybe the Palestinian terroists should stop using civilians as shields?

“I believe he is totally biased against Jews and Israel’s right to exist, and he should get no nookie because of that.”

And what are you? Do you want to tell me you’re not biased against the Palestinians getting a portion of the land that was stolen from them, or having the liberty for once to control their own affairs?

“Maybe the Palestinian terroists should stop using civilians as shields?”

Been watching Fox news lately?

wow… 33 worthless posts.

i never once saw anyone refute a specific point in his article.

the entire counter-argument was pretty much “i hate those fucking palestinians and arabs” and “stop blowing up buses.” in fact, i doubt that any of you read more than the first 2 paragraphs before posting, based on the responses.

i will grant that his article is biased. but why should we not welcome this side of the debate, especially since most of the campus is biased the other way?

someone said “stop blowing up buses.” palestinians are forced to make crude bombs out of cars and themselves. look at what israel has though. fighter jets, American-made missiles, lots of higher-tech weapons in general. you act surprised that people would fight back when their homes are systematically destroyed. and look at who is doing the fighting. on one side, you do have poor palestinians, working on their own or loosely organized through an NGO. on the other, you have AN INTERNATIONAL STATE. who is taking part in TERRORISM. yes, both sides are taking part in terrorist activities.

i’m not saying that israel started it. i am also not saying that palestinians started it. shit is how it is right now, and the only way to stop the current situation is to stop assigning blame, get over ourselves, and work out a plan that everyone can be happy with.

seriously though, look at how one-sided each of your arguments are, because this is not a one-sided war.

Israel wants the Palestinians to have a portion of the land even though that portion was originally Jordan and the reason the Palestinian portion doesnt exist right now is because the Arabs decided to surround Israel and eliminate the Jewish contamination of the land. The reason the Palestinians don’t have a portion of the land right now is because they rejected Barak’s offer, and they rejected Rabin’s offer. The Palestinians don’t want a portion, they want everything.

“Well no shit. Of course a narrow-minded prick like you would not want to see anything but pro-Israeli bull shit.”

And a dickless shit like you would not want to see anything but pro-terrorist and pro-Palestinian bullshit.

It’s idiotic to deny that the Palestinians use human shields. They boast of it.

You guys need to put the Haterade back in the refrigerator.

My opnion is that I don’t have to care about the stupid Arabs if I don’t want to. And just what are you pro-terrorist liberal shitheads gonna do about it? Call me names? Boycott my posts? Ha-ha! Hey, do whatever you want, I’ll just sit here and laugh at you. And then I’ll post some more. If you fly off the handle that easily then I’m gonna have some fun with it.

”” We’d like you to FUCK OFF!!!”

You don’t strike me as an educated American. That’s simply redneck quality that indicates you’re not civil enough to engage in clean discourse.”

Hey, you don’t strike me as particularly educated either, dimwit. After all, you did take the time to respond to the guy.

“…you act surprised that people would fight back when their homes are systematically destroyed.”

Seems that they’re not exactly “fighting back”, as the homes are destroyed AFTER the Israeli civilians are killed by the Palestinian bombs.

“The reason the Palestinians don’t have a portion of the land right now is because they rejected Barak’s offer, and they rejected Rabin’s offer. The Palestinians don’t want a portion, they want everything.”

Which is another good reason not to give a f@&* about the Palestinians. They’re never satisfied.

To “33 worthless posts”…

THANK YOU!!!! Finally there’s someone else who’s willing to state that BOTH sides are to blame here.

Why hasn’t there been lasting peace? Because of all of you out there who can’t stop sticking cheap shots on each other. Because no one is willing to admit that maybe their side is wrong. Because maybe…just maybe (heaven forbid)…adults preaching bloody murder against each other breed kids who preach bloody murder against each other, and nothing gets resolved.

Sadly, this is not some stupid issue that we should stop caring about. People are dying because of this issue, and that makes it necessary to confront. I just think if you all are going to keep screaming at each other mindlessly without seeing the crimes in your own side, this will never end.

Am I putting the blood on your hands? Maybe. But for God’s sake (Both Jehovah and Allah), this shit has to stop. Quit the sabre rattling and please stand down, all of you.

-William Northend

Arafat is dead. He never wanted peace. We will see some real progress in the next year if outside influences (Hamas, etc.) don’t interfere. Abbas seems like a good man who actually wants to accomplish something. Give him a chance.

“Why hasn’t there been lasting peace? Because of all of you out there who can’t stop sticking cheap shots on each other.”

Kid, I really doubt that the Israelis or the Palestinians even read The Badger Herald. Another thing: people don’t stick cheap shots on each other, they TAKE cheap shots AT each other. What a goofball!

Why does everyone lash out at the Israelis and never at those wacko Muslim clerics who brainwash Palestinians into blowing themselves up? Wouldn’t it make sense to attack them too? Don’t you all think that they should share the blame? I’d be very interested in hearing someone address that issue for once. Anyone?

“Do you want to tell me you’re not biased against the Palestinians getting a portion of the land that was stolen from them, or having the liberty for once to control their own affairs?”

Stolen from them? Not hardly! The Israelis had at least as great a claim to the land as the Palestinians, if not more, when the UN Partition Plan was approved in 1947. In fact, in 1947, there was no “Palestinian” national group — only Jordanians. And in any case, after the Israelis agreed to share the land, five Arab armies launched a war to murder them all. It was during that war that the Arab armies called on the people who are now known as Palestinians to abandon their homes, under the logic that once they had murdered every Jews in the land, they would be able to return home and steal the Jews’ property. When Israel fought back IN SELF-DEFENSE and won the war, they conquered some land. When Israel was attacked again in 1956, 1967, and 1973, it again fought back IN SELF-DEFENSE and conquered more land.

If that makes the land “stolen” in your eyes, I really don’t understand how you can justify living in Wisconsin, where the land definitely was stolen in a series of aggressive acts (and not in self-defense) from Native Americans.

“Abbas seems like a good man who actually wants to accomplish something. Give him a chance.”

Well just who has said anything bad about him? I haven’t heard anyone say anything negative about the man. I don’t hear any Israelis bad-mouthing him. What’s your point?

The answer to the Palestinian situation is simple: people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

“We don’t care because we don’t have to. And that doesn’t make us any less human, it just means that we have the right to place our sympathy and support where we feel it is most needed.”

It is your school - run with your tuitions and your taxes - being accused of indirectly supporting the unlawful demolition of homes and killing of innocent people. That’s why you have to care. That’s why there has to be a debate in the community to shape the policy of the institutions. That’s why you have an opinion section in your newspaper.

“…the land that was stolen from them,”

In the Middle East ALL the land worth living on was “stolen” from somebody. At bottom most land titles are by “right of conquest”.

It is Mohammad Abed who is against the peace process, not the Zionists. Would a Zionist leader who is anti-peace be pushing to get to the negotiating table and withdrawing thousands of people from the territories? I don’t think so. The only people who are anti-peace are people like Mohammad Abed, who want to destroy Israel and create a greater Palestine. Luckily, Mohammad will never hold any political power. As far as I’m concerned, he can stay locked up in his ivory tower and pose fictions and ideas that have no feasibility in the real world.

Ben Herman

You can view the rap song meen Erhabi here, http://www.jsalloum.org/videos.html

Also, check out http://www.slingshothiphop.com/ and view the trailer.

Also, a definition as to what the word Zionist means. A Zionist is someone who believes in a Jewish homeland. Most Zionists throughout history have been fine living next to Arabs—if this was not the case, the Partition Plan of 1947 would not have been accepted by them. If you read Ahad Ha-Am, Martin Buber and Benny Morris, you find a great concern for the rights of the Arab people. Except for a radical minority, the Zionists today affirm these rights and support a two-state solution.

The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs also affirm the right for a Jewish/Zionist state to exist. The few radical ones who don’t, like Mohmmad, want complete Arab hegemony in the Middle East and should not be taken seriously. I am happy that these groups are not the ones who are at the negotiating table.

Also, a definition as to what the word Zionist means. A Zionist is someone who believes in a Jewish homeland. Most Zionists throughout history have been fine living next to Arabs—if this was not the case, the Partition Plan of 1947 would not have been accepted by them. If you read Ahad Ha-Am, Martin Buber and Benny Morris, you find a great concern for the rights of the Arab people. Except for a radical minority, the Zionists today affirm these rights and support a two-state solution.

The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs also affirm the right for a Jewish/Zionist state to exist. The few radical ones who don’t, like Mohmmad, want complete Arab hegemony in the Middle East and should not be taken seriously. I am happy that these groups are not the ones who are at the negotiating table.

Ben

Dear Ben,

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. You will however notice that I said the ‘mainstream Zionist movement.’ There are brave and courageous people like Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, Rabbi Judah Magnes and others who considered themselves Zionist and stood behind the aspirations of the Jewish people for a homeland. However, they also conceived of a Jewish homeland as a space for the spiritual and cultural revival of the Jewish people not necessarily as a Jewish nation-state. People like Arendt realized the necessity of working in partnership with the indigenous Arab population in Palestine. They knew that a state requiring ethnic homogeneity would lead to the dispossession of the Palestinians and that this would in turn fuel a conflict that would benefit neither party. As a result, Arendt advocated a Jewish-Arab Bi-National State in historical Palestine. I myself think this is the only way to resolve the conflict, the only way for Israelis and Palestinians to have a better life in the long-run. I’ve said this and written it countless times in public. Perhaps you missed that.

You may have also missed the fact that in my article I say: ‘The implication is that divestment is driven by something other than a concern for the human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians and the hope that both peoples may one day live at peace in their shared homeland.’ It is therefore clear that I’m in favour of Israeli human rights and in favour of a shared homeland. Please read the article more carefully next time before accusing me of advocating the removal of Israelis and the establishment of a Palestinian Arab State from ‘the river to the sea.’

Also, you may want to take note that most Palestinians still support the right of the refugees to return to the homeland they were uprooted from in 1948. This does not need to imply that they reject a Jewish homeland in Palestine (see Arendt) but it does mean that they question the idea that Israel ought to remain an exclusively Jewish State rather than a multi-cultural Palestinian/Israeli state. The fact that I question the exclusive nature of Israel does not imply (at least if one is rational and level-headed) that I advocate complete Palestinian dominance over the whole land. I do not want to impose minority status on Israelis since this is precisely the conditions that the Jewish people wanted to escape.

Mainstream Zionism is the ideology that left no place for the Palestinians in Palestine. It is the ideology that was translated into a program of ethnic cleansing in 1948 and its the same ideology that makes people think that because a few settlers go from one illegal colony in Gaza to another illegal colony in the West Bank, the Palestinians should shut up and be happy. So, Sharon has decided to withdraw to the perimeter of the Gaza prison. Israel will still control Palestinian airspace, ports, borders and everything else that Palestinians need to control to be truly independent. I don’t think Arendt or Magnes would think this was real justice, so please don’t use their names and legacy in an instrumental manner.

Finally, I’m sure its very difficult for you to deal with the fact that a people who have been utterly decimated and tortured throughout their existence (the Jewish people) are now abusing another (the Palestinians). This is difficult and perplexing, but ought it lead you or any of the other people commenting on my article to engage in baseless ad hominem attacks on either Fayyad or myself? Is it not the case that this kind of attitude is completely at odds with civil dialogue? If you disagree with me, then please, by all means address the arguments I make. Go find some evidence, check your facts, and don’t conflate issues and idea that are obviously distinct.

Sincerely to all of you,

Mohammed Abed

P.S.,

The Original Title of this article was ‘Board of Regents Acquiesce to Israeli Terror.’ It was then changed by the op-ed editors at the Badger Herald.

Mohammed Abed

“inally, I’m sure its very difficult for you to deal with the fact that a people who have been utterly decimated and tortured throughout their existence (the Jewish people) are now abusing another (the Palestinians).”

Mo, don’t even try to compare the suffering of the Palestinians to the suffering of the Jews in Europe. THere is NO comparison. None at all. None at all. Concentration camps where there was forced starvation, labor and abuse in preparation of being moved into the gas chambers (50,000 people per day) does not compare to impoverished Palestinians who were no better off before the Jews were there.

“The implication is that divestment is driven by something other than a concern for the human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians and the hope that both peoples may one day live at peace in their shared homeland.”

Oh yeah, Mohammed, there must be some kind of profit motive to keep the poor pitiful Palestinians fenced in. If you read anything about history in the Middle-East, you’d know that there was certainly a profit motive on the part of Britain to help the Arabs prevent a Jewish state. They wanted to keep that cheap oil flowing. Fortunately, other countries, namely the U.S. and Czheckoslovakia, decided “No friggin’ way, chaps!” and sent all the military aid they could to Israel.

If you think that greed is the underlying cause of this “persecution” that your people are experiencing, then maybe you need to stop being selective about what historical trends or events you use to make your point. You’d certainly find that the greed is not on the Israeli side. It is YOUR facts that need checking, my friend.

“Finally, I’m sure its very difficult for you to deal with the fact that a people who have been utterly decimated and tortured throughout their existence (the Jewish people) are now abusing another (the Palestinians).”

It’s probably more difficult for Jews to deal with the fact that they are subject to terrorist attacks.

From reading some on the subject, it is my humble conclusion that there is no way to placate many violent Palestinian organizations other than Israel’s utter destruction. If the Israelis cede land and the Palestinians do nothing to quell their own violent factions themselves, the Jewish people will have simply given away land for fleeting peace of mind.

The success of the peace process requires making concessions, something that, to the best of my knowledge, the violent Palestinian factions won’t make. Up until now, the Palestinian leadership has been rather ineffective in reining in these groups terrorist activities. If these groups are allowed to operate unrestrained, you just can’t have peace.

The Peculiar Institution: Understanding Why Palestinian Terror Is Different

By Lee Harris Published 02/28/2005

1. THE PALESTINIANS’ MOMENT OF TRUTH

The Palestinian people stand at a critical moment in their history. They can rally behind the efforts of their new leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to bring an end to the Palestinian tradition of terror, or they can continue to give their support to those who are pursuing a fatal and futile fantasy — a fantasy that has cost the lives of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, both Israelis and Palestinians.

The fantasy in question is the fantasy that one day the so called “Zionist occupation” will end. And the reason it is a fantasy can be easily detected in the phrase “the Zionist occupation.”

The state of Israel has long since ceased to be a Zionist project. Like it or not, Israel is a historical fait accompli, a state as real and genuine as any that has ever existed in history. If the Israeli people could have been run out of the area, they would have left long ago. Those who are there are seriously there. They aren’t leaving in the future. That is why the Palestinian people have only one realistic choice before them: they must work in every way possible to eliminate the terror virus that was permitted to spread among them under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, especially now when the Palestinians at long last appear to have a leader who is trying to bring an end to Palestine’s reign of terror.

Terrorism is a Palestinian tradition that must end. But in order to bring about this desperately needed change, not only must the Palestinian people cease to show sympathy with their indigenous terrorist organizations, so too must Westerners, both in Europe and in the United States. Sympathy with the Palestinian people is in order, but not sympathy for the institution that has held them back from all progress toward a genuinely responsible civic polity.

For that is what terrorism has become among the Palestinians — it is their peculiar institution, the way slavery was the peculiar institution of the American South in the nineteenth century. For, like the slave system, terrorism, deployed as a means of achieving political goals, ends by poisoning the society that permits it to flourish in its midst. The only group that draws any advantage from its use are those who are ruthless enough to use it. Like slavery, it corrupts whatever it touches, and is of value only to those who live off it. Like slavery, it appears to be an institution that can only be destroyed by those who are willing to use extreme and drastic measures to eradicate it. And, lastly, like American slavery, Palestinian terrorism has its defenders, many of them decent and well-intentioned individuals. In what follows I will try to explain why these individuals are mistaken in extending their sympathy to organizations like Hamas and other “militant” Palestinian groups.

1. CANT IN DEFENSE OF TERRORISM

Samuel Johnson once remarked, in a moment of irritation, “I will have no cant in defense of savagery.” Well, if he had lived today, he would have had to put up with something even worse than cant in defense of savagery, and that is cant in defense of terrorism. But what would have been guaranteed to push him beyond the limits of his patience would have been the Western school of cant that, for over a half century, has been employed to defend and apologize for one particularly brutal, pointless, and politically self-defeating forms of terrorism: Palestinian terrorism.

What makes Palestinian terror uniquely privileged among all other forms of terror, even among those people who find other form of terrorism unacceptable? And why do so many well-meaning people in the West observe a double standard when it comes to the terrorism used by the Palestinians and the terrorism used by al Qaeda?

That such a double standard exists is hardly a matter of dispute. The Bush administration proved this point some time back by its condemnation of the Israeli government’s killing of the Hamas leader, a man whose life had been dedicated to perfecting terrorism as a weapon to be used against innocent Israeli men, women, and children. And where the Bush administration condemns an Israeli action, it is fairly easy to imagine what the rest of the world’s attitude on such a question would be.

What accounts for this?

To attempt to provide the answer to this question, I have identified three distinct sources of cant in defense of Palestinian terrorism, each of which may be summed up in the stock phrases that usually spring to the lips of those who are engaged in the process of defending or apologizing for Palestinian terrorism. They are:

(1) The “cycle of violence”

(2) The “legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people”

(3) The “Zionist occupation”

My reason for spending so much time dissecting the cant surrounding Palestinian terror is simple. I am convinced that the West shares much, if not most, of the blame for the most startling fact of our epoch, namely, the political triumph of Islamic terrorism.

If the word “triumph” sounds premature or alarmist, ask yourself what nation state has had the impact on the geopolitical world order that the Islamic terrorists have had in the last half century. Without a navy or an air force or an army, without any of the paraphernalia of a normal nation state, a handful of terrorist organizations have managed to seize the center stage of world affairs, and have been deciding the fate of nations. They have all but shattered the international system of alliances upon which the Pax Americana depended; they have turned many of our former allies into current enemies; they have rallied fifth columnists within every Western democracy, including our own, to champion the cause of radical anti-Americanism; they have seduced the progressive Left into defending the most reactionary regimes in the world. They have turned one European election to their own purposes, and have thereby acquired a technique that can be all too easily applied to other elections, raising a question of the survivability of parliamentary democracy in the face of future coordinated terrorist strikes. They have put the governance of the United States on permanent hold by putting the fight against terrorism on top of our national agenda, where it will remain as long as the terrorists are willing to act to keep it there. In short, it is the terrorists who are calling the shots.

How did this happen? How did the vast power of the West, and the enormous benefits of the Pax Americana, fail to defend us against the demon of terrorism?

This is where Western culpability lies. We meant well. We sympathized with the plight of the Palestinians, and for good reason; but we let this sympathy get the better of our judgment. When the Palestinians first used terror, many liberals argued that this was a legitimate way for a subject people to defend themselves, and we cited what seemed to be analogous conduct on the part of anti-colonialist revolutionaries, like the Algerian nationalists — or indeed, like the American patriots who fought to shake off the yoke of England. The operative motto was, “One man’s terrorist was another man’s freedom fighter.”

Today, in the era of the war on terrorism, this motto has become a source of uneasiness and confusion. On the one hand, many of us want to declare that all forms of terrorism constitute an unmitigated evil; yet, on the other hand, it is impossible to avoid noticing that some acts of terror have successfully been used in order to bring about desirable political change. Were the Spanish who rebelled against Napoleon in 1808 terrorists? And what about the Germans who tried to blow up Adolf Hitler with a bomb — they failed in their mission, but would their success have been wrong? Or the Algerian nationalists who wanted France to stop ruling them, and who used a systematic campaign of terror to bring about their national liberation?

For better or for worse, one man’s terrorist quite often is another man’s freedom fighter. The Algerian nationalists were terrorists to the French, but freedom fighters from the point of view of the nation state that their terror brought into being. This fact, however, has nothing to do with moral or cultural relativism; nor does it give us permission to call someone a freedom-fighter merely because he enjoys blowing people up. Rather, the Algerian experience reflects a particular set of historical circumstances familiar to us from antiquity, namely, the struggle of one people to acquire independence from the control of another people.

Such struggles are not pretty. They were not pretty in the ancient world, nor in the modern one. Like the founding of a state, the liberation of a people is inevitably a violent process in which many innocent lives are lost. Yet there are two things that all such historical struggles have in common: first, the violence has a point, and second, the violence is not an end in itself.

Consider the case of Timothy McVeigh. What point did his violence have? Or, to put it another way, what was he intending to achieve by the bombing of a building full of innocent American men, women, and children? According to McVeigh’s own account, it was to raise the consciousness of ordinary Americans, and to make them see how terrible their Federal government was. Did it have this effect? Or, more to the point, could it have had this effect? Did the American people cheer McVeigh for his generous efforts to make them see the truth about the Zionist occupation government? With the exception of Gore Vidal, the answer is no.

Was McVeigh a freedom fighter, or a terrorist? In his own mind, he was a freedom fighter; and if subjective intention is enough to determine this question, then we would be forced to acknowledge that McVeigh was indeed a freedom fighter; but then we would be forced to acknowledge that John Wilkes Booth and Charles Manson were both freedom fighters as well, along with the next lunatic who wishes to slaughter people in order to bring about a popular uprising that exists only in his own fevered imagination.

In short, if freedom fighter is to mean anything, it must have genuine substance to it, and this can only come about in one way: the man who is a real freedom fighter must be fighting for what his entire community recognizes as their freedom, and not merely for his own feverish hallucinations.

This was true of the Algerian terrorists, and it was equally true of the Israeli terrorists, like the Stern gang. Both groups used terrorism as an interim tactic exclusively designed to bring about a political objective, namely, the civic freedom of their respective communities. They were using terrorism not as an end in itself, but as a mere makeshift device, so that once their political objectives had been achieved, those who had used terrorism stopped using it.

You are free to deplore such use of terror; and yet, if you go back to the founding of any lasting state, you will discover lawless violence and illegitimate uses of force — in short, terror. The only difference is that modern states like Algeria and Israel were formed in a period of history where such acts were considered horrendous atavisms — which, of course, they were, judged by the standards of modern civilization.

Throughout this essay I will take for granted the idea that terror can be used for legitimate purposes, as it was used during the period of de-colonization, when various peoples, like the Algerians and the Israelis, struggled to create independent nations from what had once been European colonies and mandates. I will even go so far as to accept the idea that such terror could be dialectically justified by the results achieved through it, and that in this case, the ends justified the means.

Once I have granted all of this, however, I will draw a sharp distinction between terror as a means to an end, and terror as an end in itself, because the crisis that the West faces today has arisen in large measure because of the West’s failure to understand the chasm that separates instrumental terrorism employed by the Algerians and Israelis to found nation states of their own from the pointless ritual terrorism of the Palestinians, designed not to create a Palestinian state, but to perpetuate a fantasy agenda that involves the ultimate liquidation of the state of Israel.

1. “THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE”

The failure of the West to distinguish between these two types of terrorism is not due to a liberal bias or to a conservative one, or even a pro-Israeli or a pro-Palestinian one. Everyone from Noam Chomsky to George W. Bush tacitly assumes that Palestinian terrorists should not be treated like al Qaeda terrorists. Many on the left feel a mistaken sympathy for the Palestinian terrorists out of a belief that they are like the Algerian freedom fighters, while many on the right feel that political realism forces them to distinguish between these two forms of terrorism.

Political realism was the primary justification several American administrations negotiated with the late Yasser Arafat, despite his history as an instigator and abettor of terrorism, and it is the same political realism that has led administrations to scold Israel for its elimination of leaders of the various Palestinian terrorist organizations. According to this point of view, it is imperative that the United States must appear to be what Bismarck called “an honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, adjudicating between the legitimate claims of both antagonists. Therefore, while the Clinton or Bush administration may deplore Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, each has normally felt obliged to condemn Israel retaliation for continuing what is called “the cycle of violence.”

Here we come to the first, and perhaps the most common, form that our modern cant about terrorism assumes — a phrase that slips so easily off the tongues of anchorpersons that no one ever stops to inspect its meaning.

You walk into my house and shoot my wife dead. I chase you out of the house and gun you down in the street. The next day your son kills me; and two days following my son kills your son.

Now here is a cycle of violence, and yet can there be any doubt who started this cycle? You did. True, I may have done things that, in your opinion, justified your violence; but provided I did not use physical violence against you or yours, then you were the first one to escalate to the deliberate use of violence.

So how could I have stopped the cycle of violence? Well, by not doing anything to you or your kin when you killed my wife.

But would this have stopped the cycle of violence? What if you came the next day and shot my son, and I still didn’t use violence to avenge myself. In this case, is my refusal to stoop to the use of violence a factor promoting the end of violence, or an incentive to more violence on the part of the person who first decided to use it?

The “cycle of violence” is a cant phrase, like so many other cant phrases circulating today, in that it permits us to feel as if we have said something profound when in fact we are talking utter nonsense. Yes, violence, once begun, often breeds violence — but, as history amply demonstrates, violence breeds violence no matter how the other party responds to it. Fighting violence breeds it, but so too does appeasing violence. Furthermore, massive and overwhelming violence, far from continuing the cycle of violence, often stops it in its tracks, like the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So what is the phrase “cycle of violence” good for? Well, for deceiving ourselves into thinking that we can be even-handed and fair-minded in our approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since it is all just a cycle of violence, we do not need to take sides, or decide whose violence is justifiable. All violence is equally wrong, on this view; hence the role of the honest broker is to deplore both Israeli violence and Palestinian violence as if there were no difference between them.

This policy is similar to the policy on violence that is fashionable in American public schools today. If two boys are found fighting, both are punished equally, and no attention is paid to the question, “Who started it?” All violence is equivalent. The violence of the bully, and the violence of the boy who is determined to put the bully in his place, are one and the same. The heroic kid, who is prepared to stand up to the bully, is not honored, but sent to detention or expelled.

In the context of a public school, such a policy can be justified by the obvious problem of how do you go about determining who really started the fight when both boys, along with their buddies, are screaming that it was the other side who threw the first punch. Yet matters of expediency must not be elevated to maxims of morality. It is fine to break up two boys with the statement, “One of you may well be totally in the right and the other totally in the wrong — but, unfortunately, the school system lacks the facilities to pass a judgment on this question. Therefore, we are forced to punish both the guilty and the innocent.” But it is not fine to tell them that all violence is equally wrong, and to condemn both equally for resorting to it, since this, rather from being a straightforward statement of school policy, is transparent cant.

Yet this is the position that so much of the world inevitably takes when it is a question of eruptions of violence between the Palestinians and the Israelis. “There they go again,” is apt to be the response of many fair-minded Westerners; and each new terrorist act, and each retaliation against it, are weighed against one another as if they were morally equivalent.

Psychologically, it is understandable why so many Westerners feel this way. Those, for example, who have gone back to the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict inevitably discover that their sincere efforts to solve the question, “Who started it?” are baffled by the bloody and violent historical track record of both Israelis and Palestinians. But, in fact, it is not necessary for us to try to determine the question of who started it. This is because, even when we cannot be clear about who started it, we can be reasonably certain about who is not trying to stop it — and this is certainly true in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israelis retaliate against terror, and they try to prevent it; but they do not use acts of terror to deliberately disrupt attempts at a peaceful solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the Palestinian terrorist organizations do. They have for decades, and they continue to engage in such terror, despite Palestinian national elections and concessions made by the Israelis. Nor is there any reason to suppose that this terror will end, so long as there are Palestinian organizations whose very existence depends on maintaining a condition of anarchy and disorder. Any stable and peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would, in and of itself, rob the terrorist leaders and their followers of their power and importance. Thus, they have a vested interest in keeping uproar and violence alive.

Despite this painfully obvious fact, the apologists of Palestinian terror argue that, unlike the Israelis who have tanks and airplanes, the Palestinian militants lack the means to express their political aspiration, except through acts of terrorism. But couldn’t Timothy McVeigh have said the same thing? “Yes,” he might have said, “I would have declared war on the Federal government if I had been equipped with my own military force, but, lacking that, I did the best I could: I blew up lots of perfectly innocent people.”

The argument does not work in McVeigh’s case because we do not accept the legitimacy of his aspirations: we do not see the point of his act of terror, nor do we see any link between the point he was trying to make and the means he elected to make it with.

This, however, is not the way that most of the world views Palestinians acts of terror. These atrocities are looked upon as the _expression — however immature or misguided — of what is called “the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.”

1. “THE LEGITIMATE ASPIRATIONS OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE”

This second cant phrase is short hand for saying that while, of course, we can’t approve of all the aspirations of the Palestinian people, such as the liquidation of the state of Israeli, we can approve of their legitimate aspirations, such as the desire to have a state of their own. But this is like telling a young man who has his heart set on marrying your daughter that you approve fully of his desire to find himself a bride, but that you have no intention of offering him your daughter’s hand in marriage. By doing this, you are not recognizing his actual aspirations as legitimate; you are trying to get him to aspire to something quite different — something that you are prepared to regard as his legitimate aspiration, such as marrying someone else’s daughter instead of yours. Thus, when apologists for Palestinian terror use this cant phrase what they really mean is this: If the Palestinians were interested in establishing a state next to Israel that did not continue using terrorism against Israel in the hope of driving it into the sea, then this would be fine with them — just as a Hitler who was happy in his own homeland and who had no interest in exterminating the Jews would have been fine with Churchill.

It is absurd to suggest that a people who have passionately dedicated themselves to an unacceptable goal, such as the destruction of the Jewish state, are really expressing a reasonable goal cunningly hidden from view within the unacceptable goal. Hitler, for example, in his ultimatum to Poland over the city of Dantzig had a reasonable goal — the return of a German city to its original homeland — but accompanying this reasonable goal was one that was quite unacceptable, namely, the use of violence to destroy the independence of Poland. Had Neville Chamberlain said at that time, “Well, Mr. Hitler’s ultimatum does reflect the legitimate aspirations of the German people as well as the people of Dantzig,” he would have been quite correct — ninety percent of the city wanted to be re-united with Germany, just as Germany wanted to be re-united with it. But what value were these legitimate aspirations if they were not the real aspirations — as they clearly were not?

The much maligned Chamberlain was not fooled by Hitler’s claims of legitimate aspirations: he had seen what “the legitimate aspirations” model had lead to after the Munich accord when Hitler, not satisfied with re-uniting the Germans of the Sudentenland — his original legitimate aspirations — elected to march into the Czech republic and liquidate it as a national entity.

Cant talk of legitimate aspirations, when used in connection with Palestinian terrorism, deceives many well-meaning people into believing that such terror has a realistic and acceptable goal, namely, the fulfillment of the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people to have a state of their own, when in fact the only way to fulfill the aspirations of the Palestinian militants and terrorists is through the liquidation of Israel. That is why any Palestinian political organization that expects Israel, America, or the rest of the world to take it seriously must figure out a way not merely of controlling the terrorists, but eliminating them altogether. No one can take seriously the claims to political responsibility of a people whose elected leaders cannot control gangs of terrorist thugs — a fact of which the current Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, appears to be painfully aware.

Here, as so often, sympathetic Americans see the plight of the Palestinian people and think to themselves, “What would be my aspirations if I were in such a situation?” And from this premise, they conclude that the Palestinians would aspire to the same kind of thing that we would aspire to under the same circumstances: to create our own state, to operate it independently, and to live in peace alongside Israel. But this is a classical example of the sympathetic illusion that prevails in so much Western thinking about the aspirations of the Palestinians in particular and the Arabs in general.

The upshot of this sympathetic illusion is that we unconsciously replace the Palestinian fantasy aspirations of total victory over Israel with our own modest “Live and let live” attitude, thereby creating the mirage of a legitimate goal to which our imaginary Palestinians would be aspiring if they were just like us.

This mirage of a legitimate goal is essential to all Western apologetics for Palestinian terrorism. Thus an organization like Hamas is seen as seeking a legitimate objective, namely the creation of an independent Palestinian state, but is simply going about it the wrong way. Instead of following the roadmap to peace, they are using terrorism. So get them to stop using terror, engage them in the peace process, and that way, the state of Israel will find peace and the “legitimate aspirations” of the Palestinians would be accommodated.

On this view, the Palestinian aspirations are sound; it is simply that the Palestinians have chosen an unfortunate means to achieve these aspirations, namely, terror. Get them to stop using terror, and help obtain their legitimate goals, and all will be well.

Underlying this Pollyanna scenario is the idea that Palestinian terror is a poor man’s form of Clausewitzian warfare. Palestinian terrorism, like traditional war, is politics carried out by other means. Unlike the Israelis, the Palestinians lack the military hardware of their enemy, and hence are entitled to use whatever means necessary in order to achieve their objectives — objectives that, according to the “legitimate aspiration” thesis, are the same objectives of any other people: national independence.

But independence from what?

Well, obviously from the Israelis.

Yet the moment the conflict is framed in this way, it becomes quite obvious that anyone buying into this scenario is evoking a model drawn from the period of de-colonization that followed World War Two, with the state of Israel cast as the European oppressor, and the Palestinian people cast as the oppressed native population. Hence the origin of the most specious of all the arguments for Palestinians — indeed, in many ways, the one central premise in the canon of pro-terrorist cant, namely, the notion that Israel is not really a state, but a Western colony, also known as the myth of Zionist occupation.

1. THE MYTH OF THE ZIONIST OCCUPATION

The spell that this model casts over minds in the West, including minds that should know better, can hardly be overemphasized. For it is this model that permits Western apologists for Palestinian terrorists to see them as freedom fighters who, like the Algerian revolutionaries, are simply using any means that comes to hand to secure their national homeland from European occupation. As a result, the Palestinian struggle against “the Zionist occupation” is no different from the struggle of any other indigenous people to liberate themselves from colonial oppression.

According to this model, the Palestinian use of terror is legitimate because of the noble ends that it serves. As Lenin remarked, “You cannot make an omelet without breaking the eggs,” so that, going on this analogy, that Palestinian terror is nothing more than the egg breaking that is necessary in order to rid the Palestinian people from the yoke of European subjugation, with the establishment of an independent Palestinian state playing the role of the omelet.

On this popular view, the Palestinian struggle is the last great battle for independence from European colonialism, and hence it is, in effect, simply an updated version of the Algerian struggle for national independence half a century earlier. The Algerian revolutionaries used terror; the Palestinians use terror. Both forms of terror, it is claimed, aim at the same end — liberation from colonial oppression. Therefore, if the Algerians were justified in breaking eggs because of the omelet that resulted, why shouldn’t the same culinary logic apply to the Palestinians?

Here we have an example of cant thinking that arises out of a completely false analogy, and that best way to see this is to examine the original proto-type.

The Algerian model of terrorism was developed out of the concrete historical circumstances of the Algerian independence movement, concerning which three factors stand out as having a critical bearing on the analogy between the Algerian and the Palestinian model of terrorism.

First, there was never any doubt what the Algerian terrorists wanted. From the initial use of terror, it was clear that the desired political objective was the severing of all ties to France, and the establishment of complete independence — and at no point did the Algerian terrorists ever waver from this unconditional demand.

Second, independence was a demand that, however painful its satisfaction may have been to many Frenchmen, was still a demand that the French could afford to pay. The independence of Algeria was all about Algeria; it required no drastic alteration in the life of the average Frenchmen, provided he lived in France, and not Algeria. The French, in short, only needed to give up Algeria; they did not need to give up France.

Third, all parties knew that once France had acceded to the demands of the Arab nationalists, that the Arab terror would stop. The French knew this because the Arab nationalists, though still not representing a sovereign nation, acted as if they were already one. Though there were quarrels among them, these never rose to a point where the French government had to wonder, Who represents the Arab nationalists? Thus the French were assured that once the Arab nationalists had obtained what they demanded, that no splinter group will come along to make a set of new demands on France. Besides, what would be the point of these new demands if the French pulled out of Algeria?

These three factors account for the Clausewitzian quality so obviously present in the Algeria independence movement. Terror, in this case, was a form of war used to obtain realistic political ends. Indeed, the only difference between classical Clausewitzian war — that is, war between independent nation states — and the Algerian war of independence, was merely a matter of terminology. Algeria was still recognized by most of the world as a colony. But in the same way that certain modern states are merely honorific states, and not states in substance, Algeria might have been called a merely honorific colony, since it proved it was not a colony by fighting a war the same way that any genuine nation fights a war. It behaved like a state first, and got recognition as a state second.

At the time of its revolution, Algeria was not recognized by the world community as an independent and sovereign nation, except by the Communist block. In this sense, it was the mirror image of those failed states that are called “states” simply because their existence has been formally recognized by the United Nations. In this case, what was called a colony was in fact already a real state — and it proved this fact by acting enough like a real nation state to make demands on France, and to force France to yield to these demands.

Algerian terrorism, whatever else you may say about it, was the breaking of eggs solely for the purpose of making an omelet, and not merely for the joy of breaking eggs. But this kind of terrorism was only available as an instrument of policy because it was terrorism that had a realistic chance of working to achieve its goal.

This realistic chance turned entirely on the historical setting in which the Algerian revolution took place, namely, that period in which European nations were being forced, one after one, to return the colonies that they had established in earlier centuries back to the native populations, for good or for ill. It was this setting that made the use of terrorism by nationalists a realistic political choice, and this is a fact that must be recognized even by those who might have deplored the making of such a choice.

In summary, the Algerian model of terror can only be realistically effective under certain precisely defined circumstances. First, there had to be a colony that wished to gain its political independence. Second, within this colony there had to be an emergent state apparatus in the form of a nationalist leadership that was capable of acting coherently and for a collective purpose. Third, there had to be a point where the colonizing country would call it quits rather than continue to pay an increasingly costly price for maintaining the colonial status of the native population.

This point was reached in France when the French began to genuinely fear that the Algerian revolution would create a veritable civil war in France; and this was a price that the French simply were not willing to pay — and for good reason. And thus the day came when the French declared: “Enough’s enough — let them have their independence.”

In short, in this case, terror worked, and the Algerian nation was born as a result of it. True, eggs got broken, but the omelet, for what it was worth, was made in the end.

1. THE IRRELEVANCE OF THE ALGERIAN MODEL

Now the problem of using the Algerian model to justify terrorism is quite obvious: when the three conditions enumerated above do not hold, the Algerian model of terror becomes utterly pointless, and ceases to have even a quasi-Clausewitzian purpose; and nowhere is this more evident than in the Palestinian use of terror against Israel. In that case, we need to pay attention to the motto of Joseph la Farina, the nineteenth century Italian nationalist who also fought for his country’s independence, and who had learned first hand how much unnecessary blood can be shed in the pursuit of political fantasies.

La Farina’s motto goes like this: “In politics the impossible is the immoral.” And it is by this motto that Palestinian terrorism grossly fails to live up to the Algerian model. There, terrorism was used in the pursuit of a realistic goal — France abandoning Algeria; today, the Palestinian suicide-bombers are in pursuit of a fantasy — the fantasy of Israel abandoning Israel. From this perspective, it is not their use of terrorism that condemns them, but their utter lack of realism.

The rhetoric of the anti-Israeli left is deliberately customized in order to conflate and confuse. It argues that Israel is to Palestine what France was to Algeria — simply a colonial power occupying territory that does not really belong to it. Israel, on this reading, is transformed from being an independent nation state into being merely a colony of America, or perhaps of the West in general, in which case the model of the Algerian revolution may be piously invoked, as a way of justifying the terror of the Palestinian suicide-bombers. See, the apologists for Palestinian terror exclaim, we are just doing what the Algerians did to gain their independence. If they are justified in what they did, then we are justifying in what we are doing.

This analogy is based on the curious notion that Zionism was a form of colonialism, as if somewhere outside Israel there was a mother country controlled by Zionists — a contention that can only be made plausible if you accept the argument that America is itself the Zionist mother country. Yet even if you are willing to swallow this absurd premise, the analogy still doesn’t hold water — and a glance back at the Algerian revolution will show us why.

When it became clear that France was going to pull out of Algeria, the pied noirs, or those Europeans who had made Algeria their home generations before, and who were more often than not of Italian and Spanish ancestry rather than French, decided that they were not going to budge, whereupon they themselves began to employ the exact same terror strategy against Metropolitan France that had proven so successful a technique in the hands of the Arab nationalists. The OAS was formed, and the attacks that they carried out were just as ruthless, and often more deadly, than the attacks that had been undertaken by the Algerian revolutionaries — and all of them designed to force France into reversing its policy of de-colonizing Algeria.

Thus, if the Palestinians wish to evoke the Algerian model of terrorism to justify their own use of terror, they must begin by recognizing that the current population of Israeli does not represent the supposed American colonial power, but are analogous to the stubborn pied noirs who refused to leave the land that they themselves regard as their true homeland — even if they originally came from somewhere else. It is not necessary to believe that these Israelis are “right” to have such feelings of visceral attachment to Israel — indeed, you can deplore this attachment as much as you wish; but you must at the same time recognize both the intensity of this attachment and, what is more important, what the people of Israel are willing to do in order to defend what they regard as their homeland, and not merely as a colonial outpost of the American Imperium.

If the Palestinians insist on drawing comparison to Algeria, then they must recognize that they are not fighting American colonialists, who might be willing to leave if things got hot enough for them. Instead, they are fighting against pied noirs who are firmly convinced that they are in their own homeland, and that no one has a right to push them out of it.

But here the analogy breaks down altogether, because the Israelis cannot be compared to the Algerian pied noirs for two reasons. First, because the Israelis are roughly equal in number to the Palestinians, unlike the pied noirs, who were vastly outnumbered by the Muslim population, at a ratio of about 10 to 1. Second, because, unlike the pied noirs, the Israelis do not have to rely on small scale acts of terror, as the OAS did; the Israelis have an army, an air force, and a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons, with a delivery capacity sufficient to devastate every major city in the Arab world. Thus, far from being a vastly outnumbered minority without any means to defend themselves except by copying the terrorism of the Algerian revolutionaries, as the pied noirs were eventually driven to do, the state of Israel possesses the retaliatory capacities that only a handful of states in the history of the world have possessed; and certainly far more than Japan, Germany, Italy, or Spain possesses today. Hence the manifest — and dangerous — folly of pretending that Israel is a colony of America or of the West. If the possession of an enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons does not make you a sovereign state, it is difficult to say what would.

In short, the pied noirs could not survive where they were by brute force, whereas the Israelis can. And this one indisputable fact is sufficient to topple the Algerian model completely. It was possible to use terror to drive out the French; but it is not possible to use terror to “drive out” the Israelis, because, like the pied noirs, they are unwilling to be driven out, but, unlike the pied noirs, they have the military might to keep anyone from seriously thinking of driving them out. Hence, those Palestinians who believe that they can secure their goal of driving Israel into the sea are operating on the same level of fantasy thinking that was displayed by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Furthermore, there is this consideration. If the Israelis feel that they have been betrayed, as the pied noirs felt betrayed by France, they would have the wherewithal to make matters quite unpleasant for the world — and the traditional Israeli admiration for the martyrs of Masada is an indication of just how far the Israeli government might be prepared to go in extremis. If we are to die, we are prepared to take as many with us as possible — this represents the ace in the hole of Israel, and one that is so self-evident that there is no need to articulate it. When a proud nation is pressed to the wall, and fighting tooth and nail to insure its biological survival, it may take whatever steps it deems necessary to defend itself. When Louis the XIV attacked Holland, the Dutch immediately broke their dikes and flooded their country, thereby making it impassible for the French armies. Similarly, when Napoleon arrived to celebrate his great triumph in Moscow, an order had already gone forth to burn the great and beautiful city to the ground.

Those who have no sympathy for the Israelis must still have a healthy respect for what they might be capable of doing when they suddenly find themselves in the same desperate situation that their ancestors found themselves in on mount Masada nearly two thousand year before. Those who think that the Israelis would go down without a catastrophic parting shot at the Arab world — and perhaps Europe as well — are simply being naíve. Hate the Israelis as much as you wish; you must still take a realistic measure of their awesome capacity to inflict damage on anyone who assumes that they could be removed from their land without one final apocalyptic death spasm; and this single fact renders the Palestinian use of the Algerian model utterly ridiculous. Metropolitan France had a breaking point, and the Algerians revolutionaries were able to push them to this point. But the Israelis cannot afford to have a breaking point; and if they did, the achievement of this breaking point by the Palestinians would not result in the evacuation of Israel, but in the destruction of the Palestinians themselves, and perhaps millions in the Arab world as well.

1. TERROR FOR THE SAKE OF TERROR

There is a psychological barrier here that is of profound significance. The Algerian terrorists looked upon terror frankly as a tool. Their strategy dictated that there had to be terror bombings, but the terrorists themselves were not interested in slaughter for the sake of slaughter, so that when the French agreed to pull out, those who had been terrorists turned to something else.

But what do the Palestinians suicide bombers turn into when they stop being terrorists? Into cinders. Those who practice this kind of terror do not see it as a bloody and ghastly instrument that they hope one day to set aside, and in this respect they differ profoundly from both the terrorists who helped to found an independent Algeria and the terrorists who helped to establish the state of Israel.

Yet most in the West refuse to see this difference, or to acknowledge it when they do. Through the cant phrases we have examined, and the absence of serious thinking that is the inevitable product of the repetition of such phrases, the Palestinian terrorists have become officially licensed to use terrorism in a way that no other group of people had been licensed. They became free to murder Israelis decade after decade, and to encourage their own children to kill themselves to achieve this pointless end. Unlike the Algerians and the Israelis before them, the Palestinians were not expected to achieve any serious purpose by these acts, but were permitted to indulge in them virtually as a form of self-_expression.

In the culminating cant phrase of all, terrorism became formalized as “the _expression of the desperation of the Palestinian people,” a book of lamentations written in mangled corpses of the Palestinians’ own children — almost a ritual deserving of respect, like the Jewish Kaddish or the Catholic mass for the dead. It was sacred, and therefore above criticism. Why do they encourage their children to explode bombs against their chests? Because of their desperation.

Other people have despaired, and not one is recorded which decided to express its despair in this particular way: the Armenians persecuted by the Turks, the Jews persecuted by the Cossacks, the Irish persecuted by the English, and down the list, and not a one of them ever thought about immolating their own offspring on such a senseless and bitter pyre. And it is supposed to mean nothing to us that the Palestinians and the Arabs find such a sacrifice ennobling to the family that urges it?

The Palestinian terrorists, in short, are past masters at breaking eggs. But, unlike the Algerian revolutionaries, they appear to have forgotten that the whole point of breaking eggs was to make an omelet. They have become obsessed with breaking eggs only for the pleasure they seem to get from smashing delicate things.

Those who support the endless smashing of bodies for the mere sake of smashing bodies are not standing on the right side of history. They are in league with the forces of anti-civilization. They are cheering on those who no longer remember how to create and construct, and indeed who no longer see any purpose in creating or constructing.

This is why those who have genuine sympathy with the Palestinian people must stop extending sympathy for those who continue to pursue a totally unrealistic fantasy, especially now that a genuine alternative is being offered to them by a leader that they have chosen themselves. But Mahmoud Abbas can only be successful in bringing an end to Palestinian terrorism if the opinion of the rest of the world stands solidly behind him in his struggle to control the virus of terrorism that has plagued the Palestinian people just as much — if not more — than it has plagued the Israelis. That is why those who continue to apologize or palliate Palestinian terror are betraying the very people that they are claiming to support. It is time, in short, to stop the cant in defense of terrorism, no matter from what source it may come.

Lee Harris is author of Civilization and Its Enemies.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/022805A.html

“Also, you may want to take note that most Palestinians still support the right of the refugees to return to the homeland they were uprooted from in 1948. This does not need to imply that they reject a Jewish homeland in Palestine (see Arendt) but it does mean that they question the idea that Israel ought to remain an exclusively Jewish State rather than a multi-cultural Palestinian/Israeli state.”

Let’s say I believe you, Mohammed. Why is it ok for the Palestinians to have a state where they don’t allow any Jews to live and any Jews who already live there will be forced to leave, but not ok for Israel to refuse to allow the so-called refugees to return to their former homes, even though Israel had to absorb a roughly equal number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands?

“Mainstream Zionism is the ideology that left no place for the Palestinians in Palestine. It is the ideology that was translated into a program of ethnic cleansing in 1948”

That’s just plain false. Over two-thirds of Israelis support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the vast majority of the West Bank — contrast that with the two-thirds of Palestinians who support genocidal terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. And you cannot deny that invading Arab armies called upon so-called Palestinians to leave their homes during the 1948 war so they wouldn’t have to worry whether the people they were randomly killing were Jews or Arabs — you can look it up in Arabic language newspapers of the time. That means that it was the Arab nations that pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing on behalf of you and your Palestinian brethren. As such, your claim that Zionists engage in ethnic cleansing is a blatant lie. We can only conclude that you are either incapable of telling the truth or you are so filled with hate that you cynically repeat any lies you think your gullible, uninformed neighbors might believe. Not to pull out the Nazi card (speaking of ethnic cleansing, weren’t the Palestinians among the most ardent supporters of the Nazis?), but Joseph Goebbels used the same techniques to convince the world that the Nazis weren’t engaged in ethnic cleansing against the Jews.

It’s an interesting parallel, isn’t it, now that you’re doing exactly the same thing?

London’s Red Mayor Baits a “Nazi” Jew By Melanie Phillips FrontPageMagazine.com | February 21, 2005

Suddenly, all the talk in Britain is of anti-Semitism. For the past few years, despite the firestorm of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice that has been raging, any protests have been slapped down as paranoia. Yet in last few days, a lot of people are discovering the phenomenon. The cause is Labour’s supremely politically correct mayor of London, “Red” Ken Livingstone.

At a publicly funded party he threw to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Labour MP Chris Smith coming out as gay, Livingstone was door-stepped by Oliver Finegold, a reporter for the London Evening Standard. The mayor responded by asking whether he had previously been a German war criminal. When Finegold protested that he was Jewish, Livingstone observed: “Arrr, right, well you might be Jewish but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard, you are just doing it because you are paid to, aren’t you?”

The train of thinking behind this remarkable outburst was that the Standard, which Livingstone hates because it opposes his policies, is owned by Associated Newspapers, which also owns the Daily Mail (for which I happen to write). In the 1930s, the Mail supported Oswald Mosley’s fascists.

Livingstone’s seamless connection between that episode 70 years ago and a Jewish reporter from the Standard asking him a question about a gay party in 2005 struck people as both beyond comprehension and deeply objectionable.

It is bad enough call anyone a German war criminal. Likening Finegold to a concentration camp guard when Livingstone knew he was a Jew was unforgiveable. Not only was it deeply offensive, but in calling a Jew a Nazi it trivialised the Holocaust and denied the history of Jewish suffering. And this from a mayor whose professed “anti-racism” defines his politics.

It has all been made even worse by Livingstone’s refusal to apologize. The Greater London Assembly, the mayor’s “parliament,” is appalled. The promoters of London’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics, which was being assessed by the International Olympic Committee this very week, are aghast. The mayor’s own advisers have told him to apologize. Prime Minister Tony Blair, has told him to say he is sorry. The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Commission for Racial Equality have reported him to the Standards Board for England, which could ban him from office for five years.

Yet Livingstone has not merely refused to apologise but brazenly justified his attack on Finegold. Spraying ever more extravagant insults, he also rambled on about his opposition to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the massacres at Sabra and Shatila in 1982. Many have been left wondering whether he has lost his mind altogether.

So why has the normally politically adroit Livingstone, who reinvented himself from being the leader of the “loony left” in the 1980s to become the cheeky chappie who was elected mayor of London on a wave of popular affection in 2000, not only fallen into a hole but kept on digging? The immediate explanation surely lies in the Qaradawi affair and the mayor’s embrace of Islamist extremism.

Last summer, Livingstone hosted in London Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood-influenced Islamic jurist who has supported homicide terrorism by the Palestinians and expressed poisonous and even murderous prejudice against Jews, gays, and women (a set of attitudes more befitting the 1930s).

Qaradawi was in London to preside over the annual meeting of the European Council for Fatwa and Research and a conference on the hijab, both at Livingstone’s invitation.

Livingstone’s warm public endorsement of Qaradawi managed to unite against himself an extraordinary coalition of protest by those who felt directly threatened by the Islamist’s views. This coalition remarkably included Jews, gays, Hindus, bi-and-transsexuals, Sikhs, women’s rights organisations, progressive-minded Muslims, and students, who produced a thick dossier charting Qaradawi’s terrifying attitudes.

Livingstone hit the roof at this, and no wonder. For among those now ranged against him - and accusing him, no less, of condoning the most violent and virulent prejudice, the crime of crimes - were the very constituencies of the victim-culture on which he had constructed his entire political platform. The rainbow coalition of minorities had now turned against their erstwhile patron.

Without these minorities, Livingstone has no power base. That is surely why he threw the otherwise baffling extravaganza for Chris Smith, to mend his fences with the all-important gay rights lobby.

But the Qaradawi affair had thrown up another very disturbing feature. For Livingstone produced his own utterly bizarre counter-dossier defending his right to host Qaradawi, whom he described admiringly as “one of the most authoritative Muslim scholars in the world.”

In this, he carefully distanced himself from Qaradawi’s views - while managing, offensively, to equate them with those held by Catholics and Jews - while claiming that Qaradawi was neither a supporter of terrorism nor a social reactionary, but instead “one of the Muslim scholars who has done most to combat socially regressive interpretations of Islam on issues like women’s rights and relations with other religions.”

Let us briefly remind ourselves of some of the highlights of the “progressive” Qaradawi’s oeuvre. He has said that Europe will be conquered for Islam by preaching and ideology. He supports democracy, provided it is driven by the laws of Sharia.

He approves of female circumcision. He supports the “light” beating of wives by their husbands. He has lent his name to discussions about the most appropriate method for executing homosexuals. He sits on the Shariah [Islamic Law] Board of al-Taqwa Bank which was designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and its assets frozen, by the U.S. government.

He is rabidly Judeophobic. His sermons regularly call for Jews to be killed, along with “crusaders” and “infidels.” He has spread the lie that the Torah permits Jews to spill the blood of others and to seize their land. He has insisted that all Jews are responsible for Israel’s actions, and on al-Jazeera’s website stated: “There is no dialogue between us except by the sword and the rifle.” Although he disapproves of al-Qaeda’s terrorism, he supports human bomb terrorism against Israel. He said: “The Israelis might have nuclear bombs but we have the children bomb and these human bombs must continue until liberation.”

Horrifying stuff. But according to Livingstone, it isn’t true. The allegations against Qaradawi, he claims, amount to nothing more than a conspiracy. And here his document veers into the utterly irrational. He claims that since some of Qaradawi’s utterances have been translated by the MEMRI translation service, whose founder was once an Israeli intelligence officer, Livingstone claims that the attack on Qaradawi is a Mossad plot. So in other words, the evidence about Qaradawi is a conspiracy by Jews to lie about Muslims. The mayor’s document states:

It may seem difficult to take such material seriously, but in some respects the approach of MEMRI, echoed in the dossier, is reminiscent of the various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories - this can be seen very easily if one simply substitutes the words “Jewish” and “Judaism” for “Muslim” and “Islam” throughout the dossier.

This is, of course, preposterous. There has never been a shred of doubt that MEMRI’s translations are accurate. And having claimed that these truthful renditions of Qaradawi’s hair-raising utterances are merely evidence of a Mossad plot and equate this with classic anti-Jewish false conspiracy theories is simply mad.

More than that, in this demented attempt to equate Israelis with anti-Semites, or accuse all his opponents of being Mossad agents or their dupes, Livingstone’s wording has more than an echo of the paranoia pouring out of the Arab world itself.

This is surely no accident. The mayor is said to be very close to precisely such Islamists. In particular, his court includes several cadres of a tiny, hard-Left sect called Socialist Action, which is thought to have links with British groups that follow the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood.

Certainly, the mayor is being strongly supported in his current travails by Islamist extremists. The Muslim Brotherhood-influenced Muslim Association of Britain, which has links to Hamas and says Qaradawi is a moderate, strongly supports Livingstone in that controversy.

As for the furor over Oliver Finegold, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee website says Livingstone must be supported against “this vicious attack by our Zionist enemies. Ken Livingstone is a faithful and tireless friend of Muslims. And now the Zionists are closing in for the kill - what will Muslims do?”

This website also says that “Jewish Zionists” abuse their power to influence foreign policy against Muslims, and that those Muslims who attended the Holocaust Day ceremony were “Uncle Toms”; and in a feature on the men around Tony Blair, it singled out only prominent Jews in public life or people with connections with Jews. Livingstone has said he is “virulently” hostile to anti-Semitism. With supporters like MPAC and the MAB, what on earth would he look like if he admitted being hostile to Jews?

But then, Livingstone already has form in this department, with a long history of accusing Israelis of being “Nazis” or British Jews of being “neo-fascists” if they support Israel.

And this illustrates the far wider issue - that the Left, of which Livingstone is such a shining ornament, has gotten into bed with radical Islamism. Subscribing to its twisted narrative of “oppression,” the British Left routinely libels the Jews of Israel as “the new Nazis,” has breathed life into Muslim Jew-hatred (which itself borrows deeply from Nazi propaganda), and prompted a terrifying increase in anti-Jewish feeling ranging from muttered social prejudice, through public accusations of the “global Jewish conspiracy,” all the way to record levels of physical attacks on Jews, synagogues, and cemeteries.

Tony Blair has been embarrassed by London’s mayor. But this is a chicken that has simply come home to roost. Livingstone was formerly kicked out of the Labour party on account of his extremism. But when it became clear that he was going to win the London mayoral race as an independent candidate and humiliate Labour, Blair readmitted him to the party to ensure that Labour won that election.

Now Livingstone has re-emerged in his true colors. So, too, has the rest of the Labour movement, with posters and articles disgracefully using anti-Jewish stereotypes in order to appease Muslim sentiment, peddling anti-Jewish prejudice.

For Blair’s government, Britain’s 280,000 Jews are now utterly disposable, to be traduced and abused to buy 1.8 million Muslim votes. That is the real embarrassment of the Livingstone affair - to have hung out the dirty washing of the Left, which grovels before prejudice and terror to stay in power.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=17081

Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.

Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.Can we please keep posts short and to the point? If the last two long-winded posts are published somewhere on the Internet, then just provide a link that people can paste into their browser.

Yeah, a link is better. Maybe some short excerpts are OK.

At the VERY least get rid of the extraneous line breaks!

line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!

‘Mo, don’t even try to compare the suffering of the Palestinians to the suffering of the Jews in Europe. THere is NO comparison. None at all. None at all. Concentration camps where there was forced starvation, labor and abuse in preparation of being moved into the gas chambers (50,000 people per day) does not compare to impoverished Palestinians who were no better off before the Jews were there.’

I’m not sure who wrote this. I think it’s fairly clear that Abed was not equating the suffering of Palestinians with the extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis. What he said was ‘a people who have been utterly decimated and tortured throughout their existence (the Jewish people) are now abusing another (the Palestinians).’ Perhaps a more accurate rendition of his thought would be: ‘a people who have been utterly decimated and tortured throughout their existence (the Jewish people) now have a state that is systematically abusing another people (the Palestinians). In what sense does this imply the claim that Jewish suffering under the Nazis was no worse than Palestinian suffering under Israel?

‘Mo, don’t even try to compare the suffering of the Palestinians to the suffering of the Jews in Europe. THere is NO comparison. None at all. None at all. Concentration camps where there was forced starvation, labor and abuse in preparation of being moved into the gas chambers (50,000 people per day) does not compare to impoverished Palestinians who were no better off before the Jews were there.’

I’m not sure who wrote this. I think it’s fairly clear that Abed was not equating the suffering of Palestinians with the extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis. What he said was ‘a people who have been utterly decimated and tortured throughout their existence (the Jewish people) are now abusing another (the Palestinians).’ Perhaps a more accurate rendition of his thought would be: ‘a people who have been utterly decimated and tortured throughout their existence (the Jewish people) now have a state that is systematically abusing another people (the Palestinians). In what sense does this imply the claim that Jewish suffering under the Nazis was no worse than Palestinian suffering under Israel?

‘Mo, don’t even try to compare the suffering of the Palestinians to the suffering of the Jews in Europe. THere is NO comparison. None at all. None at all. Concentration camps where there was forced starvation, labor and abuse in preparation of being moved into the gas chambers (50,000 people per day) does not compare to impoverished Palestinians who were no better off before the Jews were there.’

I’m not sure who wrote this. I think it’s fairly clear that Abed was not equating the suffering of Palestinians with the extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis. What he said was ‘a people who have been utterly decimated and tortured throughout their existence (the Jewish people) are now abusing another (the Palestinians).’ Perhaps a more accurate rendition of his thought would be: ‘a people who have been utterly decimated and tortured throughout their existence (the Jewish people) now have a state that is systematically abusing another people (the Palestinians). In what sense does this imply the claim that Jewish suffering under the Nazis was no worse than Palestinian suffering under Israel?

While the foreign media accept at face value the PA’s official condemnation of Friday’s suicide bombing, the PA-controlled media are glorifying the bomber as a shahid (martyr who died for Allah) — the highest level of human achievement for a Muslim. By granting shahid status to the murderer, the PA media are portraying bombing as a positive religious act.

Within this context the official condemnations need to be understood not as deploring the act, but its consequences &mdash damaging the Palestinian cause.

Sunday’s front-page coverage of the story in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda features a giant color photo of the terrorist at the top of the page, with the caption: “The executor of the Tel Aviv operation, the shahid Abdullah Badran.” Another photograph shows his mother holding a picture of her son, and is captioned: “The mother of the Shahid.”

The Opinion Editor of the Herald, Mac Verstandig, is Jewish and outspokenly pro-Israeli.

There’s no anti-semetic conspiracy theory here, just a few columnists with extreme points of view.

So if they criticize Israel they become extremist?

“There’s no anti-semetic conspiracy theory here, just a few columnists with extreme points of view.”

Ah, but is there an anti-Semitic conspiracy?

Criticizing Israel is not extreme - the manner in which Mohammed criticizes it is extreme. It is pure deception, exaggeration and propaganda.

CLEANUP ON AISLE FEEDBACK

linebreaks spill all over the place

breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line breaks!line

Say, isn’t this the kind of immature thing that Muslims do to crash Jewish chat rooms and forums? Some folks just don’t like to lose.

The most shocking aspect of the above comments is not necessarily their belligerent, racist, unoriginal or ignorant nature but the fact that these intellectually retarded people actually have no counter-argument to anything that Mohammed has said in his article. Just another bunch of regurgitated anti-Arab, anti-Muslim I-am-a-scared-Israeli-because-I-know-they-are-right-and-I-am-wrong bullshit lines. The sad thing is that so many educated people are blind to the fact that if something is unjust, it is unjust. No matter who the culprit is. It isn’t that Mohammed is anti-Jew. He is against injustice in the world generally (if you took the time to read and understand what he was saying you would know). As always, his article has factual evidence to support his arguments and (surprise) he does not need to resort to racial slurs and hate speech to make a powerful statement. When has this author ever said anything remotely negative about Jews? EVER? If you have an ounce of rational capability in your brain then you should be able to realize that there is a difference between a Zionist and a Jew. Apparently, not too many of you can manage that. To tell you the truth, that inability is going to be the downfall of “Israel.” All of you are so scared and ignorant that you have to hide behind these cruel and audacious comments because in your hearts you know that you are not doing the right thing. And as for asshole who called Mohammed a coward? You may want to check your dictionary, unless is “coward” is English for someone with twice as much heart as you. If writing and anonymous comment to the Badger Harold is the last thing you have done to stand up for your principles, I really don’t think that you are in a place to so much as say the word (unless you are referring to yourself). Further, if any of you actually read what this man writes you would know that he is for a one-state solution. As in ONE state for TWO EQUAL peoples. Which, if you ask me is a much more generous offer that Israelis deserve. Not to mention a far more productive, just and rational solution than any of you have come up with in your comments. Eventually, the truth always comes out. Everyday there are more and more people thinking like Mohammed (thank God) who dedicate themselves to educating other and seeking a just solution to this problem. My advise to all of you? If you cant beat 'em (which, judging from the lacking quality of your comments, you can't), join 'em!

Saying that we have no argument does not counter our arguments, its just doing what you CLAIM we are doing.

Why don’t you anti-Jewish assholes just give it up? You just don’t get it. We don’t care about a bunch of militant ashitheads who try to get their point across by killing people. Do you honestly think that we in the West do not even bother to keep up on events in Israel? And why do you always avoid looking at the last 50 years of history? If you did, you’d see why the Israelis don’t trust the Arabs. They’ve never been able to!

And don’t expect us Americans to automatically take up your side either. That’s obviously what you hope we’ll do. You are nothing more than a bunch of antagonistic bastards with nothing better to do than harrass other people who have done nothing wrong to you or anyone else. Go to hell and take your bullshit causes with you.

“Everyday there are more and more people thinking like Mohammed (thank God) who dedicate themselves to educating other and seeking a just solution to this problem.”

Educating us? By spreading bullshit? The same bullshit every time? And precisely what has he offered in the way of a solution?

“When we talk politics with Arabs in Israel, they say, ‘My grandfather used to live in Tel Aviv, and now it’s owned by Jewish people - we want to come back,’” he says. “I respond, ‘My parents came from Iran and Tunisia, but nobody is going to give our property back to us. It’s all been confiscated … We have this little sandbox we call Israel. We give our hearts and lives to make it a proud country. Every one serves in the Israeli Defense Force in order for Israel to survive. You have half of the globe. What the fuck do you want from us? Go live in Saudi Arabia.”

-Subliminal

I’m really interested in knowing why none of the Arab countries will take in the Palestinians. Wouldn’t it be easier than fighting a constant no-win battle against the better-educated, better-armed Israelis? Aren’t they tired of being handed one humiliating defeat after another? Nowadays they just cry to the rest of the world and blame the U.S. for their own stupid problems. What a cop-out! What a bunch of losers!

Mohammed, you and that idiot Fayyad should open a fast food chain or something. Buy a Starbucks franchise. Produce a documentary like Michael Moore did. Do something positive for a change instead of this shit.

what is it about the middle east and genital mutilation? arabs do freaky surgical shit to girls’ nether regions, and israelis do it to boys, in both cases without consent.

can’t these people just keep their f*ing hands off children’s crotches?

let’s nuke the whole damn region, just so we don’t have to listen to these belligerent pervs pissing and moaning about their slice of that godforsaken real estate anymore. they deserve each other.

Excellent article. It spells out the facts plain and simple and if the mainstream newspapers and tv news spelled out all the facts in such a way, there would be peace in that region because no one would accept paying for such a racist and supremacist concept — if ONLY they knew. Without billions of US tax payer money, that system would have died out years ago because naturally as in “survival of the fittest” it would have lost. And we preach here in the US that Apartheid is supposed to be a thing of the past. Really? Apartheid, is Apartheid, is Apartheid, by any other name smells just as rotten. The Zionists should have known that an attempt to set up such an “exclusive resort” on another people’s land would lead to violent backlash. They made their bed, they need to lie in it alone without blame and complaint AND without our money, and accept their natural fate, or they remove Jimmy Crow and his Apartheid Band and let everyone live together as equals. Otherwise, the cycle continues….

yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“what is it about the middle east and genital mutilation? arabs do freaky surgical shit to girls’ nether regions, and israelis do it to boys, in both cases without consent.”

Actually, Arabs do it to boys too. But unlike Israelis, who circumcise their boys when they’re a week old, Arabs do it when the boys are 13 years old.

I thought genital mutilation of girls only happened in Africa. What exactly do Arabs do to girls?

It takes a lot of courage to speak out in the face of injustice and I am glad there are people like Mohommed to do it. These articles are much needed for the community if we, as Americans, are to begin understanding the various points of view on the conflict and how it affects ALL people. These articles add to the discourse, however, I don’t know that any personal attack responses do anything for understanding anything.

It is also very exasperating to hear people say that NOTHING compares to the holocaust. Why is it a contest to see who is the bigger victim? Yes, the genocide of the Jewish people was absolutely horrible, but is that to say that someone else’s suffering isn’t quite as painful? The Native American extermination in the U.S., that is also a holocaust…is that no comparison either?

Once we begin to understand each others oppression and suffering as our own we will, finally, be able to listen to each other without competition or malice.

Keep up the good work Mohommed.

“Excellent article. It spells out the facts plain and simple and if the mainstream newspapers and tv news spelled out all the facts in such a way, there would be peace in that region because no one would accept paying for such a racist and supremacist concept — if ONLY they knew.”

Gosh, Karen-or whatever your real name is-I had no idea that just printing what YOU and other anti-Jewish morons consider to be the truth would actually bring about peace over there!

“The Zionists should have known that an attempt to set up such an “exclusive resort” on another people’s land would lead to violent backlash.”

An exclusive resort, eh? I was over there about six years ago and it certainly didn’t seem that way then. Given that Israel’s chief industry, tourism, has been spiraling downward since 9/11, it could only be getting worse.

On other people’s land? Well, if you’re counting ALL of Israel and not just those hotly-disputed settlements-which you seem to be doing-then obviously what another poster said about you can only be correct: you really are an anti-Semitic cunt.

It takes a lot of courage to speak out in the face of injustice and I am glad there are people like Mohommed to do it. These articles are much needed for the community if we, as Americans, are to begin understanding the various points of view on the conflict and how it affects ALL people. These articles add to the discourse, however, I don’t know that any personal attack responses do anything for understanding anything.

It is also very exasperating to hear people say that NOTHING compares to the holocaust. Why is it a contest to see who is the bigger victim? Yes, the genocide of the Jewish people was absolutely horrible, but is that to say that someone else’s suffering isn’t quite as painful? The Native American extermination in the U.S., that is also a holocaust…is that no comparison either?

Once we begin to understand each others oppression and suffering as our own we will, finally, be able to listen to each other without competition or malice.

Keep up the good work Mohommed.

“I’m really interested in knowing why none of the Arab countries will take in the Palestinians.”

Didn’t Kuwait kick them ALL out?

Has ANY country done anything to actually help them? (Herding them into camps or sending money to the families of dead bombers doesn’t count)

“Yes, the genocide of the Jewish people was absolutely horrible, but is that to say that someone else’s suffering isn’t quite as painful?”

Yeah, but next you’ll be blaming every atrocity ever committed on Jews. It’s been done before. The prime minister of Malaysia tried it a few years ago, and God did he ever look like an idiot!

So what’s next, blame the oil crisis on Jews? Blame them for the problem with Social Security? Blame them for your tuition going up?

Mohammed’s opinion piece is nothing more than inflammatory hate speech. And you call it speaking out in the face of injustice? I call it brainwashing with bullshit! Without competition of malice? Mohammed is probably drowning in his own malice right now.

No doubt the Palestinians will be as grateful as other Muslims that the US has assisted in the past, like for instance Kuwait. (Maybe it’s a French influence?)

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson031102.shtml

Yet the more disinterested Gallup poll of Middle-Easterners apparently reveals that roughly three-quarters of Kuwaitis (72%) do not much like the United States.

Americans have been amazed that Muslims showed so little appreciation that we helped save Islam from the Russians, fed starving Somalians, and prevented Kosovars from being annihilated. We were damned by Russians, Armenians, many eastern Europeans, and Orthodox Balkan peoples for ousting Milosevic by force and attacking a Christian European country — but oddly, never praised by the Islamic world for saving Muslims and therein incurring such wrath from our natural allies and friends.

I share the sentiments of the last poster. I say let’s just support Israel and leave the rest of the world to fend for themselves against tyranny and see how well they do. You can’t please everyone, so why bother? The rest of the world is so much older but none the wiser. Let’s see if any other developed countries are willing to take on the role of peacemaker, breadbasket, police department and doctor’s office for the whole world.

Just how much motivation is there for other countries to take care of each other? It would be interesting to hear what Mohammed and Fayyad have to say about the United States after they see how much less other countries care.

I find it truly amazing that liberals care so much about a religion-Islam-that would execute gays en masse just because they’re gay, a religion that has been every bit as hostile toward Jews and Hindus as Christians have been.

Every time those Arab countries started a war with a non-Muslim country they got their butts kicked; and the Arabs were the ones who started it every time. If they didn’t like getting the shit kicked out of them then they should’ve stayed inside their own borders!

I guess it’s a good thing there so many liberal idiots here in the West who unconditionally believe everything they hear from extremist wackos; otherwise they wouldn’t get as far as they have. Of course it’s not accomplishing much if the only audiences they can get are a bunch of self-disenfranchised losers who have no future. What help are THEY gonna be?

So go ahead and make your spiel, Mohammed and Fayyad. All you really can do is print bullshit. That doesn’t mean you’ll actually get anywhere. Most UW-Madison students don’t even read the Badger Herald anyway. And activism on this campus has waned considerably; the only protests you see anymore are the ones against cutbacks in education spending and tuition increases. When it comes to events beyond the US, all you’ll see is one big wall of apathy. And you know who’s to blame for that, don’t you?

Maybe it would have worked out better for the USA if we had just let Saddam keep Kuwait. Saddam would be pumping Kuwait dry and the Middle East would “stable” under his iron grip. The Saudi “government” (if not yet fallen to Saddam) would be on their knees to the USA begging for protection from Saddam.

If it were all about the oil and the best interests of big USA companies this would clearly have been the better way to go. The price of oil would probably be half what it is now. Saddam was no great friend of the Moslem fundies until after Gulf War I, maybe it would even have been better for terrorism. Remember Bin Laden’s big beef with the USA was the troops in Saudi Arabia and the ONLY reason they were there was to kick Saddam out of Kuwait.

Instead, all our blood and treasure has been likely wasted, traded for the freedom of people who are unlikely to be the least bit grateful.

This all may be instructive in deciding what to do with regard to the Palestinians. I vote that we help Israel, the only true friend of the USA in the Middle East.

PS. For the money spent, we could have developed pebble-bed nuclear power plants and built as many needed to produce enough electricity and hydrogen that we could have completely eliminated any need for oil from the Middle East. Instead China is working on pebble-bed nuclear power which when combined with people willing to work for 25 cents per hour will bury us.

“Didn’t Kuwait kick them ALL out?”

Not just Kuwait. At various times in the last 40 years, several Arab nations have attempted to kick out all Palestinians, including Jordan (where 60% of the population is Palestinian), Syria, and Tunisia.

And let’s remember why Kuwait kicked out all the Palestinians — because they collaborated with the Iraqi invaders in 1990 and celebrated when Iraqi soldiers raped, murdered, and pillaged their way through Kuwait.

Speaking of Palestinians celebrating, anyone remember what they were doing on September 11? That’s right, they were dancing in the streets and giving candy to their children to celebrate the mass murder of innocent Americans.

It’s kind of sad that Madison liberals insult the intelligence of liberals everywhere when they rally around extremists like Mohammed and Fayyad. They look pathetic. I’d think that liberals would educate themselves by studying Middle-East history and learn why things are the way they are over there before they buy the crap that Mohammed and Fayyad write.

But no, they’d rather go along with whatever lunatic opens his/her mouth at the moment. So much for higher education.

Man, it must really suck being a Madison liberal! Hey, I read the crap Mohammed and Fayyad wrote, but it’s just more of the same B.S. they’ve been writing for over a year now. Why do all the Madison liberals think we’re so short-sighted when they know damn well we’re just sick and tired of the same sob stories?

I won’t agree with someone who thinks mass murder of innocent Americans is somehow justified. And even if we were the exact opposite of what Mohammed makes us out to be, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that no one’s gonna bomb us anyway.

Mohammed, you’re full of shit if you think everybody on this campus will buy into your claim of being a victim. You and your ilk get what you deserve. If you wanna blow yourselves up, go ahead. Every time you do that crazy shit is one more good reason not to care about your self-imposed suffering. We don’t care because you’re not worth caring about. What can you do? Nothing!

How about this, Mohammed:

All four of my grandparents were the sole survivors from their families in the Holocaust. Your grandparents left their home with the encouragement of five Arab armies, fully believing (however stupidly)that they would return to reclaim their home AND be able to steal the land and property of Jews who would be murdered by those Arab armies. My grandparents were victims of a tragedy forced upon them; yours were victims of their own actions because had they stayed in their home (as Israel begged them to do), they would not have lost it.

You are no more a victim of what happened to your granparents than I am a victim of what happened to mine. But even if you were, whose fault is that? My grandparents picked up the pieces of their shattered lives and made something of themselves. Your family, however, apparently lacked the strength of character to do the same. Instead, you still claim nearly 60 years later that you are personally a victim of human rights violations allegedly committed long before you were born, and probably even before your parents were born.

It seems like the problem is a fundamental difference of opinion on the value of human life between Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinians like you apparently believe that human life is only valuable insofar as it can be used either as a propaganda tool or as a weapon to murder innocent people. Israelis like me believe that human life is so sacred, we are willing to release thousands of terrorists from our prisons in order to recover the bodies of our soldiers who were killed by Hezbollah terrorists and accord them proper burials. Arab nations have unspeakable oil wealth, yet refuse to come to the aid of their Palestinian brethren except when it comes to funding terrorist attacks against Israel. Israel has no such wealth, yet easily absorbed about the same number of Jews expelled from Arab lands as the number of Palestinians who fled in the 1948 war, plus over a million others from Eastern Europe.

The people of Israel aren’t your enemy, Mohammed, and they’ve done nothing to draw your ire other than defending themselves. No, your real enemy is your own people, the Arab nations that use Palestinians as propoganda tools rather than trying to improve their lives. Until you realize that, all your whining will just be shouting at the wind.

“How about this, Mohammed:…”

Well put! I couldn’t have said it any better.

to the person who wrote the last post (you didn’t identify yourself).

1: It was my parents and my grandparents who were expelled from Palestine. They did not leave at the behest of any Arab leaders. The residential districts of Jaffa where they lived (Nozha) were shelled relentlessly for three days by Israeli forces. After the civilians in the area were nicely softened up, Israeli forces came through houses and physically pushed people out of their homes, shooting some along the way to ensure their forced exodus would proceed smoothly. My uncle now lives in Chicago. You might want to go and see him. He will show you the arm that was almost torn off by the shrapnel from one of those shells.

I am and always have been horrified by the suffering your people have gone through. I’m personally extremely sorry for the members of your family who perished in the holocaust. No one should have to go through that. However, its a real shame that you have to deny the suffering of my family. It’s a pity you cannot show compassion for what other people have been through.

I’ve noticed that many of the people who commented on my article are using the holocaust in an instrumental way to ‘put Israel above the law of nations’ (Etienne Balibar) and to legitimize what was done to the Palestinians in 1948. The logic here is that since what the Palestinians went through does not compare to the suffering of Jewish communities in Europe, it’s morally acceptable to have treated them in that way. This is a distorted and perverse way to think about this issue. The previous post goes one step further and completely denies the atrocities of 1948 (hence the comment that my family ‘left at the behest of Arab leaders’ and other well-worn myths). So, I’ve decided to call the last person to post a ‘Nakba Denier.’

Finally, the last poster seems to suggest I’m victimizing myself and claiming human rights abuses were committed against me personally. I’m not sure where you got this from since in the article I talk about the suffering of Palestinians in general, particularly those who are currently being killed/maimed/tortured//cleansed/dispossesed of their land. However, I think it ought to be clear that I’m a mere one generation removed from the generation of my family who were removed from their homes. My grandfather’s house still stands in Jaffa, and the village where he had his orchards lies derelict to this day (go look at Khalidi’s ‘All That Remains.’ Its called ‘Quastina.’ You can even find out which Israeli brigade burned it to the ground and expelled its inhabitants). I always thought that article 13 of the Universal declaration of human rights affirmed the right of all people to return to their country without hinderance from ethno-centric states like Israel. I’d be happy to meet with you and talk about this if you like.

For those of you who would like another opportunity to engage in these kinds of personal attacks, you can read my article coming out in the next issue of the Madison Observer. They have a comment function too!

Mohammed Abed

Hey Mohammed,

You still haven’t expalained why I should give a rats arse for a people who danced in the street on 9-11 and who show no willingness to compromise for peace. Hudna is all the Palestinians offer and only a fool would trust them.

Mohammed, you still miss the point. The point is that your people wanted the Jews driven into the sea and destroyed. That is why they were expelled. And your people have not relented from this policy of Jewish extermination. That is why you are still forced to live in exile. The lines that were drawn between Israel and the territories were not enough for the Palestinian leadership. In the end, the Palestinians lost. They deserved to lose.

Until there is a genuine commitment from the Palestinian people, Israel will not drop her guard. Until the Palestinian people can prove that they can be trusted, I see no reason to offer my sympathy and support for them. The Palestinians have new leadership and Israel is more than willing to give him a chance, like they gave Arafat before him so many chances. We have the utmost confidence in Abbas to fulfill his pledge to peace. It’s just liars like you who make us feel so uneasy. Nevertheless, we will dutifully live up to our end of every peace agreement. The rest is up to you.

“You still haven’t expalained why I should give a rats arse for a people who danced in the street on 9-11 and who show no willingness to compromise for peace.”

Yeah, Mohammed, let’s hear your reasons for Americans’ obligation to care for Palestinians after they so gleefully celebrated the systematic murder of so many innocent civilians on 9/11. I am also waiting for your response.

Mohammed, your relatives in Britain and Chicago are surely doing much better than they did in Jaffa. What’s to complain about? Your response?

up to 114 worthless posts…

i am shocked by the bigotry exhibited by people i go to school with. i would have thought that an education would raise you above that.

mohammed actually makes the clearest arguments on this board. he’s not discounting what anyone says because of who their people are. seriously, not all palestinians are terrorists! you’re fucking ignorant if you think that. they’re people, and they deserve some rights, like the right to not have their home destroyed or shelled. many of them do not support hamas or terrorism, because palestinians get killed by car bombs. and maybe some palestinians cheered on 9/11, not because innocent people got killed, but because the biggest oppressor in the world, not to mention the country that supplied the bombs that kill palestinians and subsidizes israel, got attacked?

i hate to say this, but anti-arabs are no better than the KKK. you hate a certain group as a whole, and any member of that group is automatically wrong, no matter what they do. not only that, but i bet a lot of you think that mohammed supports terrorism! it’s like saying that (please pardon the stereotypes, i don’t really feel that way) ALL blacks are in gangs or play basketball, that ALL jews are stingy with their money.

and to the person that told mohammed to open up a restaurant, YOU ARE THE REASON THE US GOT ATTACKED! the world hates us because of our one-sided bigotry. try to think of the other side for once, as i don’t think your god is down with hating people.

honestly, i hope you burn in hell forever if you can’t figure that out.

“honestly, i hope you burn in hell forever if you can’t figure that out.”

You sound like a bigot yourself. Hey, not all Americans are anti-Arab. So why were the terrorists who hijacked four planes on Sept. 11 so indiscriminate in deciding who they killed? Do you think that they tried not to hurt any innocent people?

Another thing you said that made want to respond:”… the country that supplied the bombs that kill palestinians and subsidizes israel…”. Obviously you are referring to the US. Pal, I don’t know where you get off on criticizing the US for helping country that desperately needs all the military assistance it can get, or where you feel that Israelis kill Palestinians for sport, but your mentailty is clearly below any other expressed here. You and anti-Jewish Arabs are no better than the KKK either.

We have thought about the other side, and their actions speak louder than any of their words. YOU go to Hell! It’s where your kind belongs.

“and to the person that told mohammed to open up a restaurant, YOU ARE THE REASON THE US GOT ATTACKED!”

Ah, I get it. In the good ol’ US of A you can start a business much easier than you could in any Arab country, but the very suggestion to do so here is all the justification needed to murder innocent Americans, eh? Gosh, I suddenly care even less about Arabs all of a sudden. Oh well, I got midterms coming up, guess I should study for them instead of reading left-wing bullshit. Ta-ta, assholes!

“The residential districts of Jaffa where they lived (Nozha) were shelled relentlessly for three days by Israeli forces.”

It was a war zone! Do you really think there weren’t Arabs actively fighting against the Israelis?

“I’ve noticed that many of the people who commented on my article are using the holocaust in an instrumental way to ‘put Israel above the law of nations’ (Etienne Balibar) and to legitimize what was done to the Palestinians in 1948.”

Nothing was done to the Palestinians in 1948. They didn’t even call themselves “Palestinians” until the 1960s.

“and maybe some palestinians cheered on 9/11, not because innocent people got killed, but because the biggest oppressor in the world, not to mention the country that supplied the bombs that kill palestinians and subsidizes israel, got attacked?”

This poster has clearly never been to Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Sudan, etc. Maybe s/he should do some reading about human rights around the world. Amnesty International publishes annual reports ranking nations for quality of their human rights records. The United States is always in the top 10%, the Palestinian Authority always in the bottom half. By definition, that means that at least 90% of the world’s regimes, including the Palestinians’ own, are more oppressive than ours. And as for subsidizing Israel, guess who’s next on the list of biggest US foreign aid recipients? I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with Shmegypt. And let’s not forget that the US essentially funds the entire national defense of every country in the Arabian peninsula, most of which could easily afford to pay for their own defense.

“the world hates us because of our one-sided bigotry.”

No, as much as it pains me to disagree with President Bush (worst president ever!!!), the world hates us because our society is wealthier than any other and provides its people with more freedoms and opportunities than any other. The world hates us because our success is perhaps the greatest repudiation of their ideas for doing things in ways they think are better. In truth, it’s your one-sided bigotry that makes the world think they can gain something by attacking us.

“So, I’ve decided to call the last person to post a ‘Nakba Denier.’”

Why don’t we translate that for the uninformed, Mohammed?

“Nakba” means catastrophe. It’s the word Mohammed and his sympathizers use to describe the establishment of the State of Israel in 22% of the traditional Jewish homeland.

By calling Israel’s establishment a nakba, you inherently call for Israel’s destruction, with everything that goes along with it — that includes the call in the PLO chater to drive all the Jews into the sea. Those of us familiar with such language recognize it as a call to genocide.

Now, your intent may not be genocidal, Mohammed, and I tend to think that you’re not quite the monster some of the posters here have made you out to be. But your rhetoric is disingenous and misleading. If you want to debate the relevant issues, you ought to stick to facts and explain the implications of your language, and avoid the hateful polemics. The polemics absolutely destroy any credibility you may have had with me.

I have no vested interest in either side of this issue, but I usually side with the Israelis.

Why?

Remember the poster who wrote about the Palestinians dancing in the streets in celebration of the 9/11 attacks? Public opinion among the Palestinians at the time was overwhelmingly in favor of such attacks against the US, and it still is in favor of such attacks against Israel. But there are two sides to this conflict, and you never see Israelis blowing themselves up in an attempt to kill civilians, and any objective observer must acknowledge that the Israeli army takes great pains to minimize the possibility of civilian casualties.

So for me, it comes down to who values life. The vast majority of Israelis don’t celebrate when innocent people die — they even offer humanitarian aid when thousands of people die in earthquakes in Iran or in tsunamis in the South Pacific. The vast majority of Palestinians do celebrate when innocent people die. Israelis celebrate life; Palestinians celebrate death.

If that’s not as simple a distinction as good vs. evil, I don’t know what is.

To Mohammed and the dickhead who wrote “YOU ARE THE REASON THE US GOT ATTACKED!”:

You are the reason the US steps all over you and your people.You are constantly trying to destroy us, so we kick your asses every chance we get. There are a lot of countries you won’t see us lining up to kick the shit out of because they don’t fuck with us.

What I don’t understand is why you persist in pissing us off. You know damn well your heads are gonna roll. And then you turn around and sulk because “those big mean Americans bombed us again.” Hey, you started it! You blow up a bunch of us, we’ll turn around and beat the shit right outta you, it’s that simple.

Here’s another thought, if you think at all: You live in a country that, despite all its flaws, gives you far more freedom and opportunity than the shitholes you came here from. When you come here, you leave your old-world hostilities at the border or you won’t make it. And that will be your own damn fault! The countries you come from have fighting the same stupid wars for centuries, and for what?! So that your own children can fight and die needlessly for the same bullshit your ancestors needlessly fought and died for? Just look and see how long that mentality would last here. Not one goddamn minute!

We live in a democracy here. We have rights. Back in Palestine, before these Zionists you never stop bitching about even showed up, you didn’t have dick! But your ancestors tried to stop the tide of Jewish refugees from getting in, with help from the British, the refugees fought back and kicked your ancestors’ asses, expelled you from what became Israel and that was the end of it. Tough shit if your ancestors couldn’t take what they dished out!

Like at least two other posters stated earlier, you don’t want to look at history. You don’t want anyone to know what really happened. You don’t want anyone to see that it was you Arabs who were the aggressors all along.

A closing thought: getting your house torn down because one member of your household would be considered getting off light to a lot of folks. Houses can be rebuilt, lives lost to a suicide bomber can’t! If you don’t want your damn house torn down, don’t kill Israelis. What the hell is so hard about that?! The Israelis have lived up to every peace agreement they made with the Palestinians; the Palestinians have always broken their half.

You Arabs act like such bad-asses everywhere you go, then you act like such cry-babies when you’re trying to brainwash someone’s college-age kid with your bullshit. Are you really that desperate that you have to stoop to such a low level? Remember this: you are attending a university that did not discriminate against you when you applied for admission. You made it into graduate school. How possible would that be for you in any Arab country? Think you’d get the same deal? If not then maybe we should expel you right now so you can go back to the “hellhole” you came here from. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out either!

Arab animosity toward the West = classic case of penis envy.

Mohammed, I get a big kick out of you. I really do. You know, you’re lucky there are enough aging-hippie, neo-hippies and just-plain-losers in this town to give you an audience. The rest of the folks in this town simply have better things to do than to listen to your crap. I know several people here in Madison who lost relatives on 9-11, and they’d kick your ass for what you write. If you believe that getting your head bashed in for exercising your First-Amendment right is bad, just think what a human rights violation it was to have your whole life snuffed out by some asshole Arab terrorist who thought he was a real bad-ass!

As far as I’m concerned, you and all others who think like you can go straight to hell! No need to hijack a plane full of innocent civilians to get there, just fucking go!

Face it Mohammed, you Arabs lost Israel. You lost it because you deserved to lose it. There’s nothing for the Arab world to do except take in the Palestinians like they should have done a long time ago. What did they gain by keeping them in Israel? Nothing will change. So just accept the fact that you are only kicking a dead horse. We Americans have more pressing concerns than to put up with your hatemongering. Get a life!

“We Americans have more pressing concerns than to put up with your hatemongering. Get a life!”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Salaam aleykum, my brother!

‘I know several people here in Madison who lost relatives on 9-11, and they’d kick your ass for what you write. If you believe that getting your head bashed in for exercising your First-Amendment right is bad.’

Wow, this stuff just keeps getting more bizarre by the minute. Since when did I say anything about 9-11 in this article. Did you actually read it? I also can’t remember saying anything about how bad getting my ‘head bashed in’ for exercizing my first amendment rights would be. However, presumably bashing anyone’s head in is bad, although I’m sure the previous poster has failed to recognize this.

And what bravery to post all this anonymously!

Some of the people posting here are really embarrasing themselves and exposing the extent of their racism and small mindedness. These cowardly attempts to intimidate people speaking out about this issue will never work. It does however provide me with a great deal of amusement!

Mohammed Abed

Comment removed: Inappropriate content

“I’m not sure if I will ever graduate, but I am still having a fun time spreading propaganda.”

Thanks, Mohammed, for finally admitting your real intentions. Now we know for sure where you’re coming from. Now do us all a favor and leave the country. By the way, it’s obvious you have a problem with reality, which would explain why you decided to major in Philosophy instead of something more useful.

Okay Mohammed, now we see what you really stand for, so all the hateful racist posts don’t seem so hateful or racist, at least compared to your admission of spreading hate. We see everything you have written in a brighter light, and all the folks who wrote in to support of you can now see what they were really supporting. I’m sure you will sustain a sizable following in spite of it.

Eventually the true colors of any extremist will shine through. What began as a hidden agenda quickly becomes a dead giveaway. Now everyone knows why the Israelis, and consequently the world’s Jewish population, have never been able to trust Arab leadership. Who can blame them? The French thought they could. the Argentinians thought they could too. So now you and your ilk have no choice but to make good on all future peace agreements with Israel.

Talk about a rock and a hard place!

“I’m not sure if I will ever graduate, but I am still having a fun time spreading propaganda.”

What?! You actually admit being a liar?! OK, pal, you just gave yourself away! Thanks for being honest and up-front… for once. No more bullshit, just plain ol’ down-to-Earth honesty. I guess we won’t be hearing any more BS from Fayyad either…will we? Fayyad, are you following all this?

Comment removed: Inappropriate content

Sorry Fayyad, Mohammed already gave the both of you away. Both you go find somewhere else to spew your BS. We’re not buying it anymore. Get your own blogs. The Badger Herald has a bad enough reputation as it is.

To whoever posted this:

I’m not sure if I will ever graduate, but I am still having a fun time spreading propaganda. Mohammed Abed

I’m sure you understand that it’s illegal to sign my name to something that I did not write. You guys are certainly free to engage in all these ad hominem attacks but attributing this stuff to me is beyond the pale. I’m also fairly sure that Fayyad did not write the previous comment.

I’ll be making the Badger Herald staff aware of this, and if there is any way of finding out who is doing this, I’ll be exploring it.

Mohammed Abed

Gunmen clash with PA police in Nablus

associated press, THE JERUSALEM POST Mar. 4, 2005

Disgruntled Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a police station on Friday, sparking a gunfight that left three people wounded, as recent tensions between the Palestinian Authority and maverick terrorist groups erupted into armed violence.

It was the second serious incident of violence between Palestinian authorities and armed groups this week, underscoring the delicate task that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas faces as he tries to rein in gunmen and restore law and order in the West Bank.

Abbas has been trying to persuade armed men to lay down their weapons while resisting calls from Israel and the international community for a crackdown. Pressure on the Palestinian leader to take tougher action increased since a Palestinian suicide bomber from the West Bank killed five Israelis in Tel Aviv last weekend.

Witnesses in Nablus said at least 13 gunmen took up positions outside the police station on Friday afternoon and began shooting, prompting police to return fire. Hospital officials said three people were wounded in the clash, one seriously.

“I heard loud noises and gunfire,” said Mohammed Zohel, a witness to the clash. “I thought the Israelis had gone into the police station, but later I saw it was gunmen fighting the police. It is a real war and very frightening.”

The gunmen belonged to al Awda, a small terrorist group affiliated with Abbas’ ruling Fatah party. Representatives of the group said they took action in response to police attempts to arrest one of their members who was driving a stolen car. But a police spokesman said the group was upset that one of its members had been beaten while in police custody.

Abbas tried to play down Friday’s incident, saying Israel’s continued presence in Palestinian population centers has hindered his ability to take action. Israel agreed at a Mideast summit last month to pull out of five West Bank towns, but the handover was frozen after last week’s suicide bombing.

“We hope that Israeli will withdraw soon from these cities so that we can control security in these cities,” Abbas said outside his home in Ramallah. “As long as the Israeli army is in the Palestinian West Bank, there will be breeches and we will deal with it.”

Earlier this week, tensions between the Palestinian Authority and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a larger terrorist group linked with Fatah, erupted into a confrontation in the nearby town of Jenin.

The incident came as the Palestinian interior minister was visiting Jenin. A popular local gunman, Zakariya Zubeidi, irate that the minister had come to the town without his permission, opened fire on a building where he was holding meetings.

Yousef ordered the arrest of Zubeidi, who is seen by residents as the ruler of Jenin, but quickly backed down.

“I’ll be making the Badger Herald staff aware of this, and if there is any way of finding out who is doing this, I’ll be exploring it.

Mohammed Abed”

Mohammed, if you and Fayyad didn’t write those two posts then why did you both use the anonymous box to write them, as well as this one? What’s wrong with getting an official sign-on ID? It would certainly make it known that it’s you and not someone else.

Or is your denial of authorship just a cowardly way of backing out of your admission to spreading anti-Israeli propaganda?

“The gunmen belonged to al Awda, a small terrorist group affiliated with Abbas’ ruling Fatah party.”

Really? Looks like we may not be able to trust Abbas either. How can he earn the respect of the Israelis and the world when he is obviously in cahoots himself with terrorists?!

Jews drive like this. Arabs drive like this.

Ah, but Canadians drive at the speed limit, obey all traffic laws and do not talk on their cell phones while driving. I guess that makes us more civilised and conscientious than even Americans! Oh Canada, our home and native land…

Everyone should keep in mind that this is an opinion page. It is Mohammed’s personal opinion, attempting to get people to view the situation the way he does. I personally have a hard time believing anyone on either side who cannot cite reputable sources to back up their claims. Give me reference! Reputable ones preferably with links! The Guardian? There are about 20 “The Guardian”s out there. Was it a first hand account, or another op/ed? Until I know this type of background info, I’m not believing anyone.

“Until I know this type of background info, I’m not believing anyone.”

In that case, we should just stop reading the Badger Herald Online, since we have no way of knowing who’s the real McCoy.

I’ve driven in Canada. Spent two years in Edmonton. They drive like scared old ladies. Drove me crazy. 10 under the speed limit in the fast lane. No excuse for it.

Why oh why can’t these Arabs just act civilized, like the Canadians? They always resort to terrorism, kidnappings, software and music piracy to get their point across. Is that the kind of people who are really serious about peace? If they’re so persecuted, how is it possible that they are able to inflict so much damage by flying halfway around the world and hijack some airplanes and fly them into buildings?

Maybe they’re just jealous because they don’t live in a democracy like we do. They mostly live under monarchies who rule with an iron fist. Health care in those countries is minimal, illiteracy is never higher than ten percent and education is but only a pipe dream for most of the population.

Instead, they wail away at Israel and the United States, as if we actually had anything to do with it. And if we do offer to help improve their living conditions, the whole world jumps our case by accusing us of interfering in another coutry’s internal affairs.

I say screw the rest of the world. They’ve been around longer than us, let them figure out for themselves how to solve all their own problems. I’m a Canadian. There are quite a few things about the USA that I disagree with, but for the most part Americans have been more than fair.

“I’ve driven in Canada. Spent two years in Edmonton. They drive like scared old ladies. Drove me crazy. 10 under the speed limit in the fast lane. No excuse for it.”

No, they just saw your US license plate and started driving cautiously.

“Everyone should keep in mind that this is an opinion page.”

My opinion is that Mohammed and Fayyad are anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish assholes. Got a problem with that?

“My opinion is that Mohammed and Fayyad are anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish assholes. Got a problem with that?”

No, I don’t. That is one of the reasons why I want reputable references from him. I want to give him a chance to prove to us that he is not anti-Jewish, Christian, etc. If he can’t come up with them, then his opinion isn’t worth squat. If he can, I will read them and then form my own opinion.

“No, they just saw your US license plate and started driving cautiously.”

Sorry, Canadian rental car, Alberta plates.

If you had Alberta plates then there would be no reason for Canadians to be paranoid of you.

Wait a minute…you drove a Canadian rental around Alberta for two whole friggin’ years? Are you nuts?!

Company paid for it.

Your company paid for it? How much?

After about a year of reading opinion pieces from the likes of Fayad and Mohammed, I’m interested in knowing why the Badger Herald never prints opinions by the other side. It would make the issue more balanced, wouldn’t it? Or does the Badger Herald have a problem with those who disagree with the opinions of its editorial staff?

“They drive like scared old ladies.”

That’s because they ARE scared old ladies.

Wow. All this uproar over one article? Abed, you must be doing something right. It is interesting, however, that some of your “critics” are willing to defend Israel at any cost, as if the Palestinians have absolutely no reason to be angry. And one guy keeps asking for references. How about these stats from Amnesty Intl. 22.5% of Palestinian children are malnourished, 65% of Palestinians live below the poverty line, while 70% of Palestinians find themselves unemployed. Still not reason enough to be angry? Or do you find Amnesty Intl far too liberal for your liking?
How about the the following links then?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middleeast/4201351.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middleeast/3733638.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3694350.stm

Hopefully, the BBC is good enough for you guys…Fox News just didn’t have anything at the moment.

Look…people on both sides of the conflict have acted appallingly. We all need to recognize the immense suffering that exists on both sides so that we can better understand the conflict. That’s what Mohammed is doing. He’s representing the Palestinian people in a time when the US media does such a horrible job in its portrayal of them.

We need to work on discussing a solution that both Palestinians and Israelis can agree upon instead of wasting time arguing. Peace is far too important.

Andrea

"I use hate as a weapon to defend myself. Had I been strong, I would never have needed that kind of weapon."

Right here you can see Zionist racism firsthand. Madison is filled with obnoxious, loud-mouthed Zionists and here they are for you to read. They suck. I hate them. If stealing Palestinian land is so important to them, why don’t they move to Israel themselves?

to the person who wrote “To Mohammed and the dickhead who wrote “YOU ARE THE REASON THE US GOT ATTACKED!”“… I’m so caucasian I could get lost in a blizzard, so don’t try to say “your people” in reference to what I write, because you’d then be including yourself.

and to “jews drive like this. arabs drive like this.” - i think you made a bigger point than you intended.

the reason i included the “i hope you burn in hell” line, is because anyone on here who calls themself christian is breaking (check with god for the official count) 6 or so commandments.

seriously, if you people were British, you’d be calling the american rebels “terrorists.”

and don’t ever call me a bigot, i just want a pro-killing palestinians argument that comes from your head, not your ass. you, on the other hand, won’t be happy until you can exterminate any opposing viewpoint. you’re the bigot, try to prove me wrong.

p.s. the reason iraq invaded kuwait was because kuwait slant-drilled iraqi oil. bush I gave both sides weapons, and promised saddam he wouldn’t interfere in his military actions.

and i don’t condone killing innocents, or anyone for that matter. but the only way to stop terrorism is to understand why people are pissed off in the first place.

I really think that Mohammed needs a lesson in current events because his article is selective at best. While innocent Palestinians do get killed as a result of the conflict, many of the casualties are terrorists that were planning to target Israeli civilians. Whatever your politics, civilians do not deserve to die, whatever the side. If you knew where the terrorists that perpetrated 911 were the day before, wouldnt you try to take them out? I think its clear that something has to be done to bring about a just solution to the Arab Israeli conflict but its not gonna happen by spouting propaganda from either side. Not only is Mohammed’s article blatantly one sided, it ignores the suffering of the Israeli people that is just as painful as the plight of the Palestinians.And to Karen from Boston…please, stop writing until you develop an IQ over a chimp on crack

Ari Millo

Mohammed, great article. I have put segments of it and a previous article of yours up on my blog http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/

Your commentary is rigourous, reasonable and of course, people who are racists can’t handle that, and launch into ad hominems and hyperbole. It is clear, you are speaking about the crimes of Zionism, which I see that many on this board are thoroughly condoning, while at the same time condemning random violence against Americans or against Jews. It is “acceptable” to them that the Jews who stole Palestinian property and caused the refugee status of the native people are justified in this crime. Keep up the good work, Mohammed. You are a very good writer who deserves wide exposure. mary rizzo

Dear Mohammad,

I admire your resiliance in spite of the proliferation of racist attacks. I would not allow some of the sentiments expressed in these comments in my high school classroom. Keep speaking truth to power; many Americans, who have been brainwashed by the Zionist narrative, will listen when presented with the facts as cogently as you have in both the stories I’ve read.

Nancy Harb Almendras Wiesbaden, Germany http://www.umkahlil.blogspot.com