And we wonder why the middle east hates us??

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Yeah, people say all kinds of things. Doesn't mean they'll actually do anything. Saber-rattling is a common practice. Talk is cheap.

Yes, Hamas has not recognized Israel. Israel has not recognized Hamas, despite them winning an election the UN has classed as one of the fairest they've ever seen. Yeah, whatever. Both sides are behaving like spoiled children and, frankly, I think it would be far better for the US to seize both sides and literally spank them. Not metaphorically, not symbolically, literally. The only danger is that both sides would probably enjoy it.

Arab nations have attacked Israel. Hmmm. And this has nothing whatsoever to do with Israel attacking Arab nations - the Golan Heights weren't seized in a defensive war, the Israelis were the instigators. They may claim they had justification, they may even have had justification, but they then quite deliberately arranged the massacre of civilians in refugee camps. Even the Israeli courts deemed those acts to have been atrocities and to have been the fault of Israel, even though Israeli soldiers had a limited role in the mass murders. Ariel Sharon is probably the only person to have been elected leader of a nation AFTER that nation had convicted him of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

And, no, Israel hasn't called for the destruction of Arab nations, but after little incidents like that, it has probably passed through the minds of all nearby that the election of a convicted genocidal maniac does mean that the population as a whole has no problem with the idea of reducing the planetary population. Nobody elects a person they don't fundamentally agree with. Israel is also responsible, to a large degree, for the civil war in Beirut between the Islamic and Christian militias. I don't suppose they've exactly forgotten that, either.

Then there's the assassinations. There have been a few. Poison-tipped umbrellas, poisoned drinks, car bombs, letter bombs, the occasional missile from an aircraft. These are not acceptable under International Law, no matter how you look at it. The fact that innocents have died in these attacks does not make it any better.

The bombing of a UN refugee camp was also not going to inspire confidence in anyone. Although publicly claimed as a mistake (they were aiming at buildings nearby, apparently), there is some evidence that it was deliberate and intended as a psychological attack against the enemy, much as the bombing of Dresden was in World War II. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but deliberate murder on a massive scale of non-combatants is not acceptable in a civilized world.

Am I saying Israel is always in the wrong? No, of course not! But to be blind to faults is as ignorant and evil as to be blind to qualities.

Nor am I saying the others are fault-free, for the same reason. I will never forgive the Palestinians for the destruction of archaeological sites. I will never let it slide that they and others have casually murdered innocent Israelis. I will never excuse any of those peoples for any of the harm they have done, any more than I will excuse any other nation.

And that is what makes my anger far, far closer to just. I admonish ALL nations for their crimes, equally and without bias, whether my own or others. I have none of the disease of nationalism, and it is a disease, a withering, sickening disease that rots the brain from the inside out. I was born in England, but I could type out as many - and more - abuses by the English than I could by almost any country in the Middle East. Just because I am English does not make England immune to my feelings. Nor does it attract any greater anger. Crimes are crimes are crimes, no matter who is guilty and who is innocent.

The Russians accuse the West of bias against Russia, in total ignorance of the fact that the Western media is relatively free from political influence, is not controlled by a propaganda chief, and is biased not against anyone but towards whatever that specific news outlet regards as accurate and honest reporting. Such accusations are foolish, for the West is more likely to react to such claims in a hostile manner than they would otherwise.

The same ultimately applies to accusations against any free thinker accused of bias against any other nation. The more free the thinking, the more polished the mirror, the more accurately nations will see their own defects of character. Don't blame the mirror for those defects a nation chooses to hold onto. Blame the nation for refusing to let go.

Personally, I think that nobody should be able to be placed in any government until they have completed a 12-step program and have demonstrated to the electoral body that they have indeed made amends wherever doing so would not cause further harm to all those harmed by their prior conduct. You want small government? This will give you one so small you could barely see it.