Quote Originally Posted by maxw
Dennis Miller recently said the following about the Middle East situation:

"The Palestinians want their own country.
There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians.
It's a made up word.
Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years.
Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient
but is really a modern invention....
This is such a load of lies, perhaps he has never met a Palestinian to ask him about their families being forced out of their homes during the Naqba (1948). These people were forced out of their own homes, their own land, by force and violence. There are 5 million Palestinian refugees today scattered all around the world. Many of them live in some of the most squalid conditions, in crowded refugee camps, with no means to better their lives, no decent education for their kids, no jobs, not even the freedom to move about.

The Palestinians are living in the largest prisons on earth, occupied by Israel, they have no right to control their destiny. Their land which is their only means of earning a living is continually seized by the government to build settlements. The Palestinians cannot even travel from one city to another. The highways in gaza and west bank are only for the settlers to use. The Palestinians are enduring collective punishment and are being blugeoned into submission.

But they refuse to give up their dream for freedom. They are the Indians who refuse to live on reservations, the blacks who refuse to sit in the back of the bus.

In 1982, Israel occupied Lebanon for 18 years to dislodge PLO and in the procees killed thousands of innocents. Out of that occupation came Hizbullah and unfortunately, again, we are seeing history repeat itself.

The only solution is to address the root causes of the violence. Attacking and killing is not the solution and I hope Israel realizes that some day. The only solution is for Israel to start treating the Palestinians as human being, give them their rights, their freedom and free will to control their destiny. If Israel does not want to give them freedom, then they should be accepted as human being, as equal citizens of the country. Israel cannot hope that they will vanish one day.

Justice is the only way to peace. Too many innocent people have been killed on both sides.